I somehow have the feeling that it’s not fair to write something so harsh about SMO, after all, it gave me traffic like no one ever did, all the time, every single time. But after all that hep, hype and hooplah at the end, it all rolls into fancy titles, numbered lists and those endless 101 blah blahs you could do to blah blah! That’s about it. Eat it !
I tried my best but social media optimization simply wouldn’t let itself grow. It limited itself from palatable, numbered lists and crafty articles to bookmarkable low-value posts. There seems to be “see-saw” going on between quality content and traffic.
When you want to make SMO friendly content, the quality factor plummets down, and when you write real good classic articles, the SMO factor is gone for a toss. Well, as always, there has been exceptions to this and there are quite a few who managed to get the best of both worlds, but it didn’t happen all the time for them – meaning they were lucky.
Like my creative juices always pull me I feel SMO is like a Mc Donald quickie while real good content is much beyond it. It is right that people don’t like to read, but skim. They like to share slick things, and dislike thick write ups. True, but in all that hustle to make shareable, candy floss articles there is something that we often ignore – the infoseekers are too out there, who make less noise, but observe you carefully. They may not share your article, but remember it, they may not digg or thumbs up your article, but congratulate you when you see in person.
So ultimately it boils down to one question – SMO, or info seekers? Seems like we have quite a lot to sort out and probably time will prove.
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Hi, I'm Mani Karthik, Pro Blogger & SEO Consultant from India. I blog, I Tweet, help websites with SEO. Loves working from home office. Quit my day job as SEO consultant 4 years ago, to pursue full time blogging and consultation. Living the dream now.
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Mani,
Social Media Optimization does not exist!
You really dont have to optimize a website to make it social media friendly and that is a fact.
Social Media Marketing on the other hand my friend, is not truck loads of dog poo and can really get you the traffic and branding you need!
Ashwin’s last blog post..MyBlogLog – An Overview
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Well, social media optimization does bring in a lot of hype because of all the spikes in traffic.
I would agree that boastful 101 or 100 listed or numbered posts get a lot of thumbs up in StumbleUpon and Digg. Of course, the traffic produced by social media can be said closed to low or none quality.
However, think of this, what if you have some true readers which are really seeking information (like me
)? You will gain some loyal readers from this process.
The surface might be all the spikes and server crashes (for some) but the consistent traffic, before and after the spike will have its difference.
Wayne Liew’s last blog post..Search and Destroy Broken Links With A Plugin
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Ashwin, Just read Rohit Bhargava’s 5 rules for SMO…It is just 5 different ways of saying the same thing – “increase incoming links to your site/blog”.This is nothing but the core of SEO…
probably he is trying a O-Reilly…
Techblissonline Dot Com’s last blog post..Use Drivemax to back up and restore windows drivers easily
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@TechBliss,
He talks about linkability – Nothing to do with SEO.
Secondly, all that crappy crap he talks WILL NOT get you any results what so over.
There is nothing called “optimizing” social media.
Ashwin’s last blog post..Yahoo Integrates Del.icio.us onto Search
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what do you mean when you say linkability? How is it different from making your site good for getting more backlinks? How do you say that getting more links is nothing to do with SEO? Doesn’t more links (good links)transform to good authority and better rankings in search engines? If not,why?
Techblissonline Dot Com’s last blog post..Five cool bookmarklets that you will love
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Techblissonline, there is some miscommunication between you and Ashwin. While I absolutely agree to Ashwin’s comment about linkability being the key to social media marketing, it is also true that Social media Optimization exists! When you craft your article to increase its linkability- what are you doing ? You are basically optimizing it to make it suitable for social media. Also, when you talk about SMO principles are same as SEO link building staff – it is not absolutely correct – in SEO link building is done with the sole purpose of SERPs, whereas in SMO, linkability is increased to gain more links and increase share of voice and presence. This links in most cases would also drive traffic. SEO just gets benefitted by a well concerted SMO campaign.
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Saptarishi, to me everything done towards getting links online is for the sole purpose of getting more authority and consequent traffic.SMO links, if good, are going to help your optimization for SERPs too.So I am not treating the process of getting links via SMO as a new service offering…as there is nothing extra you do to optimize your site for the social media.You create good content that is optimized for SE as well and the social media are going to accept it, if they like the content.
Techblissonline Dot Com’s last blog post..create a Polaroid out of a digital picture
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Guys,
I think you both are talking the same stuff. Rishi being an SEO himself spoke in a relatively technical aspect while Techblisshonline made it easier to understand in laymans language.
I’ll use Rishis language to a client while TBO’s to my blogger friend.
Mani Karthik’s last blog post..Why does AR Rahman repeats the first two words of his song?
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