There is a wind of change blowing in the blogosphere. Two concepts for attracting visitors are facing each other, social media optimization and search engine optimization. Bloggers are divided in two camps: Kevin Rose, the social media star, or Larry Page, the search engine guru. More and more bloggers are turning their back on Google to optimize for social media sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, and Del.icio.us to name a few. It is easy, takes no time, and with a simple killer article you can get thousands of visitors almost instantly from a single submission. On the other hand, marketers optimizing their blogs for high ranking in organic search results cannot ignore Google and jump in Kevin’s wagon, they have to be friend with Larry and make sure they are heading in the same direction as ‘his‘ wind is blowing.

Some bloggers are taking very strong position in this battle. But deep down, is this there a real fight going on? I have asked the question to 3 pro bloggers, and a new blogger who’s had a fair deal of success in a short period of time. My question to them was: Who are you optimizing your site/content for, social media or search engines? Let’s see what they have to say about it:

Maki, from Dosh Dosh

Maki returns the question to bloggers. Before choosing your camp, introspect your blog to target readers wisely. While Kevin can introduce you to many of his friends, Larry might be your best bet to cut a deal:

“It depends on your goals. If you’re mainly looking to spread ideas, optimizing your content for social media channels will increases it’s chance of gaining more attention. Search engine visitors are somewhat similar to social media audiences in the sense that they are more likely reference content that is unique, interesting and useful. But if you’re creating a website purely to generate income by sending search visitors out via ad clicks, you don’t need to make your posts palatable enough for social media audiences. This is because you don’t necessarily need or want it to be spread in these channels.”

Fred, from Newest On The Net

For a new blogger trying to make his way through the blogosphere, most of the time the primary goal is to increase readership. Fred used SMO wisely. His blog got lots of social media love in a short period of time and this translated in a descent number of subscribers for a new blog. SMO combined with quality content such as his famous 35 Guaranteed Ways To Increase Your RSS Subscribers returned impressive results. In his case, following Kevin while keeping an eye on Larry, is the way to go:

“I do a combination of the two. I do a little SEO and a lot SMO. For new blogs social media is the best way to get traffic and develop a loyal reader base. SEO takes a long time to see the rewards. As you can see from my article on StumbleUpon, social media can drive tons of traffic to your blog as long as you have great content.”

John Chow, from John Chow dot Com

While some bloggers are dancing with Kevin and others flirting with Larry, there’s a third group that simply just don’t give a damn. They hang around at the bar chatting with whoever wants to join the conversation. John Chow, the famous Dot Com Mogul, is one of them. His take on whether he should push for SMO or SEO says it all:

“Neither. I optimize for my readers.”

Yaro Starak, from Entrepreneur’s Journey

Luckily, there are other avenues. Yaro, the ambassador of pillar articles, counts on producing quality content for auto-submission and does very little SEO. For him there are alternatives to Kevin and Larry:

“I don’t heavily optimize for social media or search engines, although I certainly take steps to help with the search engines, like use tags and internal linking patterns that focus on certain keywords. It’s far from anything that strategic - just good habits.

In terms of social media, good content gets stumbled, so if I produce good content I figure social media will reward me, I certainly don’t have any structured plan regarding this, but I know other bloggers do. Frankly, I don’t like spending my time digging and stumbling in the hope of getting more diggs and stumbles thrown back at me, it’s just too much work.

My answer, if I could have a third choice, is to focus on email opt-ins, that is where I am currently taking my blog because it’s far more lucrative than any front page digg hit.

If you force an answer out of me, I would have to say search engines over social media.

Who Wins The Battle?

While social media is skyrocketing and many bloggers are optimizing their content for mass submission, the Google giant should never be ignored. Be neutral and let nature do its thing. If your blog offers quality content, readers will naturally submit your stories and come back for more. The best advice you can get out of the answers above is to never put all your eggs in the same basket. Consequently, neither Kevin nor Larry should be declared champion. Will there be a rematch in the future? Let see where 2008 will take us.

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