아래의 글은 SEO 와 SMM 간의 경쟁구도에 대해 SEOmoz 의 Randfish 가 올린 글을 재구성한 것입니다.

Comparing SEO & Social Media as Marketing Channels
November 16th, 2010 - Posted by randfish to Online Marketing

You may have seen the recent string of posts about SEO vs. Social Media, starting with this effective, but poorly argued controversy-bait, which was excoriated by Elysia Brooker and Hugo Guzman, then followed up with a more nuanced view by Darren Rowse. While I'm not particularly interested (nor do I think there's much value) in re-hashing or arguing these points, I did think the topic warranted attention, as it brings up some excellent points marketers should carefully consider as they invest in their craft.

 우리나라에서도 트위터, 페이스북(이용자가 200만 명이 넘었다죠.) 미투데이 등 소셜 미디어가 점점 입지를 넓혀가고 있고, 그에 따라 소셜 미디어를 통한 마케팅에 점점 더 많은 관심이 모이고 있습니다. 외국에서는 우리나라보다 조금 더 빠르게 소셜 미디어 마케팅이 활성화 되었고, SEO, PPC와 함께 새로운 온라인 마케팅 수단으로써 각광받고 있습니다. 하지만 워낙 급부상한 분야다보니 기존의 SEO, PPC 와 묘한 자리타툼(혹은 경쟁)이 있는 것이 사실입니다. SEO를 업으로 삼는 사람들은 SEO가 더 뛰어난 마케팅 방법이라고 할 것이고, SMM 으로 먹고 사는 사람은 SMM이 더 낫다고 하겠죠. Search engine journal 이라는 사이트에 SMM을 하시는 분이 'SEO는 완전 시간낭비, 돈낭비다!' 라는 뉘앙스의 글을 올린 적이 있습니다. SEO를 하는 사람들의 심기가 불편해질 수 밖에 없었겠죠? 논란이 이어지는 가운데, Randfish는 이런 말을 합니다.

We Search for What We Want + Need
The search for information and answers has been essential to humans since time immemorial. And there's no sign that our latest iteration, web search, is losing any steam:

Even as we've reached a maturity point with broadband adoption and online population, searches are rising. We're not searching less every month; we're searching more.

Search is an intent driven activity. We don't search casually (much), we search to find answers, information, goods and services to consume. The power of search marketing - whether paid or organic - is simple: Be in front of the consumer at the time of consumption. There's no more effective time to be present and no more effective way of knowing what is desired. All the social graph analysis in the world won't tell you that Sunday evening, I got fed up with my current selection of footwear and, after some searching, spent a few hundred dollars on Zappos. But being front and center when I queried mens puma shoes brought them some nice business.

 1. 사람들은 점점 더 많이 '검색' 한다.
위의 그래프를 보면 아시겠지만, 소셜 미디어가 인기를 끌건 말건 검색은 날로 증가합니다. 감소할 기미를 보이지 않습니다. 정보의 양이 증가할 수록, 점점 더 많이 검색을 하게 됩니다. (좀 더 정확하고 적절한 정보를 찾기 위해서겠죠?)


We're Social to Discover and Share
Social media - whether it's Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Reddit, StumbleUpon or something else - is about connections, interaction, discovery and distraction. We hardly ever use these portals as a way to find answers, though they certainly may provide plenty to unasked questions.

Social media marketing advocates often make the case that social is how we find out about new products on the web, but, at least so far, the data doesn't back up this assertion:

-
ATG Study on How Users Discover Products via SearchEngineLand

 2. 검색은 의도를 가진 행위이다.
 유명인, 혹은 유명 사이트를 팔로우해 놓으면 자동으로 정보를 배달받는 소셜 미디어와는 달리, 검색은 분명한 의도를 가지고 이루어 집니다. 필요한 정보를 찾아보기 위해, 무엇인가에 대해 더 알기 위해 이루어지는 적극적인 행동 입니다. 때문에 B2B 거래를 하거나, 이용자의 행동 변화를 이끌어 내는 데에 유리합니다. 하지만 SMM 의 경우는 상품에 대한 자세한 정보나 행동 변화를 이끌어 내기 보다는 PR 개념으로 이해하는 것이 더 적합하다고 생각합니다. 실제로 위에 나오는 그래프를 보시면, 상품에 대한 정보를 얻는 방법으로 검색엔진이 약 50%, 소셜 미디어가 약 15% 정도입니다. (25~35 세 사용자 기준) 또한 구매를 고려하는 정도를 따진다면, 검색 엔진을 통해 들어온 사용자의 4.5% 정도인 반면 SMM 의 경우는 1.3% 에 그칩니다.

