Integrating SMO and SEO Jacob Morgan and Jose Nunez

Social Media & SEO “...The social web will become the primary center of activity for whatever you do when you shop, plan, learn, or communicate. It may not take over your entire life (one hopes), but it will be the first place you turn for news, information, entertainment, diversion.” Larry Weber, Chairman, W2 Group, “Marketing to the Social Web”

SMO & SEO Interaction Applications of indexing and semantic analysis Common goals –Identifying –Tracking –Listening –Participating Focus on –Brand/product issues –Quantifying trends –Sentiment and Influence HiRank’s Semantic Indexing Project

Primary vs. Secondary Primary Traffic –Initial visitors from optimization Secondary Traffic –Referral links and visitors that are residual SMO + SEO Interaction = short term and long term strategy

Target Audience Target Audience is actually made up of many audiences Identifying your target groups is essential Use tools such as web analytics, social media analytics tools Look for: Referring sites Trafficked keywords Existing communities Conversions Geo-targeting data

Social Media Activity 65% of people read blogs to get an opinion Why is this important? Build trust Build authority Understand intent Focus on quality content

SMO Principles Increase your linkability Make tagging and bookmarking easy Reward inbound links Help your content travel Encourage the mashup (source: Rohit Bhargava)

Increase Linkability What does it mean? –Make people want to link to your content How do you use SEO?: –Target page content –Optimize for relevancy –Distribute/place keyterms –Suggest anchor text –Contribute content –Link to resources

Tagging / Bookmarking What does it mean? –Add features so others can find/share content How do you use SEO?: –Keyterms in tags –Categorize tags –Associate tags –Semantic Taxonomy

Reward Inbound Links What does it mean? –Reciprocate links/tags (note: there is a proper SEO way to do this) How do you use SEO?: –Find relevant pages –Focus on anchor text –Use “nofollow” properly

Help Content Travel What does it mean? –Don’t just focus on your site How do you use SEO?: –Optimizing media (audio/video/etc.) –Relevant sites to share/submit/syndicate –Optimize incoming links –Use microformats

Encourage Mashup What does it mean? –Co-creating content/sharing How do you use SEO?: –Share optimized content –Keep control of SEO elements –Track user/visitor/creator use

Social Media Platforms Creating communities (and profiles) Interlink your communities (and profiles) Link back to target pages

Google Alerts Term relevant notifications –Industry, personal, company, brand, etc Comment on blogs/news/forums Keep keyterms in mind Target most relevant pages

Article Partitioning Create content based on other content Further optimize existing articles Post and comment for your readers –Target keyterms Similarities and differences –Let your voice be heard –Add value

Link Quality/Interlinking Topically relevant links Confirm relevancy Distribute link value Interlinking –Connecting relevant pages –Semantic relationships

1 + 1 = 3 SEO and SMO Integration is crucial 1+1 = 3 approach Understand short term/long term goals Understand Semantics/Search engines Test and track results

Thank You Jose Nunez – Chief Technologist –hirank.com/consultants/josenunez Jacob Morgan – Chief Relationship Builder –“google” Jacob Morgan Find out more at