SEO versus SMO - is SEO dead?
What is SEO?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a term that is most familiar with internet marketers and for people who want to earn some decent (serious to others) bucks on the internet. Naturally, not all web users are familiar with Google SEO but for users who are curious and have searched the web on how to make money on the internet, they would definitely stumble to this particular term.
SEO basically means improving a site's presence and visibility by aiming to list the site in the first page of search engines - particularly Google. It does this by various SEO tools, steps, and techniques (some are even underground or deceitful which are usually called blackhat SEO).
This post, however, will not discuss different SEO tools or SEO web tips or even various methods on how to successfully earn cash on the internet – simply because the World Wide Web is already saturated with such posts. Instead, this post aims to focus more on a very interesting question numerous webmasters and online marketers have after Google's Penguin and Panda updates – in 2013, is SEO still applicable especially now that the industry is constantly changing? The answer is actually quite simple: Yes – though it has to adapt with the changes.
SEO in 2013 -
A lot of users may not know this but 2012 is like riding a bus with confusing stops and destination for many people who utilizes Google SEO (thank you very much Penguin and Panda). Though the aim of such updates is to seemingly seek out and penalize websites who gained high search ranking through the use of underground or deceitful means, there are also many legitimately promoted websites that have been affected as well – hence arriving to the question posted above.
The most common SEO marketing tips would include good content, gather and use commonly searched keywords, check traffic source generated by inbound links, using plugins like Yoast, checking backlinks, etc... Yes, these steps are still applicable but have to be utilized properly.
For example, there are many free stand-alone SEO tools that can perform specific functions but nowadays, there are also certain tools that integrate many of the essential SEO aspects for faster output and consolidated reports. Though most of the latter is not free, in the long run, serious people who would want to succeed in this industry may want to go for the paid powerful tools.
Exaples of the two types of SEO tools mentioned above are listed below. The first one is a paid SEO tool while the second one is a free SEO tool.
- SEO TOOLS to monitor and improve traffic from search engines | Colibri
Colibri is a tool to measure and improve Inbound Marketing with a focus on SEO to get better traffic and conversions. Used by hundreds of companies worldwide. - Google Analytics Official Website - Web Analytics & Reporting – Google Analytics
SMO - Social Media Optimization
In this day and age, social media also plays a significant role to produce organic traffic. In fact, social media is very essential that the term social media optimization has been coined. For the readers who are wondering if they should concentrate more on SEO or SMO – the answer is “both” as this two should be implemented together.
Remember the internet has millions of users who use various social media sites like Twitter, FB, LinkedIn, etc... Utilizing such channels to promote a hub would surely boost that site's inbound traffic.
Lastly, directing audience to the website is just the first step. Retaining the visitor and making them come back is equally important. The second step is usually accomplished with a visually impressive site that has good reliable content that the visitor needs. Again, there are many paid SEO tools (like ColibriTool) that can check if visitors are returning visitors and how much time these web audience have spent on the site. Statistical reports like this are very important and should be consolidated for faster processing.
That’s just about it. Once you started with SEO and SMO regularly check where bulk of the visitors is coming from - is it from the search engines or from social media sites. SEO is here to stay and SMO is here to complement it.