Making choices and decisions is a daily requirement of business owners and leaders. There are days, in fact, when you do little else. One choice you do not need to make is whether your marketing strategy should include social media or SEO. We have said before that this is the wrong question. Especially in light of recent changes to search algorithms, it’s still the wrong question.

You will always need to help people find your business website when they need the products or services you provide. There is no need to engage in the kind of SEO tactics that gave search optimization and search marketing a bad name a few years ago. In fact, if you do that today, you can expect the search engines to punish you. However, it is important to write web and social content in ways that make it easy for the search engines to identify the subject of your site and your information.

You still need to understand and use keywords. It is important to know what words and phrases people commonly use to find businesses, products, and/or services like yours. You can then provide content about the keywords and keyword phrases that answers the questions and needs of your target audience.

Social Media and SEO can be a very powerful combination in your marketing strategy if allowed to work synergistically. Now that social media content is included in search results, use of the most important keywords in your social content will also bring people to your website or your social media pages. Consistent use of keywords across social platforms and your blog and website will further raise your search ranking.

In fact, the most effective approach to social media or SEO is not a choice of which you will include in your marketing strategy. Rather, you should be planning how you will capitalize on synergies created by strategically optimizing both social media and website or blog content for your best keywords or keyword phrases. You will likely discover that cross-pollinating all of your content with strong keywords attracts more of your target audience to the platform they prefer to find answers to their questions and to learn how your business can meet their needs.

Search, whether using the web search engines or social search, uses optimized content to bring the right audience to your content. You can then provide additional static content, engage with them using social media platforms or make a sales call.

Social media or SEO is still the wrong question. Social media and SEO are natural partners in digital marketing for all businesses. The appropriate question is, “What are the most creative and innovative ways to use social media and SEO together to attract more of your most likely prospects?”