Search engine marketing or SEO is a known term in the internet world these days, but SMO or social media optimization is a comparatively newer term. SMO is a bifurcation of the SEO services, but unfortunately not many business owners, know how to use it in order to increase their search popularity.

Where Search Engine Optimisation works on search engines the social media optimization works on social media sites. The social media sites are not exactly focused on businesses, but are more into social interaction. Some examples of social media optimization sites are blogs, forums, podcasts, video sites and community based websites.

The Search Engine Optimisation websites, do not really aim at replacing Search Engine Optimisation, instead, they only tend to compliment the functionality of SEO services. While SEO provides long term ranking to the websites, the SMOs are famous to create a viral buzz to a business, particularly to a small business. They are like gossip mongers who spread news about your website like wild fire. This helps in building in curiosity and attracting visitors to your website.

The drawback of social media optimization (SMO) lies in the fact that the buzz that they create fades away too soon. News is news till no one has heard about it, but once people are aware of it, it is of no use, where as the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) has a higher stand here for the simple reason that they are permanent and effective too.

Experts believe that both SMO and SEO are partners that compliment each other. A great way to use them is to link the website to some of the SEO quality content pages every time the social media sites name the website. This proves that content is an essential part of both SEO and SMO techniques.

There are various content rich websites that work as social media sites. One such social media site is Yahoo! Answers that not only answer various queries raised by the end users but they also indirectly promote the websites.

Though social media optimization is helpful in website promotion and visibility, it will never be able to take the position Search Engine Optimisation occupies. SEO is much higher in results and efficiency than any other website optimization.