However, I am strongly inclined to believe the claim that social media is how we find out about new content on the web, particularly when we're not seeking something in particular (as with a search). Blogs, pictures, video, research and the like are surely seeing an increased share of their visits from social, and that branding exposure is definitely valuable.

Some recent GroupM Research helped to shed the light of data on this supposition, noting that:

The click-through rate in organic search results for users who have been exposed to a brand's social marketing campaign are 2.4X higher than those that haven't; for paid search, it showed a jump from 4.5% to 11.8% (in both cases, this is for branded queries)
Consumers using social media are 1.7x more likely to search with the intention of making a list of brands or products to consider purchasing compared to those who do not use social media
Ben Yoskovitz talked about this value in his recent analysis:

Based on the information in this report, it’s reasonable to argue that social media marketing can increase the quality of leads (and not just the volume). It’s possible to hone in on, and understand intent through search and how social media exposure affects that intent. And as people are exposed (and I would say involved with – since exposure sounds like you’re just broadcasting stuff at people, which isn’t what social media is about) to social media their intent is more focused and driven towards lead conversion

That's the kind of social media marketing value I can get behind. Get exposed to potential customers through social so that when they build their consideration set, search and purchase, you'll have a leg up on the competition.

What Drives Traffic (and Converts) for Whom

It pays to understand the bias of this flare-up's instigator, and I've got plenty of compelling data myself to see his perspective. Last weekend, I started publishing content on a personal blog - no domain authority, no links and little chance of performing well in search. But the results from social media - Twitter, Facebook and Hacker News in particular - are fairly remarkable:

The search traffic demand, all 78 visits, was generated from the articles that went popular on Twitter & HN. The site itself still doesn't rank for its own name. Yet, social media sent 22,000 visits over 9 days. No wonder bloggers, in particular those that monetize through advertising, sponsorships and other traffic-driven systems, have a proclivity for investing in social traffic. Perhaps it's not so crazy to suggest on Problogger.net, a site about growing blog traffic and improving monetization, that social can be "better" than SEO.

 그럼, SMM의 장점은 뭐야?

 지난 주말, randfish 가 자신의 개인 블로그에 포스팅을 시작했다고 합니다. 트위터와 해커스뉴스에서 인기있었던 글을 포스팅하여 링크를 걸어놨는데, 9일동안 22,000 의 트래픽이 소셜 미디어를 통해 발생되었다고 합니다. (검색 엔진을 통해서는 78트래픽) 실로 어마어마한 성과라고 할 수 있습니다. 때문에 사이트의 트래픽을 단기간에 증가시키고 싶다면 충분히 효과적인 방법이 될 수 있다고 생각합니다. 이렇게 증가한 트래픽을 분석하고, 랜딩 페이지를 개선하거나 모종의 SEO 작업을 수행한다면 PageRank에도 도움을 줄 수 있는 기폭제의 역할을 할 수 있으리라 생각합니다. (물론 양질의 컨텐츠를 제공해야 하겠죠.)

I'd still argue that overall, referring traffic of all kinds sent from social, particularly from the largest network (Facebook), is only a fraction of the visits Google sends out each day (unless you're in the business of appealing to the Facebook audience biases - I was a bit frustrated with how the data was clearly manipulated in the reference piece to fit the story). But, social does eliminate some of the inherent biases that search engines carry and let content that appeals to social users flourish no matter the site's ability to grow its link profile, make content accessible to spiders or effectively target keywords.

