Will SMO take over SEO?

Nowadays there is a speculation in the internet industry that SEO is going to be dead and social networking websites will take over SEO.

Since inbound links are the main criteria to generate traffic to any website, and social networking websites are providing enough backlinks to increase the visibility of the website and helps achieving positioning in top 10 search results, So it is a common belief among the top internet marketers also that SEO is going to be dead.

But there is a problem with this method of gaining backlinks, any person can open an account in social media websites without doing any real investment and then gets the authority to give feedback about any product/ service, whether he has much knowledge in that particular domain or not. Even sometimes it happens so that brand names of big companies are misused by various people through social networking websites. So if search engine will start giving much importance to these types of posts then it will surely affect their search result and in turn the user satisfaction. This would not be desirable by the major search engines as Google and Microsoft earn quite a lot from providing significant results from these search engines, so they need to keep their algorithm up-to-date in-order to deliver the best quality results. So as long as Google and Microsoft like big players are in business, SMO will not have much impact on the search results and SEO will remain in the internet industry.

85% of people still use search engine to satisfy their primary business or personal need. Now let us imagine a situation in which someone is using social media to promote his website without optimizing his website. Surely no one would like to believe on that as Social media is generally used to take second opinion about the product/ service. So if your website is not optimized and you straightaway want to market it through social media then your efforts will go in vain.

With out SEO the internet will be full of spam. Can you imagine a situation in which search engine is replaced by some of the social networking website like twitter or facebook and people start getting the results on the bases of their total number of followers? So the brand which has the highest number of followers will get listed first in that social networking website. Then the whole creditability of search engine will be lost and people will have no faith in search engine. I think they will no longer use the search engines for any of their needs.

Social Media will surely affect Google's real-time search results but high Page Rank websites will dominate the search results.

We need to understand that the role of SEO is not restricted only to provide quality backlinks but also

• SEO is used to promote websites in such a way that they can be easily understood by search engines.
• SEO helps increasing the visibility of the website for the defined keywords
• SEO also helps your website to achieve higher rank in the search engine.

So according to my experience, SEO is not going to die any time in near future, but its going to further evolve and provide us better results. Do let me know about your viewpoints related to this topic.

How SMO interacts with SEO

Nowadays everyone is talking about Social media networking / social media optimization(SMO). Most of the people have joined these social networking communities. Recently I was reading an article: Companies planning to increase their social media spend. Having a profile in social networking websites is becoming necessity nowadays which also helps spreading word of mouth publicity about your brand...
No doubt SMO is a great tool to spread brand awareness, seek advice and get noticed in the social media. But one thing which really bothers me is how SEO and SMO interact with each other. Let’s find out what they are and how are they related:
Search Engine optimization (SEO) is the process of analyzing a website and modifying it to enable search engines to read, understand, and index it correctly. This dramatically increases the traffic to the web site.
Social media optimization (SMO) consists of a set of methods for generating traffic on any website through social networking websites, business networking websites, online communities and blogs (macro blogging as well as micro blogging).

1. SEO and SMO both can be used to drive traffic to your website which in turn generate substantial leads your business
2. SMO is done to impress human being and SEO is done to impress search engine spiders. So in SMO we need to write impressive content to seek the attention of social media, whereas in SEO we write content for the website with proper usage of keywords grab the attention of search engine spiders.
3. For SEO we need to change the titles, metas headers etc of a website so the website gets modified whereas for SMO we use social networking websites to spread the brand of our website.
4. SEO has been emerged long time back whereas SMO has come into existence recently after 2005.
5. Any person with a little bit of knowledge of internet can do SMO whereas quality SEO can only be performed by SEO expert. Google really gives importance to Search engine optimization as it is directly associated with the page rank, which demonstrates the importance of the webpage in search engines whereas SMO is not at all related to the importance of the webpage.
6. The structure of the website is not so important when doing SMO, which is an essential aspect of SEO.
7. There are certain rules (which keep changing by Google) to perform SEO (example title, meta description, meta keywords, headers, alt tags etc), whereas for SMO there are no rules laid as such. Only thing one should keep in mind while doing SMO is that SMO is done to interest human being so one should never use social networking websites to directly sell something rather it should be utilized to make relationships with the prospective clients. Make it personal and interesting for others so that people would like to connect to you. So the key point is while doing SMO “keep it human”
8. SMO costs you nothing or it costs you very less whereas to get effective SEO services requires a lot of in-depth study as well as hard work so one should be ready to pay a fairly good amount for SEO of their website. Even though there are many cheap SEO companies have appeared recently in the market who barely knows anything about SEO but they provide cheap SEO services. They would just write metas and title and metas for their client’s website without doing any competitive analysis of keywords. Whereas expert SEO companies search out profitable keywords for the webpage. Profitable keywords are keywords that have a more amount of searches, but slight competition. This requires experience, lots of in-depth studies and analysis.
9. SEO is a long term strategy. Initially to get the results of SEO will take some time , but once you start getting visibility of set of keywords in the first page of search results, even after you stop taking the SEO services the results will stay there. Whereas SMO is an ongoing process you need to stay connected using social networking websites and keep doing macro blogging in order to be in search results.
10. Search engine gives you instant result on any query whereas if you are asking some question through Social networking websites it will take some time, so if your website is well optimized you will get noticed quickly through search engine which is an added advantage of doing SEO.

