SEO vs. SMO – What is Social Media Optimization all about?

This is an excerpt of a guest post that can be found in full at the FMSSEO.com site Social Media Optimization is a fairly new concept and still somewhat vague, meaning different things for different people. It was first defined back in the mid-2000s, but has been re-phrased since. It was originally very link-building focused, but the recent re-phrasing has moved the meaning more towards content and sharing. Wikipedia has a nice article about social media optimization, but to my mind it’s not covering all sides of the concept, so here’s a little something for you.

Some say SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is dead and the time of SMO (Social Media Optimization) has began. I don’t see it quite like that, it’s just not that simple. I’d rather say they together make a brilliant strategy to build on. SEO creates value in attracting people to wherever you want them to go – your blog or website most likely – and SMO then again let’s people find you in closed networks where the search engines are not allowed to go, and drive traffic from there to your website. And regarding SMO, having perfectly tuned social media profiles helps ranking high in search engines as well, as the networks themselves are real search engine magnets – well, the open networks are. Some of the networks don’t allow search engines to crawl the profiles and discussions and some do.

Where SEO and SMO literally meet, is in optimizing your website or blog for Social Media... (see the rest of the story HERE)