SEO and SMO
SMO (Social Media Optimization) is to social networks what SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is to search engines. SMO aims at boosting the use of social networks in generating traffic and referencing strategies on the global level. It is very trendy but no real efficiency was proven yet. However, they are becoming unavoidable: Twitter raised 33% between April and July 2010, becoming the second website in terms of number of requests behind Google and before Yahoo! See how their importance is growing?
Social networks must be used to show popularity and create popular links. They are not part of natural referencing. They are more efficient when they are used with easy link creation tools, no login links (Facebook, LinkedIn...), and it is better concentrating on open diffusion sites such as Digg. Everything must be done to facilitate the access to the information about the brands.
Social networks are tools aiming at broadcasting information and creating traffic. Consequently, it can be more than useful to take the SMO into account. This strategy consists in influencing people in communicating, sharing information about the brand, vote for it… which can definitely bring traffic. People interact on social networks; they share their experience, which develop brands’ visibility among internet users, and advertise the brand.
SMOs are even more useful in Twitter, Facebook in a sharing common points strategy: in these social networks, brands should share qualified and useful information (last offers, news, information about the brand). It will create traffic toward the main website.
Role of Facebook and Twitter in term of referencing:
Public Facebook profiles are indexed, and so are Twitter tweets. This means that social networks bring links to improve the SEO of a website. However, links are “no follow”, that is to say that a hyperlink should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. As a consequence they cannot improve the popularity or the reputation of a website in search engines. Hence, the direct impact on the SEO is weak, while the indirect impact on traffic and fame is huge.
Which content on the social networks?
Digg likes can be useful if the content of the page is of high quality. Today, a good content is a Return On Investment (ROI), even more on SMO and Social networks because the evaluation is no longer made through robots: humans reads, interpret and make critics about what you wrote. This strategy is interesting rather for edition, blogs… if they offer a clear, original and enthusiastic content. Of course don’t forget to offer the possibility to share the content on social networks.
Referencing on social networks is inseparable from other traffic leverage. It does not create an audience, but it completes the existing one.
Is SMO Competing SEO?
It is impossible to separate SMO from SEO: they are complementary. SMO is an efficient traffic generator but is not a useful source sites in term of SEO because the proposed links are “no follow” and thus are not referenced by SEO websites.
How to use SMO to improve SEO:
• Anticipate: talk of your business before the internet user do it for you ( cf nestle),
• Create RSS feeds,
• Regularly update FB profile,
• Put social widgets on you website
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