Using SMO To Supercharge Your SEO

Online marketing experts have been predicting the eventual decline of Search Engine Optimization for years. While SEO techniques championed during the last few years have been waning in effectiveness, they’re not going anywhere any time soon. The truth is that SEO is simply evolving into a new form of marketing which incorporates social media and interactivity far more heavily than we’re used to. Ultimately, a relatively new form of marketing called Social Media Optimization will be the eventual king of online advertising in the coming decade.

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What Is Social Media Optimization?

Social Media Optimization is all about letting your audience easily share content they like and value with their friends and family. The addition of “Tweet This” and “Like This” buttons to websites across the web gives users the power to share content they like with their followers on Twitter and Facebook at the click of a button. In a nutshell, Social Media Optimization is all about increasing the avenues available for user-promoted sharing and discovery of your content via social media networks.

How It Works

Though many websites make a solid effort to incorporate Social Media Optimization into their business strategies, they often fail to grasp how SMO can help their current SEO efforts. SMO can increase the effectiveness of SEO in a number of different ways depending on how you go about it. On one level, Social Media Optimization and analysis allows you to identify who your audience is based on which demographics “like” or “tweet” your content. On another level, users who share your content with their followers through social media portals like Facebook are doing your job for you by promoting your content for free.

Incorporating SMO Into Your SEO Efforts

A few years ago, noted SEO expert and writer Rohit Bhargava identified six crucial steps that need to be taken to get the most out of social media when it comes to marketing yourself online. They are as follows:

1. Increase your linkability
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mash up
6. Get communities connected

So make it easy to for users to share your content by adding handy plugins like Gigya and AddThis to your pages. And get people involved in your website by joining the conversation and interacting with your audience. When you invest your time in SMO, you’ll start to see results when it comes to the SEO side of the equation.

The Future of Online Marketing

If current trends are any indication, forging closer relationships in Internet marketing will play an increasingly important role in the coming years. This makes perfect sense when you consider the fact that the entire goal of Web 2.0 was to personalize online communications and make things more interactive. In essence, we’re recreating a real world experience in a digital format. It’s what consumers want, and it’s what you’ll need to give them in order to succeed in the brave new world of Social Media Optimization and marketing.

Written by Melissa Schraiber

Melissa Schraiber works for Fatwallet.com who specializes in bringing you coupons from hundreds of merchants including GoDaddy coupons!