Social media optimization (SMO) is the process of optimizing your website to make it more “sociable.” In other words, SMO makes it easier for your business to get discovered online by all the right people! (That’s why SMO is sometimes called “search marketing optimization”.)

SMO bridges the gap between your site and your social presence (meaning, your Facebook-Twitter-LinkedIn-Instagram-whatever accounts), making you more visible on the web, and giving your audience more ways to connect and interact with you.

When done right, SMO keeps your brand messaging consistent across all networks, improves your site rankings on search, drives traffic from social sites and organic search, and boosts awareness of you and your brand.

For many years, search engine optimization (SEO) was the standard for digital marketing efforts. While social media optimization and search engine optimization have similar goals—to generate web traffic and increase awareness for a company’s website—search engine optimization is the process of increasing the quality and quantity of website traffic by increasing the visibility of a website or a webpage to users of a web search engine, especially Google.

More recently, social media marketing has come to the fore, at times converging with SEO and in some instances replacing it as the most effective way to strengthen a brand, conduct lead generation, increase a company’s visibility in the online space, and connect to an audience. Various social media platforms can be used for digital marketing, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Pinterest, and TikTok.

Social media optimization often directs the public from these social media platforms to the company’s website, where more information can be provided. For example, a campaign to raise awareness about a new automobile on social media may direct the visitor to a company webpage that provides information about where local dealerships are located and how to schedule a test drive.