What are SMO and SMM. What is SMO Smo tools and general principles

People who have a website strive to ensure that it is visited as much as possible, which is especially important for owners of online stores and websites of large companies. In most cases, SEO is chosen to promote a website, completely forgetting that nowadays social networks are very popular, from where you can get a huge amount of traffic. With the help of social networks it is much easier to attract your target audience. In order for users of Vkontakte, Facebook, Twitter, Odnoklassniki and other social networks in which you want to promote to begin actively visiting your resource, you need to start optimizing your site for social media, which is the main task SMO.

What are SEO, SMO, SEM, SEA, SMM?

In the process of the development of Internet marketing, many abbreviations appeared, which over time “migrated” to the territory of our country and confuse young optimizers. To avoid confusion, you need to know what the abbreviations used in Internet marketing mean.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of actions with the help of which a resource rises in search engine results. Thanks to this, site traffic increases.

SMM (Social media marketing) is the promotion of your resource on social networks, blogs, forums, etc. Website promotion is carried out through continuous communication with visitors, providing them with quality content, useful and relevant information.

What is SMO promotion?

SMO consists of optimizing Internet resources to attract users of social networks, forums, blogs, as well as constantly maintaining communication with them.

If your site is made on the WordPress platform, then to place a block of buttons you can use plugins designed for this, for example “Easy Social Share Buttons”, “GetSocial”, “Social Warfare”, “SumoMe”, etc.

Differences between SMO and SMM

Very often, novice optimizers get confused in the concepts of SMO and SMM, because they are quite close. That is why it is worth understanding how Social media optimization differs from Social media marketing.

SMM is a set of actions aimed at attracting users to your resource: maintaining groups on social networks, cross-posting with other groups to increase engagement, holding promotions and competitions on social networks, answering questions, etc.

What is the difference between SMM and SEO?

SMM has a number of advantages over SEO:

The target audience is attracted to your website, which increases the quality of traffic and conversion.
Thanks to properly selected content, users themselves will help you make your site popular by sharing information with their friends and subscribers.
Audiences attracted from social networks love to read new information, so they will spend more time on your site, thereby improving behavioral factors, which in turn will have a positive effect on SEO.
SMM is cheaper than SEO.

Therefore, if you decide to start promoting your Internet resource, you don’t need to focus only on SEO, but you should also do SMM.

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The number of active Internet users is growing every year. The network opens up a lot of opportunities for personal development and professional activity. It’s not uncommon for new users, inspired by the success stories of bloggers and webmasters, to decide to create their own website.

Fortunately, today it’s easy to create an online resource yourself; you just need to use free engines like Joomla or WordPress. However, after the user, following the instructions for creating sites with which the Internet is filled, registers a domain, buys space on the server (hosting) and finally launches the project, the question arises: how to attract traffic to the site?

Naturally, there are many ways to promote a website to the TOP positions, but today we will focus on SMO promotion, which involves receiving a flow of visitors from online communication platforms (social networks, forums and blogs).

The abbreviation SMO stands for Social Media Optimization. In fact, it looks like a set of tools for promoting a resource using social networks and other communication platforms.

The list of SMO tools also includes such elements as RSS feed, social network buttons, news bookmarks and Wiki services. These tools are used either individually or together, taking into account the thematic basis of the resource and the scale of the project.

It is worth noting that SMO website optimization today plays one of the key roles for effective promotion. This is explained by the fact that social networks over the course of several years have managed to collect and unite a huge number of users, which, of course, attracted the attention of commercial market players who actively advertise their products in thematic groups or with the help of specialized advertising platforms.

To hit the target, you need to aim well

Due to the overabundance of online information platforms observed today, the concept of target audience takes on a new meaning. Agree, the owner of a culinary site needs visitors looking for interesting recipes and useful tips regarding cooking, and not users interested in ways to make money on the Internet.

