Difference between SEO and SMO
SEO or search engine optimization may be a familiar–if not exactly household–term by now, although that probably isn't the case with SMO or social media optimization. But while you may not quite be aware of what the latter is yet, you should know that both SEO and SMO are essential in ensuring a high ranking for your website on the major search engines. Let's take a look at how you can put both to work for you in as effective a manner as possible.
Definition
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is a set of techniques by which a particular site can achieve a high ranking on the results pages of the major search engines. It does this by making sure that your site is as closely optimized for search engines as possible. SEO also aims to make your site easily accessible to search engine spiders, thus increasing its chances of being indexed. SMO or Social Media Optimization for its part is mainly intended to make a site as user friendly as possible, thereby increasing readership.
Traffic Peaks And Valleys
While SEO has been around for quite some time now, it is only fairly recently that SMO has come into widespread attention, as social networking sites have virtually conquered the online world. That being said, traffic generated by SMO tends to be less consistent than that which results from a properly implemented SEO campaign, although it may still be used to generate loads of traffic in a consistent manner.
Backlinks are key to Search Engine Optimization. You can get backlinks in many ways.
1. Directory Submission
2. Article submissions to article sites like Ezine, Articlebase, etc
3. Create Twitter, Facebook accounts and update your new content
4. Submit your sites to Social BookMarking sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, mixx, etc
5. Forum posting
6. Link exchange
7. Create a blog in Wordpress, Typepad, etc
8. Use pingomatic to ping new content
Create backlinks gradually, otherwise Google may put your site in a sandbox
Networking And Traffic Concerns
One aspect in which SEO and SMO are markedly different is in terms of networking. While SMO relies heavily on networking and developing robust profiles, SEO does not necessarily require these. SEO also results in traffic that closely targets your particular niche, while SMO results in a snowball effect in which increased readership will have the effect of pulling in even more readers to your site.
Finally, SEO generally means that you are in competition with other sites in your chosen niche, although SMO allows you to help other sites in the process of building your own reader base, since you are not in direct competition with them.
Summary
SEO
- Inbound links greatly influence page ranking
- Also relies in large part on title tags, headers, image title, bold text and proper keyword usage
- Aims to make a site easy to read for search engine spiders
- Places high priority on content quality and site structure
SMO
- Proper implementation will benefit SEO efforts as well
- Not so much importance placed on coding and tags
- Relies in large part on visually attractive and/or striking elements
- Places a lot of importance on titles and headlines
- Aims to make a site easy to read for humans
- Quality content is essential for maintaining reader interest
- Relies on visual impact as well
