The term Social Media Optimization (SMO) came from a blog entry called 5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO) by Rhohit Bhargava. Some concepts listed in the article that follows, including "Encourage Mashups" and parts of the linking strategy section were adapted from Rohit's 5 rules. Our intention is to add to Rohit's good work by providing strategies that work across a wide spectrum of consumer oriented Social Media sites. Social Media sites geared toward a wide audience require a strategy for driving user generated content growth. These sites also need a search engine optimization strategy that deploys systematically as efficient programming tools interact with a dynamic user community.

1. Make a site that is intuitive, usable, and efficient so that first time users on the site can figure out what is going on and how to use the site without instructions. Social networking sites need fast loading pages, simple flat link navigation & white backgrounds just like the top Web 1.0 sites like Ebay, Amazon and Yahoo. Because of the myriad capabilities of a Web 2.0 site, a smooth efficient user experience is critical. Read Jacob Nielson's Usability 1001 at useit.com to find out how to create inexpensive laboratories for testing your site with only 5 representative users.
2. Build a hierarchical user structure e.g. let trusted or paid users control sections of the site and let them have special privileges such as naked links so that they feel motivated to edit and build the site with pride. Let group leaders control user behavior and enforce rules and guidelines. This works far better than predicted at sites such as Wikipedia where users create quality content and organize it for the benefit of the community without getting paid. This creates a dual benefit of efficiently managing exponential growth while eliminating spam content. It's hard to find a misspelling on Wikipedia much less spam content.
3. Protect users and viewers from abusive, spammy or irrelevant content. Make sure you give your mods, admins, and site editors sufficient permissions, as well as the power and the tools to block spam and delete abusive posts. Members themselves should be able to tag inappropriate content for review.
4. Incorporate Tagging, Linking and Bookmarking Strategies that help users link to your site, link out of your site, cross link within your site, and bookmark your site with social bookmarking links like del.icio.us. Create a link tool or link generator (example from Yelp.com) that creates link logos and link text that users can add to their own blogs, myspace pages and websites. Creating links with text that summarizes the content of the linked page with a few keywords will vastly increase your search traffic. Linked logos are not nearly as powerful. A combination of a logo and text in one link is best.
5. A custom built internal site search is critical along with a full ongoing analysis of its results. Many users of websites are search box addicts. These users not only need to find what they are looking for if it exists on your site, they also need relevant suggestions for other content. These search-centric users also have a wealth of information about what they are looking for and finding or not finding on your site. If you want to know what is in the minds of your users, check your internal site search logs. Many platforms do not even have such a log -- too bad for them and better for you if you take advantage of this powerful data source. For a review of the players in this space read Ashley Friedein's blog entry on internal site search and analytics vendors.
6. Use an automatic nightly site map generator such as XML-Sitemaps.com that supports LARGE websites by dividing the site map and site map index file according to the Google site map protocol. Site maps are essential for deep-spidering of large sites. Google is heavily biased toward sites that generate large quantities of fresh content. You need to get the search spiders onto your site and crawling deeply every night if possible when your site is young and growing. As your site matures you may want to restrict both site map generation and spidering frequency to prevent putting too much of a load on your servers. You also need to exclude bad spiders that might capture user data or interfere with getting accurate site statistics.
7. Your server administrator should set up a back-up routine and should have back-up servers available for quick recoveries from site outages. If it can go wrong, it will. Even industry leader Rackspace has had issues recently (the linked thread also has some recommendations for good server management firms.)
8. Incorporate a long tail strategy for finding doorways into your site. One of the hidden benefits of social networking sites is that they create voluminous content that gets picked up in the long tail of web searches. A dieting site may be getting a lot of traffic for people looking for workout play-lists. And this may prompt you to devote an entire application or a mashup combination within your site dedicated to sharing play-lists. Contacting a play-list social networking site like Yahoo's WebJay.com could lead to new ideas that benefit both sites. The only way to see this keyword traffic is by analyzing all of your referring keywords on a regular basis. Hittail.com has a tool in beta that helps to capture this data to create actionable suggestions and helps you create to-do lists.
