If you spend anytime online there is a good chance that you will have heard somebody use the acronym SEO or  SMO. In case you were wondering, they stand for Search Engine Optimisation and Social Media Optimisation and they are widely believed to be the best path to higher website traffic by helping to build your online reputation.

In a perfect world the best websites would rise to the top of search engine rankings and the most engaging/interesting people would dominate social media, sadly this is not a perfect world. In most cases the people you listen to online are using tools in the SMO tool kit to grow their online social presence. The websites that appear on top of Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing etc are generally there because they either paid for it with advertising or keywords and (or) followed a strict regime of Search Engine Optimisation. Some would say this is cheating but many argue that these are simply the rules of the game. By being educated about the power (and effectiveness) of social media and the importance of Search Engines in driving your online business and brand you are putting yourself in the best position to succeed. I’d like to take this opportunity to further explore the world of SMO.

“Social Media Optimization (SMO), is not limited to marketing and brand building. Increasingly smart businesses are integrating social media participation as part of their knowledge management strategy (ie. product/service development, recruiting, employee engagement and turnover, brand building, customer satisfaction and relations, business development and more). Additionally, Social Media Optimization is oftentimes implemented to foster a community of the associated site, allowing for a healthy business to consumer relationship” taken from Wikepedia

So how do you define SMO? Unlike SEO its goals are not clear. The man who is widely acknowledged as the first to use the term Rohit Bhargava explains it thus:

“The concept behind SMO is simple: implement changes to optimize a site so that it is more easily linked to, more highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (such as Technorati), and more frequently included in relevant posts on blogs, podcasts and vlogs.”

Rohit then goes on to outline his 5rules for SMO

1. Increase Your Linkability

2. Make Tagging and Bookmarking easy

3. Reward Inbound Links

4. Help Your Content Travel

5. Encourage the Mashup

Since the roll out of Rohit’s 5 rules, many contemporaries have gone on to further define the rules of SMO and we currently sit somewhere between 10 and 20 accepted “rules” for SMO. They all basically revolve around being involved, becoming a resource and creating content.

If you’d like to learn more about SMO there are plenty of great blog/forum resources on the web or you can visit the developer section on Facebook, the twitter blog, the general help center on Youtube or you are welcome to send us an email to web@beachside.net.au and we will do our best to help you understand SMO.

We look forward to following your exploits online.

By Davin Broadbent