SEO and SMO – The Common Factors

Lately I have been pondering over the concept of SMO ( Social Media Optimization ) and SEO and what exactly is common in them. It goes without saying, there are two main factors that are actually common for SEO and SMO.

1. Content
2. Links

Yes, while, SMO or social media optimization is all about increasing the linkability of your website , all of us who have had a love-hate relationship with the search engines do know that one thing that search engines love without an exception is links. So Links are important for BOTH !

Now, if you would notice the two-point list that I have mentioned above mentions “Content” as point (a) and “links” as (b) – that was intentional! Because – you get links only and only if you have good content. So CONTENT comes first !Also, I would like to point out that while creating your content for SMO, make sure you put a Title that grabs the attention.It has been observed that articles and write ups with attractive titles and lists ( top 10, top 50, last 5 etc) gets bookmarked more easily.

For proper SEO success you need to have good optimized content on your website but for SMO its not just enough to have good content – you need to increase the linkability of the content.Provide your visitors with easy to link options. They are actually trying to help you by linking to your content so why not help them to help you by making your pages easy to link. A great tool for creating social bookmarks can be found at Social Bookmarks to enhance SMO effort

Now, when we talk about links, we all know

1. Search engines love links – the more inbound links you have, the better it is for you.
2. Social Media Optimization increases the linkability of your content and efficient SMO can get you huge number of links.

Keeping this two points in mind, we can easily derive that SMO can actually work as an effective tool for successful SEO. As an additional bonus, the type of links that a site gets through Social media optimization also drives loads of traffic unlike the exchanged links dug deep inside some links.html or linkpartners.php page, that are often a part of typical SEO process.

While there are people discussing if SMO is going to replace SEO, besides, being a great traffic source, SMO can actually be the means to successful SEO.SMO demands good content and those good content is going to get linked. Now once, you have got content and you have got enough links to that content – do you think you need much more for SEO success ? yes, you need to add the salt, pepper and seasonings to serve just the perfect dish that those BIg three ( Google, Yahoo, MSN ) would love but the foundation to your SEO success has already been laid by your SMO initiatives.