In this article, we will be analysing both Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media Optimisation (SMO) to find out whether they can work well together. We will also be explaining how you use these tools to your best advantage.

SEO

With the help of SEO, the visibility of a web page or a website within the search engines can be vastly improved. This is achieved through natural and organic search results. As SEO continues to evolve, a lot of people are starting to target different areas such as image search, local search, video search and industry specific search.

SMO

Using SMO, you can market your business through a range of online portals. Over the last few years, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have exploded in popularity and SMO takes real advantage of this. You will find that within the SEO industry, SEO and SMO are often seen as two very separate things with one affecting the rankings and the other technique raising brand awareness and reputation. But we see them as working together because, to a certain extent, one wouldn’t work without the other.

In the six years since Facebook launched, it has grown as an incredible rate. The social networking site gained 100 million users in less than nine months whereas the Internet itself only gained 50 million users in four years. With Facebook being the most visited website on the Internet, with Twitter not far behind, these sites offer a great platform on which you can gain some really beneficial exposure.

The amount of exposure you can gain through Twitter, YouTube and Facebook is unbelievable, but there are other SMO platforms available including Digg, Blogger, Flickr, Linked In and Squidoo.

Social media facts and figures:

• Each day, 50 per cent of active users go onto Facebook according to the site. This means that the website gets at least 175m users each day.

• On Twitter, 15 million of the 75 million user accounts are active users and log on regularly.

• LinkedIn has more than 50m members across the world.

• There are 4bn images on Flickr.

• There are now more than 14m articles on Wikipedia. This means that in the last six months, nearly a million new posts have been written on the site by the 85,000 contributors.

• Mobile usage has become more important for Facebook recently and now, more than 65m users access the website through mobile devices.

Using SEO and SMO together:

Fresh content and promotion

It is important to update your website regularly with original and informative content as this will ensure that users keep coming to your site. You should try to upload one quality article or blog post each week. You can then link to this content through social media platforms in order to gain new visitors.

Building a relationship

Rather than adding hundreds of ‘friends’ on Facebook or following hundreds of users on Twitter, you should aim to build important and valuable relationships. It is much more beneficial to have a few strong and important relationships rather than lots of meaningless ones. You can then build and strengthen these key relationships.

Building a community

You need to understand the needs of the visitors to your site and this means that you need to get their feedback through your website as well as through the social media platforms that you use. Using this feedback, you can learn how to alter your content in order to suit their needs and therefore make it into a useful and resourceful website.

Conclusion

Using SEO techniques, you can improve a site’s ranking in the search engine results pages of Google, Bing and Yahoo. On the other hand, SMO is a technique which is used to make people more aware of your brand and to create excitement around it – getting people talking.

Both of these techniques have one common aim, which is to increase awareness about your site, resulting in more traffic and sales. For this reason, the two techniques can work together, rather than being seen as two separate tools and they can have a huge impact on the development of your online presence.

SMO continues to grow with the development of social media platforms and SEO is always evolving and changing. But as this happens, the focus should always be on your customers and building a strong and beneficial relationship with them.

In this article, we will be analysing both Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Social Media Optimisation (SMO) to find out whether they can work well together. We will also be explaining how you use these tools to your best advantage.

SEO

With the help of SEO, the visibility of a web page or a website within the search engines can be vastly improved. This is achieved through natural and organic search results. As SEO continues to evolve, a lot of people are starting to target different areas such as image search, local search, video search and industry specific search.

SMO

Using SMO, you can market your business through a range of online portals. Over the last few years, social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have exploded in popularity and SMO takes real advantage of this. You will find that within the SEO industry, SEO and SMO are often seen as two very separate things with one affecting the rankings and the other technique raising brand awareness and reputation. But we see them as working together because, to a certain extent, one wouldn’t work without the other.

In the six years since Facebook launched, it has grown as an incredible rate. The social networking site gained 100 million users in less than nine months whereas the Internet itself only gained 50 million users in four years. With Facebook being the most visited website on the Internet, with Twitter not far behind, these sites offer a great platform on which you can gain some really beneficial exposure.

The amount of exposure you can gain through Twitter, YouTube and Facebook is unbelievable, but there are other SMO platforms available including Digg, Blogger, Flickr, Linked In and Squidoo.

Social media facts and figures:

• Each day, 50 per cent of active users go onto Facebook according to the site. This means that the website gets at least 175m users each day.

• On Twitter, 15 million of the 75 million user accounts are active users and log on regularly.

• LinkedIn has more than 50m members across the world.

• There are 4bn images on Flickr.

• There are now more than 14m articles on Wikipedia. This means that in the last six months, nearly a million new posts have been written on the site by the 85,000 contributors.

• Mobile usage has become more important for Facebook recently and now, more than 65m users access the website through mobile devices.

Using SEO and SMO together:

Fresh content and promotion

It is important to update your website regularly with original and informative content as this will ensure that users keep coming to your site. You should try to upload one quality article or blog post each week. You can then link to this content through social media platforms in order to gain new visitors.

Building a relationship

Rather than adding hundreds of ‘friends’ on Facebook or following hundreds of users on Twitter, you should aim to build important and valuable relationships. It is much more beneficial to have a few strong and important relationships rather than lots of meaningless ones. You can then build and strengthen these key relationships.

Building a community

You need to understand the needs of the visitors to your site and this means that you need to get their feedback through your website as well as through the social media platforms that you use. Using this feedback, you can learn how to alter your content in order to suit their needs and therefore make it into a useful and resourceful website.

Conclusion

Using SEO techniques, you can improve a site’s ranking in the search engine results pages of Google, Bing and Yahoo. On the other hand, SMO is a technique which is used to make people more aware of your brand and to create excitement around it – getting people talking.

Both of these techniques have one common aim, which is to increase awareness about your site, resulting in more traffic and sales. For this reason, the two techniques can work together, rather than being seen as two separate tools and they can have a huge impact on the development of your online presence.

SMO continues to grow with the development of social media platforms and SEO is always evolving and changing. But as this happens, the focus should always be on your customers and building a strong and beneficial relationship with them.