David: Has SEO been overtaken by social media? What are the most imperative areas of SEO to get right? What does good web design look like in 2014? Those are just a few of the questions that I intend to ask our special guest today, Jonny Ross. Jonny welcome to DMR.

Jonny: Hi.

David: Well Jonny’s actually the founder of Jonny Ross Consultancy. An SEO web design and social media service provider based in Leeds in the U.K. Jonny, is it important that SEO and social works closely together or can you work as two silo departments, barely speaking to each other?

Jonny: I think that’s a really interesting question. I think a lot of people do believe that they can work independently. For an effective campaign the more each part understand each other the more powerful the entire campaign can be. I think SEO has very much moved towards social media. It’s nothing new. It’s happened over the last three or four years. There’s a major swing. For me SEO is just about good content and getting that content popular. Well, what do you use to do that? Social Media.I think the two things are extremely closely related. I think the more each party can understand each other and work together on it the far more effective a campaign can be.

David: So do you think there are other ways of getting that content out there nowadays without embracing social media. Or do you think nowadays a brand that wants to be successful online absolutely has to have their own social profile as a presence.

Jonny: I think there are other ways of getting content out. There’s no question about that. Certainly there’s still traditional press. There’s traditional online PR sites. Certain ones are still highly valued. It doesn’t have to be social media. Certainly the easiest door into all of this is social media. I think any company that’s not embracing social media really needs to think about that.

I just blogged about the football industry. The latest thing coming from UEFA is that they are saying that they’re going to prosecute people just for taking a video clip of someone scoring a goal because that’s their intellectual property and it’s potentially going to cause damage to contracts with Sky and ITV, etc., etc. For me they need to start embracing social media because they’re just going to lose fans. I’m quite passionate about this because I know you’ve got lots of questions. I think all companies need to embrace social media and not go against it.