You’ve all heard of search engine optimization (SEO), but now there is a new phenomenon known as SMO, or social media optimization. It’s basically optimizing your site to get the most out of social media sites.

SMO methods include adding Digg buttons, StumbleUpon links, Save to del.icio.us links, RSS feeds, etc.  It also includes adding 3rd party site functions such as a Youtube video or a Flickr photo slide show.

SMO, this term, was first coined by Rohit Bhargava and his original five rules are:
1. Increase your link-a-bility
2. Make tagging and bookmarking easy
3. Reward inbound links
4. Help your content travel
5. Encourage the mashup

Number 2, I think is the easiest one to implement on a website.  Wordpress (blogging software used on GettingMoreVisitors.com) has a plugin that allows you to add social bookmarking links from a variety of popular social bookmarking sites.  If you look at the bottom of each post on this site, you can see an example of this being used.  I use Digg, StumbleUpon, and Deli.icio.us because they are the ones that get the most visitors.

Don’t doubt the importance of these!  I’ve seen sites get over 100,000 visitors in a day from just one Digg link.  Many sites also get steady streams of traffic from Stumbleupon.  Just yesterday, GettingMoreVisitors.com received a record number of visitors thanks to one of our pages getting “stumbled.”  So, if you’ve been too lazy to implement SMO methods on your site, don’t waste another day - put them up now!