Now let's look at an example on the opposite end of the spectrum - conversions for a B2B product.

SEOmoz's PRO membership may not be a good investment unless you're a marketer actively engaged with SEO, but given that both the search and social traffic our site attracts likely fall into this intent group (interested in SEO and likely to be in web marketing), a comparison seems fair.

First, I did some prep work in our Google Analytics account by creating an advanced segment called "social traffic" that contains any referral source with "twitter," "facebook," "stumbleupon," "linkedin," "flickr," and "ycombinator" - these represent the vast majority of our social media sources. Next, I compared this traffic quantitatively with our search referrals over the past two weeks:

Social Traffic - 26,599 visits from 30 sources
Organic Search Traffic - 102,349 from 20 sources

I then compared the percent of these reaching our landing or purchase pages for PRO membership. Here's organic search:

And here's social traffic:

Here's what I see:

4.5% of organic search visitors considered a purchase
1.3% of social traffic considered a purchase
While I can't disclose full numbers, I can see that a fair number of search visits converted vs. zero for social.
In fact, looking at the entire year to date traffic to SEOmoz from social sources, it appears not 1 visit has ever converted for us. Social may be a great way to drive traffic, build branding and make a purchase more likely in the future, but from a direct conversion standpoint, it doesn't hold a candle to search. To be fair, I'm not looking at full life cycle or even first-touch attribution, which makes this analysis less comprehensive, though likely still directionally informative.

Takeaways
Given the research and data here and in the posts/content referenced, I think we can say a few things about search and social as marketing channels:

There shouldn't be a VS.: This isn't about pitting web marketers against each other (or perhaps, more accurately, themselves, since our industry survey data suggests many of us are responsible for both). There's obvious value in both channels and to suggest otherwise is ideological nonsense and worse, self-defeating.
Search Converts: $20 Billion+ isn't being wasted on Google's search ads - that sucker send intent-driven, focused, conversion-ready visits like nobody else on the web.
Social Has Value: Those exposed to a social campaign are better customers and prospects; making social not only a branding and traffic channel, but an opportunity for conversion rate optimization.
SEO Is Hard in the Early Stages: Without a strong link profile, even great content may not perform particularly well in search results.
Segmenting Search and Social is Key: Unless you separate, analyze and iterate, you're doomed to miss opportunities and falsely attribute value. I'm particularly worried about those marketers who invest heavily in social to the detriment of SEO because the immediacy of the rewards is so much more tangible and emotionally compelling (He's following me on Twitter! We have 200 Facebook fans!) - make sure appropriate effort goes where it can earn ROI; it's our job.
For another interesting (and more social-media biased) perspective, check out Search vs. Social from Bradford Cross.

I'd love to hear more from you on this topic, too.

 우리의 과제
 SEO와 SMM 은 서로 조화될 수 있다.
 - SEO 가 더 낫다는 둥, SMM 이 더 낫다는 둥의 대결 구도를 가질 필요가 없다고 생각합니다. SEO는 SEO나름의 장점이 있고, SMM 은 또 나름의 장점이 있으니 둘을 잘 조화하여 마케팅을 한다면 굉장히 강력한 효과를 볼 수 있다고 생각합니다. 개인적으로는 위에 언급했다시피 SMM을 홍보 수단(혹은 브랜드 이미지 향상) 으로 활용하고 SEO 는 그 다음 단계 - 구매, 혹은 다른 활동을 이끌어내기 위한 정보제공 수단- 으로 활용한다면 좋은 성과를 낼 수 있으리라 생각합니다.  

 Social media 이용자를 주목하자.
 - 소셜 미디어에 노출된 사람들에 좀 더 주목해야 합니다. 소셜 미디어를 통해 브랜드 이미지를 향상시키거나 트래픽을 향상시키는 것에 그치지 않고, 실제로 행동을 이끌어 낼 수 있도록 해야 합니다. (정말 과제네요!)
 

이상 아티언스의 뉴페이스이자 막내이면서 신입사원 겸 사회초년생의 역할을 맡고 있는 철수2 였습니다!