When to initiate SEO and SMO:
The basic aim of both SMO & SEO is to enhance traffic to the website which will help you grow your business. But the basic question which arises in one’s mind is when to start what? The answer is simple. One should start SEO first to ensure the first page visibility and then slowly dig into SMO, so that when your SMO users start looking for you have strong web presence in the search engines.

How to increase the web presence
There are various methods to increase visibility in Social media websites (Linkedin, facebook) like one can join various groups of common interests and then part take Q and A and discussions board etc. Or you can start following other people in social networking websites like tweeter and regularly post the tweets. By doing this you can establish yourself as a brand and personalize their relationship with their prospective clients.

What is important SMO or SEO

In today’s age search engine has become bare necessity to find information on products, services or any other information. Still common man generally goes to search engine to find information on anything and then further refer Social networking websites to get feedback from different people.
So Social networking websites can be used for brand monitoring, you can use social networking websites to keep track of what has been said about your company and so you can respond those feedbacks to give a personal touch to your customers and their opinions could be further used for discussions in your company.
Now we can say that the importance of SEO will remain there. Social networking websites can be used to as a backup to get opinions, spread contacts which can get converted into business in future. Basically using SMO you can create a personal feel which is otherwise very difficult for you to create using SEO alone. SMO gives you opportunity to personally talk to your prospective clients and solve their queries as human being, which is really essential to get business but at the same time strong visibility in search engines is also essential.

Combine SEO and SMO to grow your online business
So we can conclude that optimizing your social media presence can positively trigger organic/natural search engine listings as search engines are paying attention to social networking websites. But without doing SEO the webpage doesn’t seek importance in search engine spiders.
So my view is to combine SEO with SMO is the smarter way to grow your business. Do let me know your views, information about how SEO and SMO can be linked together in order to gain maximize output.

Benefits of using Twitter

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the followers. That’s why information on Twitter is short, to the point and effective. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. You can access Twitter via Web, Desktop Applications and even SMS. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees.
I started using tweeter some time ago. Surprisingly after few days of posting some tweets it started getting indexed in Google. While Google continues to dominate the world of “search”, it has a long way to go in offering real-time search capabilities.
Twitter is a powerful communication platform providing social networkers the opportunity to post updates in real-real time. The growth of twitter has been so phenomenal that Google also started paying attention and it is indexing Tweets. Many Twitter pages and individual tweets can be seen on the first page of Google.
Then I started learning more about it. Rather than using it just as a social networking platform, if used properly, it can benefit you in so many ways including by boosting your personal brand and enhancing website traffic.

