Search engine optimisation (SEO) is no longer enough. Now, to promote our website, we must build links to the website in unconventional and unique ways. An SEO colleague recently said “it’s much harder to get links these days.” He is correct. The old methods of link-building have become inefficient. It is now a requirement that Internet marketers have a thorough working knowledge and application of social media optimisation (SMO) techniques. This Internet marketing mutation – SEO to SMO – requires that Internet marketing experts “switch to a higher gear.”

Ignore social media and you shall be left behind!

15% of a website marketing campaign should be spent on our website optimisation: that is, properly configuring our webpages to match the actual searches our prospective customers do in google, yahoo and msn; and regularly adding quality content to our webpages

85% of the marketing effort must be spent on building links to our website: that is, employing social media techniques to attract social bookmarking, social networking, video sharing, image sharing, blogging and micro-blogging about our webpages.

These are the facts, my friend, in this rapidly-mutating world of Internet marketing. So grab social media optimisation by the horns and mutate with the rest of us!

Ideally, a specialist link-builder – a firm that employs a staff of link-builders – will be most effective at achieving relevant, quality links to your website. Here is one expert’s idea of what makes a good link builder: “Portrait of a link-builder.”

See this succint google video about linkbuilding.

The demand for social media optimisation has provided an incentive for people to specialise in link-building as a profession. So, expect further posts about this topic in the future.

As always, your comments are welcome