There is a lot of chatter recently in the SEO (search engine optimization) world, that SEO and SMO (social media optimization) are basically the same. While both SEO and SMO both have similar desired outcomes (increase revenue, build brand awareness, etc) I believe that the two are fundamentally different.
At its most basic level, SEO is focused on driving traffic to your web site via the search engines. SEO specialists focus on finding the right keywords to optimize for, develop content for these keywords and then generate incoming links to the web site based on these keywords. From an SEO perspective, everything is focused on driving traffic to one URL (having multiple domains can cause indexing issues for the search engines).
With SMO, you are not focused solely on your www.mydomain.com. In addition to your web site, you probably have web 2.0 addresses at MySpace (www.myspace.com/mydomain), a Flickr (www.flickr.com/photos/mydomain) account and are utilizing del.icio.us bookmarks. Instead of focusing on keywords, you focus on increasing awareness on your brand/product across all these different platforms.
That is the fundamental difference between the two. With SMO, being visible in multiple locations is a good thing. With SEO, having similar content in different locations can cause you problems with the search engines. It’s a different strategy, but in order to be successful online, your internet strategy should include both SMO and SEO.
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