SMO has become a popular medium to enhance people-to-people contact

Social media optimization (SMO) includes those social media activities that are intended to enhance the traffic of website. Such media activities include attractive contents to attract more and more users. There are mainly two online methods used for website optimization, such as social media optimization and search engine optimization (SEO).

The SEO is a powerful tool to increase the exposure of websites. On the other hand, the SMO is based in the concept of interactions between huge numbers of web users. The social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Orkut, Tagged, LinkedIn and others, create a great environment to enhance interaction.

SMO methods can be classified into two categories:

• Social media features- These features include Really Simple Syndication feeds, social news and sharing buttons. They also incorporate third-party community functionalities like images and video clips.
• Promotion activities- Social media optimization includes promotional contents like blogging, commenting on the other blogs, forum, participating groups and posting updates on the social networking profiles.

Social media optimization and search engine marketing are different in many ways but both focus on boosting traffic from sources to boost search engine ranking. SEO services provide great help to the online marketing to by increasing visibility on the search engine pages. SMO also helps online shoppers to interact with the retailers and when customers interact with companies, they show their interest in the products, promotions and other services. Customers can also find the suitable answers for their queries.

The social optimization includes many components like link wheel and social bookmarking to increase the user pool. In many ways, it is connected as a technique to viral marketing where reactions of the people are added in networking in the form of video, photo sharing, and social bookmarking. It is also considered as an integral part of the online reputation management (ORM) or Search engine reputation management (SERM) strategy for organizations or individuals who are responsible to maintain online presence of websites. Smart businesses are encouraging social media participation and have included as a part of their knowledge management strategy.

There are some characters of the SMO such as participation, conversation, openness and community. Now users can freely sign up in the communities that are engaged in the conversations about the topics of their interest. Users also can take part in writing blogs and forums. They can express their ideas and recommendations as well as complains on a particular issue. Social media is open for all to behave in their own ways. These sites are like micro-communities that invite people with similar or dissimilar interest to share their insight, advice and recommendations about different matters.

The SMO is an inexpensive method to contact many people. The social medical forums and websites are being used to share the information and details about the products and services. They also offer the option to avail the services in a quick time and save substantial money from visiting marketplace. SMO tools are proving to be good for online business and enhance the relationship between people to people.