SMO

Social Media Optimization

The importance Of Social Media Optimization On SEO Ranking

Social Media Optimization (SMO) has become an important part of your SEO and SEM campaigns. Once social networking sites were not much more than an oddity. But today, many have received enormous ranking authority from the top search engines. If you are not leveraging these sites to improve your exposure and communicate with your niche consumer, your search engine positions are vulnerable to your competitors.

Search marketing has always been about exposure in the search engines to drive targeted traffic to your website. For years getting the basic SEO development of your site right and generating links pointing to your site did this for you. Both are still important today. Times have changed, social media optimization added a third element to search marketing.
Google once maintained several disparate search platforms for blogs, videos, news, and similar types of “social” content. Each functioned as a separate search engine with its own set of organic listings.
Then Google blended the listings from each platform into a system called Universal Search. Bing and Yahoo have since incorporated similar systems. Universal Search is now used as the primary index. That means blogs, videos, and news have been incorporated into the natural listings, pushing many sites off the first page. This is one of the reasons social media optimization has become critical to search.
Another factor that has influenced search ranking is the increased ranking authority given to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and similar sites. These too, have quickly gained control of a significant amount of search spots.
Social media optimization preserves your current natural listings while helping you to gain even more search exposure. By using blogs, videos, and social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, you can capture a greater number of organic positions.
Your Social Media Optimization Campaign: Rules of Engagement
Top Positions in the Web’s Largest Article Directory

Encourage your audience to link to your site. Integrating a blog is valuable because your content can be updated over time, attracting loyal readers. Encourage readers to bookmark, tag and “Tweet” your blog posts by installing a button plug-in.

Link liberally to resources your visitors will need to or want to use. Social media optimization is all about assisting others achieve what they are trying to do. Once you engage your audience, help them find the resources they need by linking to them. Eventually, your site will become regarded as a resource hub, which will help you attract inbound links. Inbound links are a vital component of SEO.

Identify your market. Social media optimization relies upon the connections you establish within niche communities. You need to properly target them in order to engage them and generate content. This is true whether you’re engaging them through YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, or your blog.

Integrate tracking tools to measure and monitor the success of your social media optimization campaign. Track mentions of your site and company. Watch your site’s progress in the natural listings for your main keywords. Generate linking reports showing inbound links pointing to your domain and specific pages. Tracking your metrics is crucial in order to determine whether your SMO campaign is effective.

Each of the elements of a social media optimization campaign fit in with your SEO. The ongoing content creation, tagging and bookmarking, attracting inbound links by being a resource for your audience – these are essential for pushing your website higher in the search engines’ listings. SEO social media optimization leverages a new set of tools to accomplish the same goal as SEO: more exposure for your site on Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The challenge is knowing how to use those tools effectively.
If you want to boost your exposure in the search engines’ listings, consider social media optimization a priority.