If you are familiar with Search Engine Optimization then you will easily understand its “brother”, Social Media Optimization. If on the other hand you are not aware of neither, they both referring to internet marketing techniques that affect visibility in search engine results and provide solutions with a variety of methods to attract visitors to your web site.
More specifically SMO is referred to the use of social media in order to gain attention and promote a certain product or event. Search engines such as Google and Yahoo, use recommendations that are made in the social networks from its users in order to rank its results. Every time a user “likes” a page or becomes a member search engines use this information and lists the page as valuable. Therefore SMO is of high importance to the search engine optimization and helps in winning high ranking positions.
Social media optimization has also many benefits itself. Through social networking a new system of personal recommendations is created in videos, photos and websites as well. That is an important benefit and a winning point for web pages as they can gain more visitors, who have the chance to follow the web site’s content and suggesting others to join as well.
SMO plays an important role for everyone whose is interested in the internet marketing world and want to maintain their presence and be competitive. Some of the methods with which social media optimization works are brand and marketing building and some companies use them as part of their strategy to develop their products and satisfy consumers. SMO is also effective, because you have the possibility to share your page’s content, communicate with the consumers, gain their loyalty and receive more visitors.
As mentioned above, social media are of great benefit to search engine optimization. But how is SEO affected? -In many ways and all include user’s capability to share his opinion. For example, when a user adds his location on social media and that same location is in his website, but it is also offered in Google Places, automatically search engine mechanism will tract this information to use it for ranking the page.
Especially in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter what really matters is the number of people following your content and how often it is shared and the influence of the people following and sharing, all affect the SEO and ranking position.
SEO and SMO are very closed related and it seems that you can’t achieve one without the other’s help. They are powerful marketing strategic methods, constantly evolving and must be followed if you want to be part of the internet business.