I want to list down some of the methods by which Twitter can benefit us:
1.A Powerful Tool for Obtaining Information / news. Twitter users often link to useful sites or articles and can be a source of scoops and alternative news. This is very useful for active social news participants as they can subscribe to Twitter feeds for specific websites/conferences, which allows them to receive and view content quickly.Twitter can be quite an effective search tool for researching any kind of information. The results can complement other methods or sources of information. Twitter has a wide range of users, who constantly update Twitter with new information on different niches.
2.To reinforce Personal Brand and awareness. Twitter is a social media platform which has the primary advantage of developing a social brand that is well-connected and accessible. Due its vast usage, Twitter can be a used for promoting your products and services and establish your brand. If you have established business you can use Twitter to enhance your brand image. On the other hand if you have a smaller business with limited brand awareness then Twitter can be excellent for promoting and establishing your brand among enormous audience.
3.Get Feedback. Twitter provides you with an opportunity to join a group of interest by following others who are influential within your niche. Twitter also allows businesses to communicate with customers and receive feedback in a casual and cost effective manner. It can prove useful in understanding and obtaining consumer opinion about new products or services or new ideas. You can also use Twitter to communicate new ideas with people and test public opinion. Bloggers sometimes use Twitter to discuss ideas for new posts.
4.Use it as HR tool to Recruit People. Want to hire a good web analyst, web designer, or programmer? Send out a tweet asking for recommendations. This is a very quick and easy way to hire freelancers or even companies based on familiar recommendations.
5.Marketing Opportunities. Twitter can be used in promoting your products and services. It is a cost effective method to increase awareness about your products or services. You can use it to inform customers about any new announcement or special offers. Twitter offers all the advantages of traditional text message marketing and more. It can prove to be a useful tool for conducting market research by better understanding of potential or existing customers.
6.Boost your website traffic. Twitter can be used to direct traffic to your websites. If you tweet about your website, the message will spread faster and further as other active users pick it up and re-tweet it. Bloggers often use Twitter to inform their audience of any new posts on their blog by posting links on Twitter. Thus Twitter can be seen as a traffic generation tool. The placement of links within profiles and conversations can direct visitors to a specific website and is especially powerful if you pitch to early adopters and influencers.
7.Make new friends. Twitter has a built-in function for you to befriend and track the messages of other users. This is a simple way for you connect with like minded people outside of your usual circle. A Twitter association can be developed into a long term acquaintance.
8.Spreading Social Network. Twitter is an excellent tool to help bloggers share links to content which is of mutual interest to like minded people. On a personal level Twitter allows one to communicate with friends and family or close network of connections. On an organizational level Twitter allows colleagues who are not co-located to communicate with each other or businesses to communicate with their customers. With Twitter it is also possible to target a specific niche or audience by following others from your industry. It can thus allow a business to build contacts within the industry. Communities have developed around many of Twitter groups or niches. Twitter can be used to establish reliable and long term relationships for future benefits such as testimonials or peer recommendations.
9.Get Votes. Send a link to your stories you’ve submitted in other social news sites like Digg. Your followers might vote up the stories if they agree with it. This allows you to acquire more support for your efforts on other social media websites
10.Event Updates. Twitter can be used as a means to inform event participants and latest event happenings/changes by entrepreneurs. This is a stress-free way to broadcast information. Businesses have also used Twitter effectively to measure the performance of campaigns.
11.Promotion. Twitter can be used as a promotional tool to announce offline endeavors or upcoming online events (webinars, virtual tradeshows etc). If you are an e-commerce site, perhaps you have a deal of the day or seasonal offers where you can promote these deals. The fact is you do not want to be too promotional, but Twitter does present the opportunity to promote your products or service and brand to your friends.
12.SEO Boost. If you have good content on your website and you want to drive additional traffic to this content on your website, you can use Twitter to do so. A quick tweet with the URL can help drive additional traffic to a preferred landing page on your site to help persuade the conversion on your site.
13.Find future Prospects online. Twitter allows you to interact with potential prospects and your target audience. While you do not want to be in direct touch all of the time, Twitter does allow you to engage with your prospects by re-tweeting their posts or responding to something that they may have tweeted about. Discretion and tact is needed in this area.
14.Twitter and Mobile. Since Twitter is very simple to use and is limited to 140 characters, mobile use with Twitter is also easy. You can both send and receive updates what you and your friends are doing on the go using a simple SMS. Twitter can be a great mobile communication tool. As we know in business, this can be a pretty powerful thing.
15.Offer live exposure. Twitter’s message size limit prevents detailed coverage of events but it can allow you to provide real-time commentary which may help to spark further discussion or interest on the event as other Twitter users spread the message. Very useful for citizen journalism.
In short, Twitter allows you to monitor how influencers think or feel, you can also get into their attention zone via active networking. For businesses, Twitter is another channel which connects current and potential customers with your product or brand. It allows deeply infiltration into the lifestyles of interested participants, which helps to build brand persistence/loyalty. So twitter can be used a tool to achieve simple aim of tracking and directing attention from various groups of your interest and in turn drive business.