If you delve a little deeper into the concepts of digital marketing, you will come across a term called SEO & SMO. The umbrella term digital marketing has many different techniques within its space, and, SEO and SMO are among the two widely used digital marketing strategies by businesses of all sizes.  SEO has always been a part of search engines but SMO (Social Media Optimization) is a relatively new measure that refers to optimizing your social media platforms to garner relevant traffic to your website. The abbreviations might differ by just one letter, however, the concepts of SEO and SMO are vastly different. In this article, we will explain the differences between SEO & SMO and talk a little about their individual benefits.

Definition: SEO and SMO

SEO that stands for Search Engine Optimization is a set of strategies and techniques that helps in bringing more traffic to your website. SEO helps in improving the visibility of your website by ranking your website higher for relevant searches. 

Whereas

SMO refers to Social Media Optimization. It is a digital marketing method that focuses on utilizing social media platforms to connect, engage, and communicate with the audiences. It is one of the most powerful method to distribute and market your content.

SEO & SMO: The differences 

The difference between SMO and SEO are as follows:

1. SEO helps in driving traffic or users to the content whereas SMO drives the contents to the target audience.
2. SEO is an on-site optimization technique whereas SMO is an off-site optimization technique.
3. In SEO the quality of content is important to rank higher whereas in the case of SMO visually appealing contents are required for grabbing attention and acquiring more clicks.
4. In SEO we can use header, title tag, image title, bold text, keyword for higher ranking in relevant searches, and SERPs whereas in the case of SMO, coding, and tag are not so important. Visual attention has a more effective impact in SMO.
5. In case of SEO, analysis is made to see the impact of any change in the site ranking but in case of SMO analysis is made to determine which type of content is required to draw the attention of users.
6. SEO is used to market your content to search engines whereas SMO is useful for marketing your content to the target audience.

Benefits of SEO

There are many benefits of SEO but we have listed the top 5 benefits of SEO:

1. Organic traffic: An effective SEO strategy can help your website rank higher for relevant search results and become more visible to users. With more traffic visiting your website, you can also expect more customers.
2. Improved visibility: When you provide relevant information, high-quality content, and relevant products or services on your website, it becomes more visible to the search engines. This strengthens your website’s position in your niche. This results in making your website visible to the right set of audience or target market. 
3. Cost-effectiveness: SEO is always the most cost-effective method when compared to other methods of marketing. 
4. Competitive advantage: An effective SEO strategy is beneficial for having an edge over your direct competitors. With higher rankings for relevant searches, your brand becomes more popular, and more users start associating your name with your industry.
5. Earn credibility: With the increasing visibility of your website, users start trusting your brand as a credible one. SEO strategy might take time to give results but over time it can help you build a reputation that puts your brand in a favorable position to become a thought leader in the relevant industry. 

Benefits of SMO

1. Brand building: SMO helps brands in regularly engaging with their audience on social media. The more the engagement on social media, the users begin to trust and recommend your brand, product or service.
2. Strong online presence: With the large percentage of online activity happening on social media platforms, social media usage is always high. A strong SMO strategy is hence extremely important for building and maintaining a solid online presence. You can start getting more earned promotions from followers as more users start getting familiar with your brand. 
3. Improve search engine ranking: Your social media presence complements your SEO efforts. Websites that have a high amount of backlinks from high-quality sources are more likely to be viewed by search engines. High engagement on social media platforms is also a strong ranking factor for Google or other search engines.

Strategies of SEO:

1. Keyword planning: Having a good keyword strategy is mandatory for a good SEO plan. Focus on thorough research to understand the type of content that your users would want and analyze and pick up your target keywords as well as relevant keywords. 
2. Good quality optimized copy: The main success factor of your website is the quality of your content. Each page of your website should have content that is well optimized for your target keyword and relevant keywords. Well written unique content which is easy to understand when optimized for specific keywords always have a chance to rank higher. 
3. Meta title and meta description: Having a unique meta title and meta description is extremely important. The meta title is the title of the page that tells search engines what the page is about and meta description is the snippet text which appears below the title in the SERPs. it is crucial to have your keywords embedded in these sections for ranking higher in relevant searches. 
4. Link building: Link building is the section of SEO that focuses on gaining links from other websites. If your content is linked with credible and reputable links, search engines detect your website as an authoritative source for information. Hence link building is important as gaining high-quality links helps in improving a website’s rank for relevant searches. 

Strategies of SMO:

1. Make shareable content: Developing engaging content that people would want to share and link to help in increasing social links. One of the most ideal methods of SMO is creating a blog on your website. The more shareable content is, the more is the virality of your website. 
2. Make sharing easy: The SMO method involves adding social link buttons and sharing buttons on your website. This method has been proven effective for encouraging sharing, recommending, or bookmarking. 
3. Value and reward loyal followers: This type of SMO involves rewarding your loyal followers with follow backs or occasional thank you or even “giveaway” of your products and might be competition prizes. This method is pivotal in making your users feel how important they are to you as valuing your users will help you in gaining more loyal traffic to your website and hence help you in ranking higher for relevant searches. 
   

Does SEO and SMO help one another?

SEO mainly focuses on improving the ranking of your website and drives more traffic or visitors depending on the analysis of search engines. SMO is focused on driving traffic to your website via various social media platforms. SEO and SMO operate in different realms but they do have an impact on one another. Even though the main priority of SEO and SMO is to drive traffic to your website, no one truly knows precisely how many different factors affect the ranking position of a website. According to various studies, social signals do affect SEO rankings indirectly as these social media platforms act as a new form of link building. Larger presence on social media helps in gaining a higher place on SERPs. Now, Google Hummingbird gives more importance to the content that is shared over social media. This refers to the fact that the more people share your content across social media, the more viral your content is likely to get. Google also judges social signals, hence it is an essential measure to ensure that your company, products, and services are identified.

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