SMO or Social Media Optimisation is one of the SEO techniques adopted by SEO experts to push their client’s site high on Search Engines. SMO is basically the use of Social Media websites and communities to promote and create awareness on the business offerings. It also helps in increasing the customer base and expanding your reach. SEO experts usually target many Social Media sites to carry out their campaign and there are different Social Medias involved in this process. Some of these are Social Networking websites (such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.), social news and bookmarking sites, RSS feeds, Video and Blog sharing websites. As a process of SEO, the prime goal of SMO is to generate traffic and push the website to top the search results. SMO is also associated with optimisation of the website with its contents so as to drag more visitors to the site and compel them to like and share the website links over social media and networking sites.

SMO works on a strategy of creating appealing online content, be it a catchy text or photo or video clip that fascinates the visitors ultimately making them share the post/content with their contacts. Social media activities also to a great extent affect ORM (Online Reputation Management). A good SMO strategy can help you bury any bad review on you or your brand ensuring good things come up first. This will not surprise you when I will say, social media sites have now became the source of news for the young mass overtaking the TV channels. This has made the news media to rely on social media to promote their content and drag traffic to their site.

If you think sharing your website links in huge number will help you gain more traffic, then you got it totally wrong. SMO is not about having your links scattered over the social media. Joining every Facebook page, Google+ community and LinkedIn group and follow every tweet etc. you come across just to put links to your content is not called optimisation. Rather these are all counterproductive acts for SMO and SEO as well. The fact is that what you have to share gains more weight when they come from another source than you. Haphazardly spreading links without actual participation and proper engagement gets you un-followed in your networks and in turn reduces your authority.

In order to really benefit from SMO and rank your business higher while shaping your online reputation, you need to engage yourself with relevant social activities, right audience, contribute to discussions/conversations and post authoritative content of your share for your business.