Google Starts Favoring SMO Over SEO
Posted on December 9, 2011 by Nick Wilson
Google has become a traffic generating power-house for well over a decade, allowing its White Hat users to make the most out of legitimate search engine optimization (SEO) strategies. Over the recent years Google has been slowly leaning toward the social media optimization (SMO) side of the web since the development of the blogosphere and social bookmarking communities.
Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the complex process of improving your websites search engine visibility by using natural (White Hat) or unnatural (Black Hat) methods for website optimization. These techniques range from correct punctuation and keyword placement, to blog comments and forum posts. The majority of search engine optimization is contained in keywords and positioning, the more common and important attributes are Meta Tags, Descriptions, H1/H2/H3 Title Tags, URL Structure, Post Titles, Post Excerpt Length, etc.
Social Media Optimization
SMO is also known as Social SEO because of the optimization that is needed with social media activity in order to generate traffic. Social Bookmarking and large social networking websites can drive copious amounts of traffic toward your site with the proper title and description. The bigger media giants include Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Delicious, Google+ and Linkedin.
Signs of SMO Favoritism
Updates: The Google Panda Algorithm updates have shown more significant benefits toward social media optimization in the past few years. The Google SERP rank ladder has become increasingly harder to climb while large content farms gained more and more power for SERP positions. The updates have also placed significant value on domains that display current content daily, social bookmarking sites are built for these updates it seems.
Google+: The G+ plus feature is relatively new and was created in order to compete in the social network market, mainly compete with Facebook. While the online beast that is Google doesn’t have a long standing reputation in the social side of the web with the, less than popular, Google Wave and Google Buzz. This time around Google is investing far more time and money into promoting the popularity of Google+ and is starting to show some power.
PostRank: PostRank was a well known, reputable social media measuring tool. PostRank measured the engagement of the website in social media networks. Earlier this year Google purchased PostRank and the company was moved from Waterloo, Ontario to the Google office in Mountain View, California. It’s still unknown as to why Google purchased a small competitor like PostRank, other than the talented employees. However, Google’s most recent updates have started focusing on more current content that focuses on SMO more than SEO for search engine rank positions.
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