To say social media is a bit of a mess right now would be putting it mildly. Between advertisers jumping ship at X, the TikTok ban will-they-won’t-they, and Meta’s latest policy changes sparking user backlash, it’s clear that marketers need to keep this volatile nature in mind when it comes to ad spend and digital efforts.
And yes, I get it, Google’s constant SERP updates, AI overviews, legal battles, and endless algorithm tweaks can make SEO look equally unstable on the surface.
But here’s the simple truth: SEO remains one of the most stable, consistent, and rewarding long-term strategies out there, especially when you stack it up against social channels that can – and often do – shift overnight.
Table of Contents
- What’s Going on With Meta?
- Policy Shifts & Advertiser Impact
- Why SEO Is the Resilient Alternative
- Data Always Offers an Advantage
- Preparing for an Uncertain Digital Landscape
What’s Going on With Meta?
On January 7th, 2025 Meta unveiled a series of policy changes branded as enabling “more speech and fewer mistakes” on their platforms. Some of these policy changes include:
- Ending third party fact-checking in the US
- Lifting restrictions on certain discourse surrounding LGBTQ+, racial, and gender issues
- Shifting moderation tactics with regard to political content
Meta positions these changes as enabling “free expression” as quoted below:
Meta’s platforms are built to be places where people can express themselves freely. That can be messy. On platforms where billions of people can have a voice, all the good, bad and ugly is on display. But that’s free expression.
More Speech and Fewer Mistakes – Meta
The changes came in conjunction with a termination of its broader DEI efforts just a few days later.
Some of the policy changes are a bit more subtle, whereas others, as The Human Rights Campaign highlighted, are much more blatant. Take for instance a change making it acceptable to call LGBTQ+ people ‘mentally ill’ – taken verbatim from the policy text:
We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like “weird.”
Meta Hate Speech Community Standards
Other additions include:
Social exclusion, which means things like denying access to spaces (physical and online) and social services, except for sex or gender-based exclusion from spaces commonly limited by sex or gender, such as restrooms, sports and sports leagues, health and support groups, and specific schools.
Meta Hate Speech Community Standards
…as well as:
We do allow content arguing for gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs. We also allow the same content based on sexual orientation, when the content is based on religious beliefs.
Meta Hate Speech Community Standards
These changes – subtle as a flying brick with teeth – are, of course, catching the attention of users. Search volume in Google, per Google Trends, for “Delete Instagram” and “Delete Facebook” type queries has increased pretty sharply:
Delete Instagram:
Delete Facebook:
Here’s a taste of some of the magnitude of some increases in this space:
| Query | Search Volume Increase |
|---|---|
| Delete Facebook account 2024 | +1,600% |
| How to delete Facebook account 2024 | +1,600% |
| How to delete an Instagram account 2024 | +1,550% |
| How to delete Instagram account 2024 | +1,500% |
| How to delete Facebook 2024 | +1,200% |
| How to delete FB account permanently from mobile | +800% |
These changes have, understandably, created a bit of an exodus from the platform. Putting aside previous allegations of algorithmic favoring of content designed to make you angry, its already-negative impact on mental health – and many more reasons to jump ship – acceptable harassment is now quite literally written into the policy.
Being entirely pragmatic for a second: is this the end of Facebook, Instagram, and Meta as a whole? Absolutely not.
They’re goliaths in this space. That’s not to say that they’re too big to fail, but the reality is that many users will ultimately leave, but many more will stay.
As a member of the LGBTQ+ community myself, I took this as the final little push I needed to ditch Meta. There are plenty of people like me, but we’re not by any means the majority.
In truth, Meta and its social media platforms will likely continue as they have, minus some users not willing to take part on their platform.
But that’s not exactly the point. Sure, the platforms will continue on, but there’s still a notable impact on marketers and advertisers.
Policy Shifts & Advertiser Impact
Policy shifts, or leadership actions that impact user behavior on social media aren’t exactly new, but they do impact marketers in (at least) two distinct ways.
Perception: Participation = Support
In today’s digital landscape it’s incredibly easy for information (and misinformation) to spread like wildfire; that is to say that controversial moves don’t exactly stay under the radar for very long.
