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SEO vs SMO is a debate that has been raging on for some time in the world of digital marketing. In your search for ways to increase your brand awareness, generate traffic to your website, and increase your sales, you may have come across terms like search engine optimization (SEO) and social media optimization (SMO). If you’re confused about what exactly these terms mean, and how they can help your business, then you’ve come to the right place. Let’s learn more about both SEO and SMO, find out what their differences are, and how they can contribute to improving your online reputation, making your website visible to customers, driving more traffic, and boosting your sales.
What Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is all about improving your search engine rankings so that links to your website will appear near the top of search engine results pages (SERPs). This is important since the majority of people that browse search engine results only look at the top few search results to find an answer to their problem, and will not even visit the second page. There are many ways you can optimize your website to climb the search rankings. Nearly all the methods involve making it easier for search engines to understand the content on your website, its relevance to particular topics, and how to navigate your website. If you’ve done everything right, the search engine crawlers will index your website properly in their massive database.
When a potential customer looks for a solution to their problem using various search terms, the search algorithm will look for the most relevant, credible, and useful website links that will be useful and deliver the search results organized according to the rankings. Let’s look at a few SEO techniques like keyword research and link building that you can use to drive search rankings up.
Keyword Research
One thing that tells the search engine that your website contains information relevant to the user’s search query is to include keywords. These are essentially the same search terms people use when using a search engine. You can find out what these terms are by doing keyword research.
Optimized Copy
Afterward, you can strategically include these keywords in your website copy, with each web page focusing on a specific primary keyword and some related keywords. Since search engines have gotten smarter over the years, they also need to be convinced that your website contains quality content. So your copy has to be well-written, relevant, and useful to human readers. For more on writing content for websites, read Website SEO Content Services: Why You Need to Invest in SEO Content Services.
Optimized Metadata
Each of your web pages will have its meta title and meta description that tells search engines what the page is about. These will also appear on the SERPs below the link to your web page. This metadata can also be optimized by using the relevant keyword, and by being descriptive about what the page contains.
Link Building
More established websites will have higher credibility in the eyes of search engines. These are considered authoritative in their respective fields, and their site ranking will be very high. Your small business website can benefit from this by building links with this website. Of course, you would have to produce some top-tier content the high authority site will wish to link to or make content to be published on their site. Link building is not easy, but doing so will make your website look more reputable, causing your SEO rankings to improve.
A User-Friendly Website For People And Search Engines
If your website loads fast, is user-friendly, and is easy to navigate, this will further push your ranking position higher in the eyes of a search engine. For example, if your website takes longer to load, there is a good chance that the visitor will leave the site before completing the session. It would signal the search engines that your site is not of much use to the visitors and it will affect the SERP rankings.
What Is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?
Social media optimization (SMO) focuses on improving the levels of engagement your business has with users on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others. By doing this, you will be able to gather more loyal followers on social networking sites, deliver content they find interesting, encourage them to share your content, build the reputation of your business, and promote your products or services to these audiences.
Creating Shareable Content
You would need to create amazing content that people like to consume and post on your social media accounts. A blog post on your website could be shared on social media platforms like Facebook to provide advice to your target audience on a relevant topic. If the content is useful, these readers will share the link to your blog post among their friends. You can make sharing content easier by including social media links and share buttons directly on your website.
Provide Additional Value
The landing page where social media users arrive after clicking a link can contain even more useful and relevant information to provide additional value. Their trust in your small business brand will grow as you continue to deliver more value on social media platforms and your website.
Reward Loyal Followers
Many social media platforms allow you to find who your most loyal followers are. You can further strengthen your relationship with relevant social audiences by rewarding them with discounts, labeling them as top fans, or simply following them back. You can also encourage user-generated content on social media platforms by sharing it on your official account, liking it, and commenting positively on it.
SEO Vs SMO: The Key Differences
Both SEO and SMO are important digital marketing concepts that can help potential customers discover your small business online. You can use both for driving traffic to your website. Now let’s look a bit closer at their differences.
How People Find Your Content
How your target audience finds your content is different in SEO and SMO. In SEO, if your ranking position is high on the search engine, your site’s content will be placed higher on the results page when a relevant search query is made. In SMO, the content you publish on a social media site will be shown to an audience based on their interests, past activity on social media, and what accounts they follow including yours.
The Importance Of Titles, Keywords, And Quality Of Content
In SEO, metadata, keywords, image titles, alt texts, and headers help search engines understand what your content is about. They are optimized more for the crawlers than for human eyes to read, and do not play a significant role in grabbing the attention of people. In SMO however, the titles and descriptions play a bigger role in getting a social media user to click on a shared link. The quality of the content in SMO is directly necessary to catch the user’s attention, while in SEO, quality content is considered in calculating rankings by the search algorithm.
On-Site Vs Off-Site Optimization
SEO has both on-site and off-site optimization techniques, requiring you to work on improving your website (in-site), and earn valuable backlinks from more reputable sites (off-site). SMO is purely off-site since all your activity here will be on social media.
Content Vs Site Architecture
The quality and strength of your content matter a lot more in SMO than your website architecture. In SEO, the way your web pages are linked together, the crawlability of your website, and how fast your website loads on both desktop and mobile will influence your search engine rankings.
Don’t Forget Search Engine Marketing
There are other methods like search engine marketing (SEM) which can also be used to drive traffic through pay-per-click or PPC advertising through tools like Google Adwords. With so many options available to drive as much traffic as possible to your website, it can be overwhelming to figure out where to start. What your business needs is an expert on SEM, SEO, and SMO, and Inquivix is the digital marketing services provider that is ready to help your business become more visible online, build a strong presence on social media, and drive traffic to your website. To learn more, visit Inquivix today
FAQs
Search engine optimization (SEO) is about improving your search engine rankings to become more prominently placed in search results. Social media optimization (SMO) is about improving your engagement levels with social media users. Both are used for driving traffic to your website
Both are highly effective ways of driving traffic to your website. SEO is more about convincing search engines to increase your rankings by making your website friendlier to them. SMO is about creating eye-catching content on social media that users will engage with, share, and click on. SMO can often improve your SEO, as search engines realize your website is receiving traffic from social media sites, making your site look more reputable.