Social media and SEO support each other and are inevitably linked to a successful Internet marketing campaign. Rather than sharing a passive relationship, the two when combined, create an active and important connection that only grows stronger as search engines innovate and integrate both together.
Let’s examine in greater detail the relationship between SEO and social media marketing.
What is Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
With nearly 14 billion online searches every month every website owner wants their website page to rank high on search engine results. SEO is an acronym for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer” that deals with the construction of website components into systems that are attractive to search engine crawlers with the objective of making your website rank well in organic searches. The goal of SEO is simple –using high distribution of top level content to ensure that your site is well linked leading to higher rankings on search engines.
What is Social Media Optimization (SMO)?
Social media has inarguably become one of the most powerful communication tools available to the human race. Social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, StunbleUpon, Reddit and Yelp provide users with unique relational experiences which in turn breed niche communities, each with their own self-driven purpose.
Making strategic use of such social media to generate website traffic, increase online presence and gain market share through loyal community members is social media optimization. Effective SMO occurs when relevant messages are consistently broadcast from a company through a well-crafted profile at an active online community. Social media optimization is not limited to marketing and brand building alone but can also be used for customer relations, employee engagement and turnover, recruitment, product/service expansion and business development.
How do SMO and SEO work together?
Withsocial media playing an integral portion in every successful SEO campaign, it has become necessary for companies to balance priority between SEO and SMO. This balance works on the simple idea of integrating key elements of the social web into a search optimized site in order to boost inbound linking,increase the number of relevant high-ranked results in custom search engines, and to create “ social buzz” through viral media such as blogs, podcasts and video logs.
Since SEO depends on SMO and SMO in turn depends on SEO, we realize that the relationship between the two is symbiotic in nature as one can no longer exist without the other. Using this relationship to your advantage can help you build an optimized site for your business.
