What is SEO, SEM, SMM, SMO?

What is SEO, SEM, SMM, SMO?

When I created my first website, I believed that the best way to promote a website was through word of mouth and traditional paper advertising.

I had no idea how to promote a website through the Internet. Fast forward to the present and there are many ways to promote your website on the Internet. When you search online and you’ll see the acronyms SEO, SEM, SMM and SMO all over the place. But what do these terms mean and what is the difference between them? It can get confusing trying to figure out. I decided to find out about these foreboding acronyms.

First let’s look at the basic meanings of the acronyms and then how each applies to a basic website.

What is SEO?

Defines SEO (search engine optimization)

It seems like a very simple definition, but let us elaborate more on this. Basically, it is the process of improving the visibility of your website to your online audience via search engines. In other words,

Optimization methods which help improve your website’s ability to be listed on the first or second page of organic search results.

“Improving a website’s presence in organic search engine results.”

What is SEM?

Defines SEM (search engine marketing)

SEM involves paid advertisements such as Adwords, Bing ads, Yahoo and any other methods of online advertising. This process involves the creation of campaigns and measuring results. You set a budget and expect an immediate return on that investment. It is also the fastest way to get your website to show up on the first page of search engine results.

 These results show up as sponsored ads at the top or side of the organic search results.in addition to doing SEO to get to the “top” a website owner can now buy advertising or pay to have an ad at the top of a search engine results list; these can be things like pay per click or Yahoo or Bing ads.

“The use of online advertising on search engine results pages to help visitors find your website. SEM often uses pay-per-click (PPC), a bidding model that charges advertisers only when someone clicks on their ad (also referred to as cost-per-click, or CPC).”

Sometimes you hear people using the terms SEO and SEM interchangeably and although these two terms may have once had a very close origin and meaning, today they are distinct from one another.

What is SMO?

Defines SMO (social media optimization)

The bottom line is you have to build online profiles via social media networks so that you can share the content you create on your website or blog. Additionally, you add social media share buttons to allow other people to easily share your content.

“Social media optimization increases the visibility of your social media profiles, your social networking activity and your published content so that it is found by people searching for information and resources that relate to your content. Social media optimization helps drive traffic to your website or blog, makes it easier for others to share with their circle of influence, builds community around your brand and helps search engines index your social media profiles, social activity and blog posts more easily.”

basically when using social media (  Facebook, Twitter, etc.) you are making your profile more visible, your social network activity and published content can then be found more easily by people searching for resources and information that matches your content.        

What is SMM?

Defines SMM(social media marketing) in addition to the SMO, you guessed it, you pay to have an ad on the social media. This is how the Facebook ads show up on your page.

Similar to SEM, SMM stands for Social Media Marketing. And as you can guess it involves paid advertising through social media networks. If you are familiar with Facebook ads, then you are seeing SMM in action. It is the process of using paid advertising to broaden your customer reach and increase your brand exposure.