For a while now companies have been devoting a significant amount of time and effort to raising a site’s performance by practicing SEO. The value of SEO has been touted considerably and though it is important, the popularity and growing importance of social media networks have made Social Media Optimization or SMO ubiquitous today.

The concept of SMO is simple. With the increasing usage of social media sites, search engines aren’t the only channels that drive big traffic. It involves optimizing a site so that it is easier to be linked to, highly visible in social media searches on custom search engines (ex, Technorati) and frequently referred to in posts, blogs and videos. Social media includes websites that help build a community or network such as Facebook, Twtter, Digg etc. Blog posts and blog search engines also fit the bill. SMO is all about making your content easier to spread and find online.

There are a few simple steps to begin the SMO strategy for your website. The first and most obvious is that the content in the site should be linkable. This means that unlike most websites that remain static and simply represent a company, adding blogs, whitepapers or thought papers to your site make it easier to reach social media searches. In addition, make tagging or bookmarking easier by adding quick buttons, tagging individual pages not just the home page and suggesting notes for a link.

Inbound links are clear signs of a website’s success and paramount to rise in search results. To encourage more links, reward existing inbound links by listing them on your site. Another method to gain visibility is to spread your content around. Portable, interesting content can be submitted to relevant sites that will ultimately drive links back to your site.

Encourage mashups or collaborate with content. Youtube does this very well by providing code that can be embedded elsewhere. Syndicating content through RSS feeds can drive traffic and gain your site visibility. To enable greater SMO is remembering that unlike SEO where the goal is clearly defined as making the site easier to find on search engines, SMO leverages the new medium so the goals and techniques are still evolving.