What used to be just a simple boost in web traffic is now an essential part in surviving as an online business, and in some cases even a brick and mortar business. As more and more demand for comprehensive and accurate search results arises, the search engines get more and more complex in how they rank sites within the SERPs. Search engines now analyze much more than just keywords and links, and one of the biggest themes on the rise is social media.
So what exactly is SMO?
Social Media Optimization (SMO) is a rather new term in the industry but is quickly becoming an essential component in any complete SEO campaign. Commonly referred to as Social SEO, SMO involves using a company’s social media properties to boost traffic and brand awareness. Mediums such as Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+ have become an essential way for businesses to communicate with their customer base. While SEO drives traffic from search engines to your site, SMO deals with directly interfacing with your customers on their social feeds.
How does one implement SMO?
There are two primary ways to incorporate SMO practices into your SEO campaign.
- One is via promoting your business or brand via the social media platforms. If your business does not currently have active accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and even other social media sites, then you’re not doing all you can do to make your company as visible as possible. Customers love to communicate via social media, and there are many opportunities to catch their attention with your services and products. Not to mention it’s a great way for new customers to find your business.
- The other is by adding social media functionality to your site’s content. A great example is right to the right of this very text. You can add social media functionality to any of your content simply by displaying similar buttons to the ones on the right. The Facebook Like button, Google’s +1 button, and others allow for readers to easily share and distribute information you want them to.
Yes, SMO takes time and effort, but the bounties it can provide are well worth the time and sweat put into it.
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I learn something new every day in this line of work. I have seen these buttons you are talking about on a lot of sites and never put two and two together to use them properly. Now that I understand how they work I can use them to benefit me and the customer. Thank you for sharing this valuable information with us. How do you get them on your blog?
There are plugins for just about every platform. My blog here is built with WordPress and I use the Tweet, Like, Google +1 and Share plugin for the buttons below the posts and I use the Advanced Social Widget in my sidebar. They are both easy to implement.
This was a great blog and I look forward to using these buttons to their full potential now that I am aware of how to use them. This was very informative and I hope that I am not the only one that didn’t know what they were for. I appreciate the information because I will be using it when I get my business up and running. I look forward to your next post, thank you.
Just by looking at the header caption of this article page, you can get an idea of how many popular social media networks there are in cyberspace which you can benefit from in the interest of promoting your business. I have been on web sties which have a social media link bar represented by small icons for each social network outlet, and those have had twice the number of icons of this article’s header caption.