Seven Step to Promote in REAL SMO, which is:
1. Reputation
Your reputation in my view starts with ensuring you are either an expert or you act as an expert curator. This means undertaking thorough research and producing original content or curating quality content. This will make you a respected and qualified source.Your reputation is also about how you engage and support people. Your reputation will be enhanced if you openly share your content and expertise including content that is not your own, engage with others through discussions and commenting, and if you are friendly and helpful to people.
I think fundamentally your reputation is enhanced by simply being helpful to people.
2. Engagement
You need to actively engage with your audience. This can include commenting, mentions, shares, likes, and plus ones. No one is as smart as everyone so share other peoples' content and provide a good user experience by providing feedback and comments.You need to target the networks with which to interact and make it easy for people to interact. It may be that people will interact with content on your site but you may find a far greater number of people willing to interact in their existing communities such as Google+ communities and LinkedIn groups. You can combine these by using say Google+ comments on your blog. Asking users to create accounts on your site will discourage users from commenting so use existing social logins such as LinkedIn or tools such as Disqus.
You can also encourage people to engage with a call to action, for example if you find this article helpful please share it. If you think I have missed anything please add your comments below.
3. Authority
There are many aspects to authority. Search engines are interested in ascertaining what individuals and brands are seen as authoritative and trusted by real people on the Internet. The most obvious example of a move in this direction is Google Authorship. Setting up Google Authorship can help establish you as an expert and show your profile prominently in search results. For example. I have spent many years researching the e learning market and writing a monthly market update. Thus when you search for 'e learning market' you will hopefully see my result (image below) with my picture and a link to my profile.You can also enhance your authority and the value of content through social proof.
4. Leadership
To me leadership is about high quality research, thinking and original content production.A leader will research everything they can about their areas and share thoughtful insights which will add value to your audience. Poor quality content will be perceived as such and as a consequence will not be shared.
As a leader you can also create value for your audience through content curation. This means adding value to content by providing a summary, adding context or a perspective to the content you are sharing.
5. Social
You also need to build high quality networks, quality potentially matters more than quantity. Seek out the experts in your field, read what they say, engage them in debate and share your ideas.
6. Media platforms
It is important you focus on the right platforms and communities Where does your audience hang out? Find and focus on the platforms, communities and groups where your audience hangs out.
Some platforms are far more effective in improving the SEO benefits of SMO than others. In my view the most effective platform is Google Plus for many reasons which are set out in the article I mentioned on why Google Plus will improve your SEO.
7. Optimization
I have included below some of my thoughts on the practical and technical aspects of optimizing your SMO below.
Share buttons - make it easy to share for users by adding share buttons to your content. You should also show the numbers of shares to demonstrate social proof.
Social Icons - group and display your social icons in a prominent place on your site.
Subscription options - group together subscription options such as email, RSS, and newsletters.
Shareable content - some content is more readily shareable such as infographics or 5 top tips articles. I think this is partly because it is short and scannable. However, I hope and believe longer but well written content will also be shared.
Social login - use social login options to make it easy for users to comment.
- Reputation - build your reputation as a reliable qualified source
- Engagement - encourage more engagement, sharing & reciprocate
- Authority - become a notable authority in your field of expertise
- Leadership - harness originality & creativity, be a Thought Leader
- Social - be social, find and engage sociable experts in your field
- Media - know your social media platforms to maximize influence
- Optimization - improve technical aspects to increase optimization
1. Reputation
Your reputation in my view starts with ensuring you are either an expert or you act as an expert curator. This means undertaking thorough research and producing original content or curating quality content. This will make you a respected and qualified source.Your reputation is also about how you engage and support people. Your reputation will be enhanced if you openly share your content and expertise including content that is not your own, engage with others through discussions and commenting, and if you are friendly and helpful to people.
I think fundamentally your reputation is enhanced by simply being helpful to people.
2. Engagement
You need to actively engage with your audience. This can include commenting, mentions, shares, likes, and plus ones. No one is as smart as everyone so share other peoples' content and provide a good user experience by providing feedback and comments.You need to target the networks with which to interact and make it easy for people to interact. It may be that people will interact with content on your site but you may find a far greater number of people willing to interact in their existing communities such as Google+ communities and LinkedIn groups. You can combine these by using say Google+ comments on your blog. Asking users to create accounts on your site will discourage users from commenting so use existing social logins such as LinkedIn or tools such as Disqus.
You can also encourage people to engage with a call to action, for example if you find this article helpful please share it. If you think I have missed anything please add your comments below.
3. Authority
There are many aspects to authority. Search engines are interested in ascertaining what individuals and brands are seen as authoritative and trusted by real people on the Internet. The most obvious example of a move in this direction is Google Authorship. Setting up Google Authorship can help establish you as an expert and show your profile prominently in search results. For example. I have spent many years researching the e learning market and writing a monthly market update. Thus when you search for 'e learning market' you will hopefully see my result (image below) with my picture and a link to my profile.You can also enhance your authority and the value of content through social proof.
4. Leadership
To me leadership is about high quality research, thinking and original content production.A leader will research everything they can about their areas and share thoughtful insights which will add value to your audience. Poor quality content will be perceived as such and as a consequence will not be shared.
As a leader you can also create value for your audience through content curation. This means adding value to content by providing a summary, adding context or a perspective to the content you are sharing.
5. Social
You also need to build high quality networks, quality potentially matters more than quantity. Seek out the experts in your field, read what they say, engage them in debate and share your ideas.
6. Media platforms
It is important you focus on the right platforms and communities Where does your audience hang out? Find and focus on the platforms, communities and groups where your audience hangs out.
Some platforms are far more effective in improving the SEO benefits of SMO than others. In my view the most effective platform is Google Plus for many reasons which are set out in the article I mentioned on why Google Plus will improve your SEO.
7. Optimization
I have included below some of my thoughts on the practical and technical aspects of optimizing your SMO below.
Share buttons - make it easy to share for users by adding share buttons to your content. You should also show the numbers of shares to demonstrate social proof.
Social Icons - group and display your social icons in a prominent place on your site.
Subscription options - group together subscription options such as email, RSS, and newsletters.
Shareable content - some content is more readily shareable such as infographics or 5 top tips articles. I think this is partly because it is short and scannable. However, I hope and believe longer but well written content will also be shared.
Social login - use social login options to make it easy for users to comment.
