There are various strategies for driving visitors to your website, both free and paid, however, we are noticing that viral marketing or hero content is getting popular becoming one of the greatest popular tactics to draw users to a certain website.
Unlike other strategies, viral traffic is generated through internet talk rather than search engines. Its success can be attributed to its inexpensive implementation expense and fast and also very strong response rate. As a result, can we state that viral marketing is superior to search engine optimization (SEO) for a great online positioning of a company or organization?
Before responding to that issue, there are several contrasts and similarities between SEO & hero content to consider.
Differences between SEO and hero content
In theory, hero content has little to no relation with SEO. Hero content is a blog, vlog, image, or meme that goes viral. When you create content with your audience in mind, there are higher chances of it going viral. But does it mean that you neglect SEO? No, you need SEO for the long term to sustain viewer interest after they chance upon your page. Let’s look at some of the differences between SEO and hero content.
1. Quickness & complexity
Without a doubt, viral material produces a significant number of clicks in a brief amount of time, so brief that it is measured in days. This is the reason these contents have gained popularity. On the contrary hand, numerous businesses require months, if not years, to acquire a considerable volume of visitors using SEO strategies. As per an expert study, this is because an SEO plan necessitates optimizing your website internally, creating your content, and correctly advertising it.
"SEO takes time to create and then for search engines to evaluate"
As an outcome, SEO results may take months to appear, particularly if the website is new. Nevertheless, creating hero content is simpler. Simply upload the video to Vimeo or YouTube and publish a piece or post on the Net.
However, what makes content, be it an article, a photo, or a video, move from fascinating to so engaging that we feel obligated to share it with someone? The NY Times produced detailed research on what motivates individuals to distribute things widely on the internet. The findings indicate a substantial link between emotions & virality, however, this link conceals some more complicated characteristics.
Optimism, inspiration, and positive content, as determined by this study, is far more likely to become viral than hateful or negative content. However, although sad material is less likely to become viral, stuff that evokes sentiments of rage or fear is somewhat more probable to be shared. On average, what creates an emotion is more widespread.
GoPro's clip to draw people to its brand is a perfect example. The corporation not only demonstrated the camera's excellence, but it also instilled in the spectator a strong sense of worry, hopelessness, then contentment with the video's charming finish. As a consequence, nearly 20 million people have seen the film on YouTube.
However, it is not only films that may produce viral traffic; numerous news pieces are extensively shared. The BBC's online version, for instance, has compiled a list of the most popular stories shared by its followers on social media.
You can indeed discover which types of postings have had the biggest influence on social media and, as a result, have been the maximum viewed. In this regard, Facebook compiles the highest number of shared stories each year. This is an excellent approach to figuring out what draws people and then capitalizing on it.
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2. Consistency and stability
Despite the benefits, a viral marketing strategy is not as long-lasting as content crawling in search results, so it generally fades away after a few days of heavy traffic.
Traffic obtained through search engine optimization, in contrast, may well be deemed more sustainable. Furthermore, individuals that use search results have an engaged mindset, which makes them more likely to act whenever they locate relevant sites, resulting in quality visitors to your premises that are highly segregated & specialized, and are centered on a particular niche audience.
3. Investing
In terms of money, creating hero content is much less expensive than implementing an SEO plan. As we've shown, developing hero content requires less cost because a large amount of traffic may be produced simply by publishing a video on YouTube. Rather, investing in expertise, resources, content, plus link development is required to drive traffic using search engine optimization.
Similarities between SEO and hero content
How do we work on SEO? The three crucial factors while designing content for SEO are relevance, accessibility, and authority. When we keep these factors in mind, we tend to create content that has a high chance of going viral.
Unpredictability
Because algorithms for search engines are unpredictable, the placement of your website employing SEO is uncertain. Furthermore, search engines such as Google or Bing are proprietary concerning their algorithm, which seem to be frequently modified or updated. Google, for instance, ranks websites based on more than 200 parameters. At the very same moment, viral traffic is unpredictable since you cannot foresee its impact. Only one way to assure effectiveness is to execute the methods we just covered for producing hero content.
End Note
To summarize, all online traffic generation tactics have pros and cons. As a result, you must mix and diversify your funds. Numerous researchers agree that you should never rely on a single approach, especially when it comes to increasing traffic to a certain website.
