SEO vs. SMO – hold your horses

Posted by Josh on Thursday, October 28th, 2010.

A friend recently pointed me toward an article that says “SEO is Dead” because of the rise of Social Media Optimization, or SMO. The article is wrong, and here’s why:

First, search traffic is still growing. People still use search to find products and services, background information, reviews, and competitive pricing. People may get ideas from their social networks, but this doesn’t necessarily come at the expense of search traffic in the same way that someone telling you in person about something doesn’t make you any less likely to look it up in Google.
The partnerships between search and social media companies that he cites benefit both parties. Search engines have huge data sets and sophisticated algorithms, while social media sites have huge numbers of users and sophisticated data about them. Search engine rankings will improve by providing additional inputs into their algorithms. Social media sites will get better search functionality and probably use of more robust advertising tools. It’s not an “either/or” scenario; rather it’s a combination of traditional methods and social media information input that provide more powerful search capabilities.
The author says that many sites are pursuing higher rankings at the expense of creating great content. If that’s the case, then they are getting terrible SEO advice. A mantra for SEO is “content, content, content.” And good content, not just content for its own sake. <snark>And nobody in social media would ever talk just for the sake of talking. No, never. Nor would companies pursuing social media ever do so at the expense of creating content. No, I’ve never seen that happen.</snark>
The evidence is misinterpreted: “Already sites at Wetpaint and other publishers are seeing more audience coming from Facebook than from search.” This is one of the first signs that a site has terrible search engine rankings.

In spite of the author’s impressive pedigree (co-founding Blue Nile), I think he’s way off base. In fact I suspect that he wrote this article in large part as “link bait” to drive up his visibility through — gasp — better search engine rankings.