Using SMO promotion tools involves attracting exclusively targeted traffic, which means:

Placing advertising posts in groups and public pages similar in topic;
Using advanced targeting capabilities for advertising impressions on social networks;
Creating a group linked to the main site;
Standardization of users by age, gender, social status and place of residence.

Quality of the advertised site

It is unlikely that an advertising campaign to attract the target audience from communication platforms will be effective if the site being promoted is uninteresting or has software problems. By the way, no promotion method will be effective if the site is not of any interest.

First of all, create a high-quality online resource, only after that you can start promoting. What qualities should a website have:

The main factor influencing user interest is the quality of content. It doesn’t matter what type of content prevails on the site, desktop wallpapers, or informational articles, it should be interesting, high-quality and useful for potential visitors.
The appearance, without a doubt, deserves special attention. Web designers have been honing their skills in website design for many years, which is fully rewarded by the sincere interest of visitors. If you overdo it with bright colors, your resource will not be taken seriously, but if you make the design too dull and faded, this will undoubtedly affect traffic.
Resource functionality. If you want to achieve high traffic, you must maintain the software base of the site in proper condition. Situations where some functions or services do not work are unacceptable. The same can be said about download speed. The results of the studies show that more than half of users leave the site without waiting for it to fully load. As you understand, SMO promotion loses all meaning if the information resource takes a long time to load or is often unavailable for technical reasons.
And the last thing that must be present on a site promoted using SMO tools is elements for interaction with social networks.

The main idea of the information presented is that first of all, you need to create an interesting and functional website and only then promote it.

Principles of SMO promotion

It's time to consider the principles by which SMO promotion works. Where to start promotion and what to strive for. Basic moments:

Just as a blog on a website affects natural traffic and conversion rates, a well-developed group on a social network significantly helps in promoting the resource. In this case, you shouldn’t skimp on attracting community members; it will come back a hundredfold. Consider the importance of daily publication of interesting and useful posts, which is the main criterion for a natural increase in the number of public participants, although at first you will still have to use not entirely “legal” methods of attracting those interested.
If you do not intend to create a group, there is a developed network of exchanges offering advertising posts in other thematic public pages. The cost of an advertising campaign can vary significantly depending on the popularity of the community and the number of active participants.
Another method of SMO website promotion is ordering paid advertising on social networks. Many people underestimate the effectiveness of this method of popularizing the resource, but recent changes in VKontakte clearly indicate that the management of the social network is refocusing on the commercialization of the site. Changing the design of VKontakte provides greater opportunities for advertising campaigns. In addition, given the possibility of creating an option to distribute users by age, gender, social status and place of residence, the customer receives a powerful advertising tool to attract the target audience.

Remember that SMO site optimization involves placing elements for interaction with social networks, which we have already mentioned. The market requires this, and if you are interested in effective promotion, then synchronizing your resource with social networks is a must.

Summarizing all of the above, several conclusions can be drawn. Social networks play an important role in the Internet environment today, and their importance is growing every day. It would be foolish and short-sighted not to take advantage of social networks, especially since there is a whole range of tools available to attract targeted traffic.

SMO promotion is a set of measures aimed at optimizing a website for social network users. The main goal of such promotion is to make social network users feel comfortable on the site, so that they constantly take part in discussions and return to it. A striking example of successful SMO promotion is the resources Habr, Pikabu, YaPlakal.

SMO is needed to increase website traffic, promote a brand, and attract new customers. During the optimization process, the site is made to look like social networks and closely connects it with them - for example, they leave repost buttons under each post.

Interesting fact: promotion arose on the basis of social marketing. It owes its name - SMO - to two marketers: Gerald Zaltman and Philip Kotler.

The difference between SMO and SMM and SEO

In SMO, the webmaster works only with the website, but focuses on social network users. Changes the interface, adds the ability to comment and repost, monitors discussions, and creates a feed of the latest events. To clearly explain the differences between SMO and SEO and SMM, we have prepared a table.

