If you have been trying to figure out what digital marketing is all about, SEO and SMO are two important concepts that you need to make yourself familiar with. Imagine you just created your own website. It has a lovely interface, is quick and user friendly and everything. However if no one is able to find it on the internet, the very point of having a website is wasted. The concept of SEO has been around since the introduction of digital marketing. SMO or Social Media Optimisation is  optimising your social media platforms to bring more traffic to your website

How does SEO work?

Search Engine Optimisation is the digital marketing tactic that works to put your website on the first page of google for queries and searches that are related to the content of your site.SEO uses the following methods to help your site rank at the top of Google’s search results.The methods or strategies are

• Keyword planning- This is simply choosing a specific keyword(s)to target on each page of the website. This gives each page a specific purpose.
• Quality optimised copy- Every website page needs to have unique optimised copy that is engaging and easy to understand and also focussing on certain keywords to rank highly on Google.
• Meta title and description- The meta title is simply the title of the page that tells Google what its about and meta description is the small snippet describing the page’s content
• Link building- This means gaining links from other websites. Every link is a sign for Google that these links are kind of votes for the website.
• User friendliness-This refers to how easy it is to navigate through your website. If your site is slow and difficult to use it will not draw a lot of traffic.

Understanding SMO

Social Media Optimisation focuses on making your social media platforms engaging enough to bring traffic to the website. This done by

• Creating Shareable content-This means creating content that people would like to share on social media.This is the reason why most websites have blogs
• Making sharing content easy-This is adding share and social link buttons encourage sharing and recommending.
• Providing value to users- This is adding outbound links to your content. Its basically publishing valuable content
• Rewarding loyal followers-Competitions, contests, prizes to be won, these are ways to let your target audience know that you value their support and thereby gain the loyalty of your followers.

Conclusion

SEO focuses on improving your websites ranking in search engines like Google and also draws traffic to your site. SMO tries to draw traffic from social media platforms. SEO and SMO are very different tactics but they do impact each other.