It’s never been easier for activists to shine a spotlight on brands participating in causes they disagree with; just look at what happened with Twitter after Elon Musk took it over.
Activists urged brands to stop advertising there, and users were more than happy to amplify the message, leading to concerns about brand safety for participation, and, ultimately 50 of X’s top 100 advertisers leaving.
Why?
For starters, association with a “toxic brand” can be incredibly detrimental to brand perception, and what better way is there to be associated with a brand than quite literally paying to be there?
The sentiment that beloved brands are actively funding platforms users view as toxic or supporting causes they don’t align with isn’t exactly a recipe for customer loyalty.
Social Media Turmoil Creates Messy Metrics
Putting aside the potential moral quandaries and implications, there’s a more pragmatic consideration too: successful marketing is dependent on targeting, and calculating ROI is dependent on solid metrics and data.
Times of flux and social media turmoil disrupt the audiences present on these social media platforms. If your brand has historically seen the highest conversion rates among a key demographic, but that demographic leaves a social media platform – either temporarily or permanently – your brand’s effectiveness on that platform is diminished at no fault of your own.
If you’ve set budgets and expectations using historical data, an overnight policy change can suddenly derail those plans in an instant, leaving you in a scramble to make up for missed marks.
Human nature meddles metrics in situations like this too – perhaps all of this turmoil has left the remaining audience on your platform of choice particularly vocal and volatile, leading to negative interactions with your ad or brand. Other users see these negative interactions, and suddenly they’re left questioning their own positions on your brand.
How do those engagement metrics get categorized? Do you spend time responding to them and putting out fires, or do you turn your attention to other pursuits with a higher payoff?
Why SEO Is the Resilient Alternative
I’ll reiterate my statement from earlier: I’m very much aware that AI, algorithm changes, legal battles, and more can ultimately make SEO look like a solution that’s just as volatile as social media – but I promise that it’s really not.
Here’s why.
Ownership vs. Renting an Audience
The entire point of SEO is to optimize the odds of your own brand appearing in search results, whether that’s on Google, Bing, ChatGPT, or any other number of services that operate to get users from X digital location to Y.
The star at the center of the show here is your website and your content which you are in complete control of.
On the opposite side, relying on social media platforms, and building your brand there, means you’re effectively renting your audience. If a social media platform suddenly decides to change direction, update its policies, or even just falls out of favor (remember Myspace?) you run the risk of losing your entire audience overnight.
It’s the platform that decides how (and sometimes even if) your content is shown, and you’re always at the mercy of someone else’s rules.
Since SEO puts the emphasis on building your brand on your own website, you get true ownership in the end. You set the rules, control the messaging, and create the user experience without worrying about sudden shifts in priorities for the platform.
When visitors land on your site, they’re interacting with your brand on your terms, not scrolling past competing ads or cat videos.
While I could drone on and on at length about the benefits of owning your brand, and the importance of a controlled channel, here’s a snappier version of some perks compared to social media reliance:
Direct Communication: Building up an email list? You’ve got a direct line of communication with your users. No visibility rules or pay-to-play models to reach your own followers.
Monetization Flexibility: It’s your site, you decide how to monetize. Ads, affiliates, subscriptions, products and services – there’s no platform revenue cuts or sudden rule changes banning certain promotions.
Tailored User Experience: You design your on-site experience to align with your brand values and audience preferences. No preset layouts or brand-imposed features you may or may not even want.
Content Freedom: Social media platforms can take down, demonetize, or stifle the reach of anything on their platform at any time they want; on your site, you’re the only one capable of doing that.
Algorithm Changes, But Not a Shutdown
Time to address the elephant in the room: the nature of Google’s unannounced, unexplained, and capable-of-happening-at-any-time algorithm updates might make SEO seem like it’s got the potential to be just as volatile as some of these social media platforms.
Generally speaking, that’s not usually the case. Take a look at Google’s algorithm update history for 2024 for instance:
The number of updates has been pretty consistent for years now, and typically you can expect an update or two per quarter. This pattern has been surprisingly stable.
