SEO & SMO: What’s the Difference?

Good morning! Ahh, it’s a gorgeous day here in Guelph. The sun is shining, the mercury is on the rise and my windows are wide open. Birds are chirping and my cats are stalking chippies from this side of the screen. It’s a feel good day!

I plan to spend some time outside in the fresh air, so today’s post is a quickie

You may have heard folks talking lately about social media optimization and the “death of SEO.” The truth is that SEO is still very much alive. SMO is alive, too. One is not overtaking the other though — they remain two very distinct entities and each has its rightful place in your overall marketing campaign.

What is SEO?

Simply put, SEO (search engine optimization) is the process of optimizing your website so that its pages show up in the SERPs (search engine results pages). SEO drives traffic to your site via search engines (primarily Google). The most common methods used to achieve this are by selecting keywords and making alterations to HTML code, such as titles, meta descriptions, alt tags, headers and microdata. SEO is often referred to as onsite optimization. The carrier of traffic in this case is the search engine(s) and the target is your website.

What is SMO?

SMO (social media optimization) is the process of sharing content outside the four walls of your website. The carrier in this case is the user (or many users hopefully) and the target is, well, anywhere and everywhere. When optimizing for social media, you’re not trying to drive traffic to your website, you’re trying to get people to carry content away from your website and share it with other users. The goal is to spread your content as widely as possible by various social media channels, including Twitter retweets, Pinterest pins, Facebook likes, +1s and YouTube views. Social media optimization is also known as offsite optimization or social media marketing (SMM).

Hope this clears up any confusion there may have been around SEO & SMO.

Now go enjoy another happy hump day!

~Aimee

The SEO Process – Simple as 1-2-3

Lately, I’ve been battling the unavoidable task of working bass ackwards on my SEO projects. It’s no one’s fault, really, it’s just been a messy kind of account. In an effort to streamline future gigs, though, I’ve been outlining some new processes the entire team can follow. I hope you’ll find this helpful, too.

I like to break my SEO tasks into 3 sections:

1. Data Collection & Information Intake
2. Review & Analysis
3. Make Recommendations

Data Collection

Pick up the phone! It’s nearly impossible to learn about your client if you don’t talk to them directly. It’s the initial kick-off call that lays the foundation for all your upcoming tasks. During this call, you’ll glean some very important details, such as:

• Competitive info: get a list of 3-5 of your client’s top competitors.
• Top keywords: ask the client what they believe their most important keywords are.
• Analytics: request access to any and all tools (Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, or whatever they’ve been using).
• Goals: ask the client what they hope to accomplish with their SEO campaign (more search engine traffic, greater social media presence, or improved click-through rates).
• Challenges: be sure to address any potential roadblocks right up front. Sometimes this can mean a lack of resources on the client side (they may not have a qualified developer, for example), or an extensive approval process due to legalities.

Review & Analysis

Now that you’ve gathered all the pertinent information from your kick-off call, it’s time to hunker down and do some digging. I find the most effective way to tackle this is by having a checklist on hand. Just work your way through it, one line item at a time.

• Review the analytics: You want to know where the client is today in the online space. How much traffic do they have? Where is that traffic coming from? Do they have a high bounce rate? If so, where are they losing the most visitors? These are just some of the many benchmarks you’ll use to measure SEO success.
• Competitive Analysis: who’s leading the industry and why? What’s their PageRank and overall site authority? How many links do they have pointing to their site, and are they valuable? How big or small is their social media footprint? Is the site(s) optimized for relevant keywords? How about search engine friendliness? Collect as much information about the competition as you possibly can–it will serve you well down the road.
• Keyword Research: use the seed list given to you by the client to begin searching for keywords. Don’t worry about search volume or competitiveness at this stage, you’ll cull that list down later. Just gather as much relevant data as you can. Use tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, KeywordDiscovery, and Google Trends.
• Cull down the keyword list to select a careful balance of highly relevant (highly searched) keywords with the lowest possible competition. Group the remaining keywords into themes and begin to pinpoint where you’ll integrate them into the site’s existing and new pages.
• This is a good time to make URL recommendations, too, since you want the URLs to be keyword-rich and search-engine friendly, you can map keywords to new pages you’ll create.

Make Recommendations

By now you’ve gathered all the necessary information, and you’ve researched keywords, competitors and analytics. Now it’s time to laser in on the client’s site to make SEO recommendations on areas that could use improvement.

• Start with the Organic & Technical Site Audit. This is how you’ll uncover what’s wrong and what’s right with the site as is stands today. You also know what the competition is doing, so you can compare the client’s site to prioritize recommendations. (Stay tuned for a comprehensive Site Audit Checklist coming next week.)

• Provide on-page best practice recommendations: this often includes examples of meta data (titles, descriptions and keywords), anchor text and interlinking, content review and more.
• Off-page best practice recommendations: these often concentrate on things like robots.txt files, XML sitemaps, page load speed, crawl errors, microformatting (aka rich snippets), and 301 redirects and canonicalization.

Only after the existing site has been cleaned up should you implement link building and social media strategies. We’ll talk more about that next time.

Did you find this post helpful? Let us know by joining in the conversation!

~Aimee

When to use branded vs Non-branded keywords

Understanding the difference between branded and non-branded keyword usage is imperative. Too many times clients insist that they want to optimize their pages for a product’s brand name, or for their company name. While I understand this instinctual urge, it’s my job to educate the client on how SEO works, and when to use branded and non-branded keywords on different pages.

Here’s an example:

For the sake of privacy, we’ll call this company XYZ Supplies. They sell POS supplies to small ma & pa shops across North America.

So let’s say Ma Baker needs to find cheaper cash register rolls because her current supplier is just too expensive. Where does she begin? Maybe she starts with a Google search, something like this:

How do I know she didn’t type in cash register rolls? Maybe she did. Then why did I choose to optimize XYZ Supplies’ cash register rolls category for “cash register tape”? I did my research – my keyword research – which told me there a more people, just like Ma Baker, searching for that keyword term.

As the SEO copywriter, I know that it’s important for me to identify the numerous keyword phrases that the client’s prospects will most likely use to find their products.

But here’s where things get sticky.

The client insists on optimizing all pages for their top-selling brand. They believe that the most important thing is to be #1 in Google for that product’s brand.

OK, I hear that. I approach this from two angles. The first being that if the company name (the brand) is in the domain (www.xyzsupplies.com) then chances are that they will automatically rank for the branded keyword XYZ Supplies. For example, the first listing on Google’s SERP for the keyword “cash register tape” is this:

The keyword doesn’t even show up in the Title or Description tags. The keyword-specific URL is a match, plain and simple, and this almost always wins the top placement in the SERPs.

The second way that I approach this is when the client insists on ranking for their best-selling product’s brand. For example, let’s say our fictitious client sells Red Widget brand of cash register tapes. Our client’s URL is www.xyzsupplies.com, and their best-selling brand is Red Widgets Tapes.

But Red Widgets Tapes has their own website, of course, at www.redwidgetstapes.com. They are a massive global supplier to thousands of companies like XYZ. Red Widgets is their brand. Is there any way XYZ can outrank Red Widgets for the keyword term “red widgets”? Doubt it. It’s just not a realistic goal.

Even if it was possible, one major issue still exists – it’s not what XYZ’s prospects are searching for online, so attempting to rank for that product’s brand is in vane. We did the research, and we know that their prospects are searching for “cash register tape.” And if that’s what they’re looking for, and that’s what XYZ wants to sell them, then that’s how we should be optimizing XYZ’s category pages.

Have questions about branded vs non-branded keyword research? Ask away, I’m here to help!

Cheers!

Aimee