Don’t be confused with the terms of digital marketing. Know it better

Lost in the acronym soup of marketing? SEO, SEM, SMO, PPC, CPC, CPM(no, the last one doesn’t stand for the Communist Party Marxist)-the huge range of acronyms and definitions on display in digital marketing often stuns beginners. 

Many often end up getting confused between these terms. Does SEO involve search engines, social media or structural engineering? A customary glance at their expanded forms-in this article, we will be taking up the first 3 terms- makes it clear:

• SEO: Search Engine Optimization
• SEM: Search Engine Marketing
• SMO: Social Media Optimization
  
  
  
  
  

Search engines and social media have become the “two pillars” of digital marketing. An estimated 1.7 billion people- 20% of the global population- is active on Facebook. Taking other social media networks into account, the figure reaches almost 40%. Meanwhile, 6.6 billion searches are being carried out per day on all search engines. These mind-boggling figures mean that digital marketing is capable of reaching out to potential customers and generating leads on a scale which no other mode of promotion can.

However, in order to make the fullest use of the 6.6. Billion figure, one needs to make sure that the web pages involved in the marketing campaign end up at the top of the SERP(Search Engine Results Page). The cheapest way of doing this is to follow a few basic principles of content creation and marketing. These principles make up SEO.
You have probably employed many of these principles without realizing what they actually constitute. Here’s a list:

• Finding out which keywords are most relevant to your campaign. In case you are unaware, keywords are the words/phrases which users type into Google/Bing’s search bar.
• Deciding which parts of the content should contain keywords, as well as the keyword density.
• Whether related phrases should be incorporated or not, and if so, to what extent. (Keyword concept)
• Which URL’s should be included into the content, and in which places.

Keyword concept, density and analysis all fall under the ambit of “keyword research”.

This isn’t an article on SEO techniques,however, or we could’ve gone on. The most important aspect about it is that it doesn’t involve any paying services at all. SEO generates “organic” results, distinct from campaigns involving paid search engine ads.

Organic results and paid search engine campaigns aren’t really enemies. When they come together, they produce SEM. Thus, SEM is SEO’s daddy(or mommy). It includes SEO, and quite a bit more.
The question “should SEO take precedence over paid search” is often asked by those new to marketing. SEM, like a benevolent father, tries to keep peace between his two offsprings. And quite a few marketers do like this-innumerable marketing agencies are using both paid search ads as well as SEO, depending on the client’s requirements and sensibilities. Even for those who stick to one of the two distinct methods, SEM provides a good overview of how influential search engines are in the realm of marketing.

The third guy on the block-SMO-is only a relatively distant relative of the other two. Marketers have been quick to take advantage of social media’s innumerable advantages, using a variety of techniques, such as:

• The use of posts containing links to campaign pages.
• Hashtagging-especially relevant to Twitter and Facebook, allows for content curation using exciting-sounding phrases.
• The use of slideshows to present content in a more attractive manner, as slideshare.net is now an integral part of the social media platform LinkedIn.
• The use of analytics tools to track the progress of campaigns.

All of which makes up SMO. Social networking sites being extremely diverse, this mode takes up a wide range of practices. Some of these are specific to particular channels.

How does it compare to the other modes which we have discussed already? SMO is not wholly unrelated to SEO. Social media results will often turn up on SERP’s. Using the right synthesis of both SEO and SMO will be of even greater benefit, in such cases. That is where the similarities end, however. Social media uses post reach and the number of likes on company pages instead of rank to measure marketing performance. Many SMO tactics can be implemented at zero cost; however, posting ads on social networking sites does cost money. 

To sum it all up, we have:

SEO	SEM	SMO
Search Engine Optimization	Search Engine Marketing	Social Media Optimization
Ensures high SERP rank	Ensures high SERP rank	Ensures greater visibility on social media
Tactics implementable at zero cost, generating organic search	Implementation may be free or may require a price.	Implementation may be free or may require a price
Uses position on SERP as a measure of effectiveness	Uses position on SERP as a measure of effectiveness	Uses number of likes, shares and relevance of posts to measure effectiveness
Tactics include keyword research and concept, use of backlinks, appropriate length of title, and others	In addition to SEO, includes the use of paid ads on the SERP	Includes hashtagging, post outreach research, use of paid ads on social networking sites, and others.

In order to take advantage of the ever-dynamic nature of digital marketing, it is a must to develop holistic programs using the best synthesis of these 3 methods. “Should i leave out SMO and focus on SEO?” and  “can i forego the use of paid ads?”, might be common questions for those obsessed with ROI. However, these people would be best served by asking themselves “how do i develop a comprehensive digital marketing strategy embracing every platform?”. Eclipse Technoconsulting Global (P) Ltd has the answer. To know more, follow us at #eclipseindia or Eclipsetech12.