SMO, or Social Media Optimization, is the process of tuning and improving a website, its content, and its technical components, in order to facilitate and maximize the sharing, promotion, and visibility of content on social media platforms. SMO is a website-level strategy that prepares the resource for integration into the social web.
Conceptually, SMO focuses on facilitating user action. This includes technical improvements such as the integration of Open Graph (for Facebook, LinkedIn) and Twitter Cards (for Twitter) meta tags, which ensure that when a page is shared, it is visualized with the correct title, image, and description. Other elements of SMO are the presence of easily accessible share buttons and the creation of “shareable” content (visuals, infographics, short-form text).
SMO is a complementary element of SEO and part of the broader SMM (Social Media Marketing) strategy. While SMM focuses on the activity on the social networks themselves, SMO takes care of the technical readiness of the website to receive and be distributed through these networks. Effective SMO helps generate social signals that can indirectly affect organic visibility.