SEO vs. SMO

What is more important: Search Engine Optimization or Social Media Optimization?

I have heard this question before so I thought that I would weigh in with my opinion on the matter. While I think both are important, I think it is an easy answer – the optimization of Social Media.

Granted, I may be a little bias being a large advocate of social media, however, I have also had my experience in SEO. I think that a company’s ability to engage and interact with a current (or future) customer is hugely beneficial. By having a strong presence in social media you give a face to the company, gaining trust and acceptance from your customers.

SEO allows you to be the top search result when a customer is looking for a product/service or has a question, but with social media you answer that question and have the ability to explain to them on a personal level how your company can help them.

I think that it should be a high priority for companies to interact with their customers through blogs, twitter, forums and other social mediums. In addition, the powers of word of mouth on the Internet is torrent. With tweets and retweets and linking, everyone is sharing their experiences, good and bad, with others re-sharing them. Imagine that someone has made a bad review about your company or product, having a high organic search result is not going to help this situation, however, responding can make a difference.

The great part about social media is that it makes it easier than ever to do just that, respond – defend yourself, support the customers problem and solve them before it causes damage. It is an easy way to turn a potentially bad situation into a gain.

It is a necessity to monitor social mediums for bad publicity like this and there are many tools that can help you do so. A simple search option is Twitter search, just by searching for your product or company name, anyone who is talking about it will appear in the results, making it easy to @ them and make a difference. More easy tools are: Google’s Blog Search, Boardreader forum search, and Yacktrack to search comments.

 

I think SEO ( Search Engine Optimization ) is important more than SMO ( Social Media Optimization ) . To know clearly and reading for explain about compare two of this, read in our blog post .

SEO Vs. SMO – Which Way To Go

 

You make some very valid, Brenna. Social media is obviously no longer fad and is not going anywhere. I love social media but there are good sides and bad sides to it. What I think people fail to do is note that the lines between SEO and SMO are quite obscure. In fact, there's quite a bit of overlap if you approach your web design from a real business strategy perspective (as opposed to a "techie" approach).

Granted, the primary objective with SEO is to improving search engine rankings BUT you have to consider the end-game which is visibility and increasing site traffic. When you isolate SEO to merely increase the rankings of your pages, you miss the point. You need quality content to get there and, by some definitions, that's what is at the core of SMO. Really, it's more of where you focus your time.

In a few words, SMO and SEO are not mutually-exclusive by any means so it's a moot point. Still, you make a good argument. It's true that social media is more about bringing warmth back to business and making things feel less transactional but you can do that as part of your ongoing SEO efforts (say, by responding to comments on your blog). Where you draw the line between SEO and SMO depends on whom you ask but, really, it's all about knowing your audience and balancing pull/push marketing strategies. 8)

 

If you are more on direct traffic, go for SMO.... but if want organic traffic, go for SEO.

 

Very concise and very true. The operational word is "organic" and it comes up quite a bit in these talks. My feelings are as follows: if you launch a web site, usually your goal is to attract customers. Surely, with direct traffic, your focus is more on retention (keeping your audience) but I feel you always want a greater degree of organic growth potential; otherwise, you'll always be "on the grind". SMO is more tempting because of the faster results and, often, aesthetic appeal but it can be more resource-intensive as well, in my humble opinion.

If you have great content, you should be finding as many channels for bringing people to the content.. and making it easier for your audience to share what you are doing. Again, there's quite a bit of overlap in SEO and SMO, depending on how you look at it...

In short, I still say SEO is king.. and so is content.