So let’s put aside the specific unknown number of algorithm updates for a year and zoom out a bit to look at some realities.
SEO Reality #1: Algorithm Updates Follow Predictable Patterns
In addition to being able to generally assume there’ll be an algorithm update or two per quarter, there are typically warning signs beforehand that allow time for preparation and adaptation.
Sometimes it’s a SERP weather forecast, and sometimes it’s Google itself flagging the launch of an update.
In addition to the predictable nature of algorithm updates, most big changes that do have the potential to shake things up are incremental and come with some advanced warning.
Take for instance mobile-first indexing, and page experience updates; these directives were communicated ahead of time, supplemented with tools to test compliance, and iteratively implemented over time to give businesses and website owners a window to make necessary adjustments.
SEO Reality #2: Long-Term Principles Still Apply
While SEO veterans might roll their eyes every time Google’s advice to brands and publishers is simply “make good content” it’s a go-to for the company for a reason: making good content is the cornerstone principle upon which SEO sits.
Yes, some algorithm updates are more impactful than others (more on this later), but the guiding principle of making your content better for users to keep them coming back will always lead to better SEO performance in the long-term.
Take for instance the era of the listicle-type article: for a minute there, every article served up by Google was in the format of ’10 Interesting Facts About <subject>’ to the point that you couldn’t avoid them.
Why? Because that’s what users were preferring.
Google’s algorithm updates are largely fueled by user data (as long thought by SEO professionals and confirmed in the antitrust case documents). If users prefer list-type content, spend more time on those pages, and click those more often, over time the algorithm will adjust to favor that type of content, which in turn causes content creators to create more of it.
It’s a gross oversimplification that doesn’t consider things like technical SEO (rules that have also ironically largely remained consistent). Still, the core point boils down to making content that your users enjoy.
SEO Reality #3: Comparative Impact
By and large, the vast majority of Google algorithm updates don’t shake things up too terribly much.
Sure, some outlier updates seem to make a mess of results, and every update comes with at least a handful of cited cases of either annihilating or pouring jet fuel onto the traffic of some websites. But these are outliers for a reason.
In most cases, algorithm updates refine ranking signals rather than erasing entire marketing strategies. Certain content may fluctuate up or down in rankings – and that can certainly have an impact – but the impact isn’t typically all that severe.
It’s especially less severe when compared to, say, a billionaire social media owner implementing a policy that instantly alienates a portion of a platform’s audience overnight.
A solid SEO strategy can dissect an algorithm update, identify the supposed rationale behind fluctuations, triage the damage, and immediately get to work mending what went wrong.
The same can’t exactly be said about fixing audience issues caused by 3:00 AM rage tweets.
Data Always Offers an Advantage
In marketing as a whole, but specifically in SEO, data can make or break a strategy. Fortunately, SEO as a practice is based on making informed decisions based on the data available to us – and there’s a lot of it.
Direct tracking: Tools like Google Analytics, Search Console, and third-party SEO platforms like Ahrefs, Semrush, and more give super precise metrics – traffic, bounce rates, conversions, search volume, and more – that provide clear insights into campaign performance. There may be bumps in tracking sometimes, but the SEO community always finds a way to get their beloved metrics back and better than before.
ROI clarity: Unlike social media impressions (which could either be fleeting or inflated), SEO metrics demonstrate how many visitor are actively engaging, what pages they’re visiting, how they convert, and what methods they’re using to convert, which makes ROI much easier to justify.
Testing and iteration: SEO allows for continuous testing in the form of A/B tests, content tests, meta tag adjustment, and more, to see which tactics align with new algorithm changes and updates. While this is also technically possible on social media to a smaller extent, it’s typically reliant on external factors outside of your control.
So you’ve got all this data, and that’s great – but what’s the advantage here? Outside of the obvious ability to make better strategic, data-driven decisions, that is.
Continuous optimization.
Because you’ve got all of these metrics at your disposal, and you own the platform that they’re being measured on, content, keywords, and website structure can be refined in real-time, which itself allows for ongoing continuous optimization.
Website changes designed to increase conversions don’t need to sit in a moderation queue like ads on social media; they’re live as soon as you click the update or deploy button.
