About SEM | SMO | SMM

WHAT IS SEM?

Sometimes you hear people using the terms SEO and SEM interchangeably and although these two terms may have once had a very close origin and meaning, today they are distinct from one another. Let us see how Google defines SEM (search engine marketing).

The use of online advertising on search engine results pages to help visitors find your website. SEM often uses pay-per-click (PPC), a bidding model that charges advertisers only when someone clicks on their ad (also referred to as cost-per-click, or CPC). — online marketing vocabulary, Learn with Google

As we can see, SEM involves paid advertisements such as Adwords, Bing ads, Yahoo and any other methods of online advertising. This process involves the creation of campaigns and measuring results. You set a budget and expect an immediate return on that investment. It is also the fastest way to get your website to show up on the first page of search engine results. These results show up as sponsored ads at the top or side of the organic search results.

WHAT IS SMO?

So now we know what SEO and SEM are, but what is SMO? SMO stands for Social Media Optimization. Perhaps the best definition I found for this was via a forum on the discussion of SMO:

Social media optimization increases the visibility of your social media profiles, your social networking activity and your published content so that it is found by people searching for information and resources that relate to your content. Social media optimization helps drive traffic to your website or blog, makes it easier for others to share with their circle of influence, builds community around your brand and helps search engines index your social media profiles, social activity and blog posts more easily. — anonymous

The bottom line is, you have to build online profiles via social media networks so that you can share the content you create on your website or blog. Additionally, you add social media share buttons to allow other people to easily share your content.

WHAT IS SMM?

Similar to SEM, SMM stands for Social Media Marketing. And as you can guess it involves paid advertising through social media networks. If you are familiar with Facebook ads, then you are seeing SMM in action. It is the process of using paid advertising to broaden your customer reach and increase your brand exposure.