Social media optimization or SMO is yet another method for search engine optimization of your site. As the name implies, you optimize your site by advertising it through the social media sites, online communities and community websites such as blog sites, message boards, podcasts, wikis and vlogs.

The methods for social media optimization involve the use of RSS feeds, social bookmarking, video and photo sharing, social news buttons and blogging etc. The basic idea is to drive traffic to your site without spending money on search engine advertising.

The concept of social media optimization was introduced by Rohit Bhargawa of Ogilivy Public Relations. Originally, he enunciated five rules for social media optimization, but the list was expanded by other contributors.

According to Rohit Bhargawa, “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.”

In actual practice, social media optimization seeks to create links to the site by making it more visible through the social networking sites like Squidoo, Blogger, Hubpages, Face Book, Twitter, Digg, Delicious, My Space or search engines like Technorati.

How does one go about social media optimization?

Getting links for your website

The number of links your site manages to pull through decides its popularity with the search engines. It is like deciding the popularity of the leader through the votes he gets. In case of a website its popularity index is the number of links it gets from other websites.

Tagging and bookmarking

Tagging and bookmarking can be made easier by inducting content features such as buttons like “add to delicious” and other bookmarking sites. In addition to this, you can also include relevant tags to your pages besides the home page for the popular social bookmarking sites.

Create inbound links

Inbound links are considered important for the popularity of the site and its content in searching engine ranking. You should create links to the blogs or sites that contain back links to your site and increase its visibility.

Make your content travel

Make some changes in your site to enable your content to travel far and wide in your niche area. This can be done by including portable content such as PDFs, video and audio files and submitting them to your list members as well as sites related to your niche. This will help you to create back links for your site.

Allow others to use your content

A glaring example of this practice is YouTube. You can download its videos to your sites to illustrate your content and make it more interesting. Another example is to use RSS feeds to syndicate your content so that others can use it for their benefit. This can help you to drive traffic to your website.

Pros and cons of social media optimization

As with other methods of driving traffic, social media optimization has become victim of spamming or link farming. While the noble idea behind social bookmarking is to include links to informative, useful and interesting sites, people bookmark – syndicate – their own sites in numerous bookmarking sites unmindful of the quality of their content which can be pirated, duplicate and cheap. It simply eats into the web space of the bookmarking site and creates a kind of content garbage making it difficult to sift grains from the chaff.

SEO Optimization is a popular internet marketing technique. SEO Marketing or SEO Optimization is a popular internet marketing technique. SEO Marketing or Optimization is the success secret behind several successful internet/online ventures.

You will spot several hundred websites which are devoted to SEO Marketing, but the real question is “What is the Best and Affordable Search Marketing SEO Strategy?” This question intrigues every single business owner.

Different types of Marketing Channels available:-

There are probably several techniques using which you can effectively promote your business online, offline, or you can use a combination of both online and offline marketing channels. However, if your business clients access your services through your business website, then you must genuinely consider SEO promotion for your website.

Some of the established marketing strategies are as given follow:-

1. Marketing Offline – Take for example if you are an owner of a food joint/restaurant then you will consider promoting your restaurant using various marketing channels available offline. Here you can target newspapers, hoardings, popular radio channels, and television.

2. Online & Offline Marketing – In some businesses you will find equal proportion of customers who visit your business online as well as offline. You can take an example of a travel company website which receives booking request online as well as offline.

Therefore these companies will consider promoting their websites using both offline as well as online marketing channels.

3. SEO Marketing – Some businesses are purely internet based for example web hosting companies, job sites, Ebay etc. In these businesses there is more probability of getting an online customer as compared to any other source. These businesses can avail full benefits of SEO marketing. If their business services/products are accessible by users while searching on Google, Yahoo, AOL, and MSN, then it is highly likely that users will contact them to enquire about their services. In several internet based websites you can actually purchase the product online without leaving your room.

If you intend to promote your business website on search engines, then you should avail services from an affordable and economical seo company India. It will give you double benefits as compared to hiring a full time SEO Manager or hiring a dedicated team of SEO professionals.