9. Allow users to rank, rate, and organize content and member posts. User generated ratings and tags not only help to organize content, they also make users feel connected to the content.
10. Your homepage must be dynamic and must draw users into your site. The home page "above the fold" is your one chance to make an impression on new visitors, the press, and also act as a resource for existing users. It's best to make that home page customizable for existing users. But for first-time visitors, that small square foot of space is your one shot to make them initiate a path to become a new member.
11. Monetizing your site must not alienate your members. Advertising is a critical element in most social media sites that appeal to a broad audience. Deploying advertising so that it adds value to the site is difficult. At the very least, you do not want to alienate users with annoying ads. One of the best ways of generating a revenue stream is to allow advertisers to create content and then charge for the traffic or collect a percentage of sales on a performance basis. By carefully building relationships on CPA or Affiliate basis, you create partnerships that build revenues for both companies. ValueClick banners and Adsense ads are a poor substitute for advertisers that act as partners in your site's development by creating content that is useful to viewers. Subscription revenues for advanced functionality are needed for many sites that are distributing valuable information to a limited group of higher income users.
12. Know what your users are doing or trying to do on the site and get feedback regularly. This is probably more important than targeting your audience. A social media site is organic -- growing and changing on its own. Myspace has seen it's user-base move to a significantly older demographic in only one year's time according to a comScore study published in October 2006. Collect feedback and data from them your users. Listen to their gripes and suggestions and for goodness sake, do not listen to the flamers and miscreants. The silent users and advertisers who are building the quality of your site need to be invited to contact you on a regular basis. If your user base is changing your development staff's quick reaction times to the demands of users is critical.
13. Consciously incorporate features that make users feel good about themselves and the site. The ability to exchange compliments (Yelp.com), mentor newbies (eDiets.com), and recognize contributions to the site with special privileges (Wikipedia) can boost members' spirits and create an emotional tie to the site that builds loyalty. Yelp.com does a phenomenal job of giving people every opportunity to heap praise on other members. Good feelings are highly addictive. Linkedin has recently added a great new feature that allows users to recommend services to the community.
14. Allow users to fully express themselves in profiles. Myspace and Linkedin profiles are the primary content that keeps users on the site. As social networking sites grow, some users will want their profiles to include information that may help them meet other people and create networks on the site with friends.
15. Create resources for users with mashups and linked content. Maps, directories, wikis, databases, resource links and other reference materials keep members on the site and make your site a destination for information. Because of the inherent power of a large and growing site, resources on your site will soon out-rank similar resources on static sites that have previously dominated the search engines.
16. Constantly improve your site with features or refinements that people use on a regular basis. But don't add features and options before they have been tested for speed and usability. Use AJAX to push applications into the browser for a desktop-like experience. The site should function smoothly in the background while personalities of the users come to the fore. Improve your site with multivariate testing, usability labs (see #1 above) and new features and with user feedback. Encourage Mashups where they make sense to promote your site, but beware of the server strain they may create. Youtube videos that play from any location made that site grow exponentially, but the server resources must have been a serious issue as the site grew.

    Even small improvements have compounding effects that are far greater than the sum of each improvement's contribution. If you make 30 improvements over a period of three months and each improvement improves traffic, retention, or revenues by an average of only 2%, the compounded effects of the improvements are an 81% improvement in site performance. If you make continuous improvements to your site, you will eventually build a dominant position in your space. These are the time tested processes advocated by W. Edwards Deming and renamed "Kaizen" by the Japanese. Kaizen helped build companies like Toyota and Sony into powerhouses. Few people know that when the first Toyotas were launched in the US in the early 60s they were the butt of jokes because of their poor quality. Toyota's path to greatness took over 40 years. Your site can grow into a huge success in only 12 months by making a commitment to continuous improvements.

• Pay Per Click Management
• Search Engine Optimization
• Social Media Optimization
• Web Design
• Video Production
• Competitive Intelligence
• Online Reputation Management

Contact Us Today for a Free Marketing Analysis: 888-220-7361