A comparison of SEO and SMO

Social Media Optimization (SMO), if you haven't heard already, is a term that was recently coined by Rohit Bhargava which refers to the process of ensuring that a website is easy to link to by utilizing the different social media sources including but not limited to, blogs, bookmarking websites and media sharing websites. There are a lot of similarities and differences between SEO & SMO. Because of this, and the idea that one cannot take over the role for the other, it is important to know when and why to use each optimization technique.

Some of the similarities are...

  1. Linkability - If people don't have a good reason to link to you then they probably don't have a good "real" reason to visit your website either. Be careful though, linkability and linkbait are not the same thing. Some of the keys to linkability are: content, design and usability.
  2. Good content - This almost does not need an individual category because part of linkability is the good content. But, the point needs to be stressed; you can have good content that does things besides giving people a good reason to link.
  3. Pull marketing - Both SEO and SMO are way to attract people to a website without pushing a message on them, but instead showing them what value your website can bring to them.

Some of the differences are...

  1. Channels - This is obvious but needs to be mentioned, SEO is about search engines, primarily the big 3, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft (GYM). SMO is about the "new" social media sources that have crept up, including blogs, bookmarking websites, media sharing websites etc...
  2. Target Audience - Often times, the people checking their new messages on MySpace are looking for something different than they guy shopping for a new TV.
  3. Goals - With SMO you might be looking to build community while with SEO you might be looking to sell something. Both SEO and SMO can also share the same goals.
  4. Participation - With SMO you should actively participate in the same activities that your audience does, with SEO there is not as much participation.

As always, in the spirit of SMO I encourage anyone to contribute to these ideas.

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.

SES

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Reader Comments (3)

Elliot Swan, September 20, 2006

It's kinda funny, I declared the same thing as "BCAA" way back in Febuary, but nobody paid attention.

Cameron Olthuis, September 20, 2006

Elliot - Good article. I agree with you about social search (e.g. delicious). I already use it for most broad searches.

David Wilson, September 20, 2006

To me the difference between SEO and SMO is where you meet your audience. With SEO you are focused on search engine traffic and driving that traffic to your web site. With SMO you have a web site, but you might also have a Squidoo Lens and a MySpace account and you are engaging your customers in those locations away from your web site. I wrote more about this recently on my blog http://social-media-optimization.com/2006/09/are-you-welcome-in-the-neighborhood/