You’re not beholden to external platforms and policies, the whims of a platform’s political leanings, or overnight changes that disrupt strategies.
It’s your platform. Take all that beautiful data and put it to work for you.
Data Helps to Future-Proof
Between AI Overviews launching in Google, the rise of Perplexity and SearchGPT, and the general way we receive information seeming to be in a state of flux, it’s no wonder that people may be having some doubts about SEO and its future.
But data comes to the rescue here too.
SEO tools for measuring AI Overviews already exist and seem to be getting better by the day. Analyzing visitors from the bots sent by Perplexity and ChatGPT offers us glimpses into the patterns and behaviors of those platforms.
Because everything tends to have a metric associated with it, the core concept boils down to what SEO is about at its core, and what it started off as: a big puzzle putting together the why.
Why is ChatGPT-user visiting certain pages more than others? Can we identify patterns in that data? What data can we provide to Perplexity to help it understand our website better?
SEO isn’t disappearing, it’s evolving.
For a while we had the basics down, and the foundations that stood true regardless of algorithm updates. Those basics and fundamentals are still obviously important, but being in a space where we don’t have decades of tactics, habits, and practices to fall back on makes people (understandably) uncomfortable.
Fortunately, the SEO professionals committed to learning the answers to the above questions are armed with the data to do it effectively now and in the future too. Shake off that discomfort, lean into the data, and learn the new fundamentals that power these search platforms.
Preparing for an Uncertain Digital Landscape
Obviously social media is and will likely always be a tool in a digital marketer’s toolbox – it’d be silly to suggest scrapping it altogether. When the digital landscape seems as volatile as it does right now, there are two guiding principles to keep in mind.
Marketing Mix Diversification
The old adage “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket” has never applied to digital marketing more than it does today.
Do I think that SEO tends to be one of the safer bets, and generally worth more effort than most firms put into it? Absolutely. Should it be the sole marketing tactic? Absolutely not, never.
Channel variety is crucial to a stable and consistent ROI.
Balance social media strategy with more stable cornerstone pillars to compensate in times of volatility like email marketing, content marketing, YouTube, Google Ads, etc.
If your marketing mix is a well-oiled and diverse machine, social media events like those unfolding now and in the recent past will undoubtedly still have an impact, but it won’t be nearly as severe.
Similarly, have backup plans ready for social media. If a new platform launches that drives millions of users due to outrage over the existing platforms, does your team have the infrastructure necessary to hop in and be an early adopter? If your go-to platform of choice suddenly, let’s say… disappears overnight (who would have thought?), do you have a backup platform in place to shift that budget to?
These are the things to be considering – ideally between or before volatile shakeups, not during them.
Ongoing Education & Adaptation
TikTok was functioning one day, gone the next, and then back again the day after.
Meta had fact-checking and community safety rules that were present, then suddenly gone overnight.
While TikTok’s news broke through pretty easily to the masses, the Meta policy changes went a bit more under the radar for some.
This brings me to my final point, probably the most important one about preparing for an uncertain digital landscape: digital marketers have a crucial responsibility to be aware of the latest happenings in digital spaces and channel evolutions. Ongoing education is critical.
That doesn’t just mean with social media either; the evolution of SEO looks intimidating, and it’s pretty obvious a lot is going to change – but that doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing, or detrimental to business.
Marketers who keep their feet firmly planted in the status quo – and the businesses they work for – will be the ones who suffer in the wake of all this evolution and change.
Don’t bemoan a new platform starting to gain popularity; use it! Understand it! Adapt these new platforms, figure out how they work, and then translate that into how they can be useful for your business.
I believe that a solid SEO strategy can and should be the cornerstone of any digital marketing efforts, especially in the wake of this continuous social media chaos we’ve gotten to watch unfold, but even the best SEO strategy will be worthless without ongoing education and adaptation.
As the volatility knob continues to be cranked to higher levels, keep an eye on safer and more stable efforts, like SEO, to form the backbone of your strategy. Sure, things might change pretty abruptly, but it’s not like Google’s going to disappear overnight.
…Right?
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