The Rising Power of Social Media OptimizationFrom one of the Top SEO Firms in the World! Matt Foster
Social Media Optimization (SMO) is perhaps the best kept secret these
days in the field of search engine optimization. But what is it, and
how can you harness its power? Loosely
defined, social media optimization is a form of search engine
optimization which targets the increasingly popular user-driven content
bookmarking sites such as digg.com as sources of both traffic and
inbound linkage. This type of SEO strategy can best be described in
more traditional terms as an aggressive viral marketing campaign, in
which user driven content forms the "word of mouth" necessary to create
a buzz in the online community regarding a particular web site. Social
media can be defined, for our online purposes, as any web site in which
the content of that site is primarily user driven. In other words, the
site owners don't create the content, the users do. Some familiar
examples might be blogger.com, myspace.com, facebook.com, and similar
sites. It would also include social bookmarking sites, which are
becoming evermore popular these days, especially by users in their 20's
and 30's. A social bookmarking site is a site such as digg.com.
There are many of them. These sites generally operate as a way to store
Internet bookmarks online. Think of the familiar "Favorites" folder in
your browser. Well, social bookmarking sites do the same thing, but
take it a step further. First of all, social bookmarking allows a user
to post his or her favorite articles, news stories, or web sites online
as opposed to on their local machine. Secondly, these bookmarks are
public, so that anyone can browse them and find sites that other people
have bookmarked. Finally, many such sites offer additional
functionality, such as user-driven ranking or voting and the addition
of public comments to each bookmark. So how can this be used for
search engine optimization purposes? Well, it is important to rember
that the proper goal of search engine optimization is not just
rankings, but traffic, and not just any traffic but qualified traffic.
It serves no business purpose to be #1 for a term not relevant to your
site, or to recieve loads of unqualified traffic to your site that will
not result in a conversion to sale. When SEO is considered in this
context, which is the proper one, things begin to make more sense. Social
media optimization involves a number of things, which will be detailed
in later posts. However, generally speaking, the bookmarking of your
site's content to social bookmarking sites creates both inbound
linkage, traffic, and a "buzz". It is a wonderful way to "get the word"
out about your site in short order. The other advantage of social
media is that it does create its own sort of internal quality control.
Those who choose to spam a site with low quality posts will generally
get voted down by the social community. Of course, bad publicity is
better than no publicity, but we would all rather have a positive buzz
about us given the choice. The creation of quality, useful, informative
content is crucial to generating a positive buzz about your site. Social
media optimization involves more than just the act of bookmarking your
site, however. It also involves making your site easy for others to
bookmark as well. This is usually accomplished via a series of
bookmarking icons placed somewhere within each page of the site, which
allow users to post your content to a social media site with a simple
click of their mouse. Ethical social media optimization also
requires the creation of quality content, as previously mentioned. The
online community simply will not tolerate useless, banal posts and the
user driven model of social media fosters a spirit of creativity and
originality, all of which contributes to the "mashup" of Internet
content. The mashup theory in a nutshell centers around the concept of
an aggregated web, in which content is pulled from a variety of sources
to generate a quality, relevant, and informational experience for the
netizen. Of course there is much more to social media optimization
than this, however this thumbnail sketch should serve to acclimate you
with key terms and processes. Happy bookmarking! |
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