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Social media optimization (SMO) is for social sites what SEO is for
business sites. Social networking and sharing sites like MySpace and YouTube
are all the rage right now, and they present novel opportunities for search
marketers. From these innovative Web portals, a new term seems to have
emerged: SMO, or social media optimization.
In his blog post, “5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO),”
Rohit Bhargava described this new terminology. More specifically, he addresses
how SMO and SEO can effectively collaborate.
The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a
site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social
media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more
frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.
You’ve already got a site that’s search engine friendly,
but is your site social media friendly? If not, you may be missing out
on some additional heavey traffic. To break ground in this new fertile
land of SMO, you might want to consider adding some functionality to your
site. In particular, making it easy for visitors to bookmark you site
to social media networks like del.icio.us can quickly generate even more
links. And the more linkbacks you create, the higher you rise in the search
engines.
So how does one make the adjustment from SEO to SMO. The basic transition
involves understanding that no harm will come to you as result of your
Web presence be in multiple places at the same time. That advice goes
against the grain of SEO, where having a single Website you point potential
customers to is par for the course. In SEO, you build traffic to a common
domain as opposed to dividing it among various locales. Corporate blogs
and corporate Websites come later, but when they do, they often can double
your representation in top search results. Even then, limitations exist
and you're still basically driving traffic to your own locations.
SMO is different in that you don’t own the various loacles in which
you have Web presence. Nevertheless, such exposure can still be valuable
to you. A MySpace or Flickr profile can drive MySpace/Flickr traffic to
your site. Similarly, the del.icio.us bookmarks you generate on that site
may ultimately drive traffic your way.
Don’t risk grabbing the opportunity to secure a preferred profile
name on social networking sites while its available to you. You just might
kick yourself down the road when some other Joe Schmoe’s is reaping
the spoils that should have been yours.
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