SMO	SMM	SEO
	Promotion is aimed at social network users.	Promotion is aimed at those who use search engines.
Work is underway with the website, rarely additionally with social networks.	We are working with social networks, but there are often links to the website.	We are working only with the site and the content posted on it.
The main goal is to attract a wide audience, regular readers.	There can be many goals: increase brand awareness, attract customers, etc.	The main goal is to reach the top of search engine results for queries from the core.
Tools - social network widgets, interface and design redesign.	Means - creating attractive posts, advertising.	The tool is internal and external website optimization.
The peculiarity of the content is its attractiveness for social networks.	The peculiarity of the content is its attractiveness to the target audience.	A feature of the content is optimization for keywords.
	Opportunities for users - rate posts, communicate.	Opportunities for visitors - to read the content, rarely - to leave comments.

Methods of SMO website optimization

There are many ways to SMO optimize websites. We'll talk about the most common ones.

Adding widgets for reposting

On the YaPlakal portal, repost buttons are located directly under the title

You can add such buttons using special services, for example:

You can also set sharing buttons using a code, taking it from the social networks that you need.

Formation of news feeds, links

The home page of sites that engage in SMO promotion is often similar to a news feed on social networks. It contains “hot” posts that have received the most comments and ratings, or posts in chronological order - new ones are located at the top, old ones go down.

On the main page of Pikabu you can see the news feed. You can watch it in the “Current” or “New” tab.

To implement such a feed, you can use paid or free themes or special plugins. For example, for WordPress it is:

Jetpack;
WP Most Popular;
WP Tab Widget;
WordPress Popular Posts;
and others.

Registration on the site using social networks

For SMO, it is important that users can register quickly, literally in two clicks, and that the site is at least somehow connected with social networks. Therefore, many provide the opportunity to register through social networks.

This is what the Pikabu registration form looks like - you can register from 4 social networks

You can do this registration using the same plugins. For example, for WordPress you can use:

Adding the ability to rate materials

Rating materials - the usual “classes” and “likes” - helps users feel like they are on a social network. The rating is also useful for generating current news - the more ratings, the more interesting the post.

You can put a minus and a plus for each entry on Pikabu

You can also use plugins for this - for example, Rating Widget.

Formation of comments

In the comments, users share their opinions, communicate, and argue. This makes the site popular - many people return to comment on new posts or see replies to previous comments.

Almost every post on Habré gets comments

You can connect regular comments - for example, through DISQUS, or comments on social networks. This can again be done using plugins. You can also motivate users to leave comments:

make comments live - for example, like on vc.ru;
displaying a rating of the best comments on the main page or under posts - for example, as is implemented on Pikabu;
periodically create a post with the best comments of the week, day, month - for example, as they do on sports.ru.

Use of User Content

The main difference between SMO and other methods of promotion. On sites, materials are created by users themselves - they write posts, rate them and leave comments. On some sites this is implemented as a blog - everyone can write their own blog. On others - in a form close to social networks: everyone can post posts, and from them a news feed, recommendations and selections are formed.

This is how it is implemented on vc.ru - each user can maintain their own blog

In order for users to create their own content, you need to add plugins, set up personal accounts, and give users rights to create content.

SMO (Social Media Optimization) - translated from English means website optimization for social networks. In other words, this is a set of activities that need to be carried out on the site in order to promote on social networks.

SMO is often compared to SEO (website optimization for search engines). However, these promotion methods have significant differences. So, SEO is more of a technical toolkit that helps search robots rank a site higher in search results. While SMO is more focused on users, analyzing the standards of their behavior, introducing an intuitive and user-friendly interface, satisfying information hunger.

First of all, you should expect from SMO: increasing user loyalty and brand awareness, attracting traffic from social networks, establishing a communication channel with subscribers.

Compared to SEO, the SMO arsenal is not as diverse. The main task when optimizing a website for social networks is to make the site as interesting as possible.

