6.5 Hints for Social Media Optimization (SMO) by MaryEllen Gibson

I have been working on the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for websites for over ten years. I am a huge fan of the belief “Content is King”. I have worked on keyword rich content that fed my visitors as well as the search engines. Then I started blogging. Slow at first and then building my blogs to an online marketing resource. Then came Social Media Sites such as Technorati, Stumble Upon , Digg , and the vast amount of others. It took me a bit to realize that these sites were Google and Yahoo’s dream of human rated content. As soon as I started to offer my site and blogs to Social Media Optimization I started once again climbing to the tops of the Search Engines.

1. Update, Update, Update - This the most important priority for a website or blog. Too many sites on the web are “dead” or “static”. They were created to be an online brochure and there they sit. The more you update your site the more “sticky” your website becomes. Visitors will want to come back over and over again. They will even start linking to it.

2. Linkability: To get a website or blog ready for social media optimization, we need to build the linkability (still not sure if this is a real word) of the content. Blogs, Event Calendar, and visitor submissions help to increase the links to your site. If you do not yet have a content management system for your website. Now is a good time to invest in a new site .

3. Bookmarking – My website is a joomla based site. So some wonderful person out there created a Social Media bar that has links to all of the Social Media Sites. This makes it easy for my visitors to link to my site. To view a sample go to www.maryellengibson.com and take a peek at my footer.

4. Submit – Make sure to submit your own new content. When I create a new video, pdf.,image or article I submit it myself. This allows the community to become involved as soon as I post it. It also help me with quick feedback. I grow by knowing what my readers want to know.

5. Know your readers – I love SMO if for no other reason that I know my audience. Unlike writing for a newspaper or website with SMO I know who loves my work and who doesn’t. Wow! Where else can you find that. I also love being able to learn more from my readers and increase my own knowledge and ability to share.

6. CONTENT!!!!! – Create it , Grow it, Spread it. Write articles. Create images. Narrate a video. Content is a must. The entire web revolves around content and we all know there is more bad than good. So create some outstanding content.

6.5 Read and mark: Go out there and comment on other sites. Read other blogs and articles. Leave your review on Stumble Upon. SMO creates a community become part of it.

MaryEllen Gibson can be found at http://www.maryellengibson.com/