The convergence of SEO and social media as interrelated disciplines has been evident for a number of years. Smart SEO’s jumped on the social bandwagon years ago realizing the potential of social media to drive traffic and links. Today, search marketers (along with marketers in general) are some of the most active in the social arena. And for good reason. Well executed social media activity offers a range of SEO benefits, perhaps best captured in Adam Singer’s diagram:

Image Source – Future Buzz

Yet whilst they are clearly interrelated, the two disciplines remain distinct in approach. One aims to satisfy robots (SEO). The other aims to satisfy humans (social). The question I have is whether a person with a purely robotic approach can still be an effective SEO…?

The question arose as I discussed link building tactics recently with an SEO colleague. His approach to SEO is predominantly a robotic one. Tweak pages and build links. While he certainly understands the benefits social media delivers from an SEO perspective, his hands-on experience with social tools is minimal.

When SEO meets social

My colleague began taking me through his personal blog commenting practices for link building purposes. As a blogger myself, I gave a publisher’s perspective on the issue. I view comments that contain links with obvious anchor text extremely pessimistically. I know exactly what the commenter is trying to achieve. And I probably delete 9 out of 10 comments of that nature. But I’m probably more of a social media purist than others.

Of course, views towards acceptable blog commenting practices are subjective. A definitive shade of grey exists around exactly what constitutes a constructive comment, particularly when there is an ulterior motive. A fierce debate raged on an Australian blog recently with social purists attacking blog commenting policies with blatant commercial intent. However, over at Search Engine People, a perfectly rational discussion on essentially the same topic drew a completely different perspective from a predominant SEO audience.

However, the specific debate over blog commenting practices wasn’t really what interested me. It was the larger issue of whether the pure robotic mindset was still valid as an SEO. This SEO was somewhat blinded to the perspective of the social purist  because of a lack on hands-on experience. And while he had a basic sense of the type of behaviour that’s acceptable, a true understanding of social media etiquette is difficult to comprehend without truly experiencing it.

The proof came when I asked him to send me some examples of comments he had left on blogs. He sent me three links to posts he had recently published comments on. However, as I viewed the posts, all three had been deleted. Zero percent strike rate. After viewing the original comments I could see why. The comments weren’t the inane “great post” you see from the laziest of comment spammers, but despite being well-intentioned, I would have deleted them myself.

Other blunders from robotic SEOs

I’ve seen similar blunders from SEO colleagues when attempting to establish blogs for SEO purposes. They understand that search engines love blogs, yet they don’t understand how to establish a successful blog. Instead of creating useful and valuable content, they farm out copywriting to India for $3 an article, treating content as a commodity. The blog is doomed to failure. If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

Different problem, but same symptom. The robotic SEO has failed to truly understand the mechanics of the social web. Content for content’s sake will never attract the quality inbound links they crave. Blogs don’t work simply because they are in fact a blog. They thrive based upon the quality of content published. Plain and simple.

So with these examples in mind, I pose the question – is it now a necessity for an SEO to have practical social media skills? Can purely robotic SEOs continue to survive in a world where social media skills are increasingly required? Or are they an endangered species…?

Over to you.

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James Duthie is an online marketing strategist and also writes & manages his own online marketing blog. You can subscribe here.

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