Let's look at 10 areas of working with a website within SMO

And one more “bonus” tip, relating not so much to SMO, but to the development of the site as a whole - make your site as convenient and useful as possible. By improving the usability of the site, you will achieve the loyalty of users who come both from social networks and from other sources. This, in turn, will affect your rankings in search results! Search engines will appreciate the activity of readers and will recommend the site, because it’s interesting.

Good luck with SMO and lots of interesting content!

PPS We talk about how to get high-quality traffic from social networks at the autumn special training for website owners “How to get a website into the TOP 10 and increase sales.” 10 webinars from practicing specialists where you can ask any questions about your projects.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the comprehensive development and promotion of a website to reach the top positions in search engine results (SERPs) for selected queries in order to increase traffic and further generate income.

The higher a site's position in search results, the more users come to it. Therefore, work on:

increasing the correspondence of pages to search queries (relevance),
optimization of structure and content,
improvement of commercial factors,
page code optimization,
increasing external factors of resource significance.

Optimization rules are set by search engines. Each of them uses and regularly updates its own ranking algorithms, which are made up of many factors. And, although the formulas are kept secret, experts know which factors carry the greatest weight. By influencing them, you can improve your position for key queries in search results.

User behavior, interface convenience, and site loading speed are extremely important for promotion results. With the development and complexity of algorithms, the importance of the above factors is steadily growing, which ultimately makes search results better. Search engines strive to provide the most useful material to a user's request. Therefore, resource owners need to publish the most interesting content for their audience.

And if it works today, it is not a fact that it will work tomorrow. Services are constantly changing and being rebuilt. Approaches are changing along with them.

How is SEO developing?

SEO originated simultaneously with the advent and development of search engines - in the mid-1990s. At this time, search engines selected resources according to a very simple principle: they took into account the words that were in the text of the pages. SEO before 1998 was key spam. The first search results included Internet resources with texts like this: “Sneakers for sale Moscow.” The search results were terrible. Most of the top posts were spam.

In 1998, Google brought about the first SEO revolution, ushering in the link era. The search service has implemented a link ranking algorithm, PageRank, which calculates the weight of a page by calculating the importance of links to it. The more links there are on a page, the more important it is. And in 1999, Yandex announced the use of its own citation index to organize the Yandex.Catalog. The TIC determines the authority of Internet resources, taking into account the qualitative characteristics of links from other Internet resources.

In these conditions, SEO begins to develop quite quickly. The first agencies appear that provide website optimization services, the link business is born: link sellers, automatic promotion services, and scripts for exchanging links appear.

The dawn of link SEO was the period 2005-2009. It was a time of large link budgets, one hundred percent guarantees. SEO is becoming a highly profitable business.

In 2009, the second revolution took place - the introduction of machine learning algorithms into search engines. One of the best machine learning algorithms was invented in Yandex - Matrixnet. With its help, a ranking formula for the search engine of the same name is constructed. In fact, the formula is written by a machine. Therefore, since 2009, SEO requires knowledge and hard work.

2012 is the beginning of the reference-free period. Search engines are fighting links. In April 2012, Google launched the Penguin algorithm. It blocks Internet resources for low-quality links created by webmasters in order to influence rankings. Following this, in March 2014, Yandex stopped taking into account the link factor in ranking for commercial queries. And in May 2015, Yandex introduced the Minusinsk algorithm, which periodically identifies the leaders in purchasing links and limits them in ranking. Promotion only by purchasing links has become useless.

At this time, companies begin to try to study ranking algorithms to understand which factors to focus on. Various promotion models are being developed, new strategies and methods are being tested.

What is it like?
search results today?

Website optimization
or how does SEO work?

Search engines are constantly striving to improve the quality of search results, so it is necessary to promote the Internet resource in a comprehensive manner. This is working with the technical side, content as a decisive factor, convenience, usability, correct display on various devices and attracting natural links.

The work is divided into two subtypes: internal and external optimization.