Keyword density vs keyword stuffing

Lesson Details:

I: Introduction

Are you a blogger or do you manage your company’s social media profile? Then, you must’ve come across this question at some point: What is the difference between SEO and SMO?

Well, the short answer is that SEO is about optimizing your website for search engines while SMO is about optimizing your content through social media.

But that’s not enough, is it? You want to know more, don’t you?

In this article, I will tell you all there is to know about SEO vs SMO.

Let’s begin with seo.

I: What is SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization.

You might have heard this term before. Well, if so, this article isn’t for you. This post is specifically designed for those who are planning to learn SEO for the first time.

To put it simply, SEO is about making your website visible to search engines. It is a process that helps you to rank your site on Google’s search engine results page.

If you are wondering why you are reading an article about SEO when the topic clearly says “SMO”, here is the answer: SEO and SMO go hand-in-hand. So, I guess it makes sense if I introduce both concepts before telling you everything about them separately.

Now that we know what SEO actually is, let’s move on to its importance. Why do you need SEO? Here are 3 reasons:

Higher rankings on Google search engine results page (SERP) = More traffic = More conversions = More revenue

A lot of people can’t understand how does SEO work. When I tell them that I am doing SEO for their website or blog, they always say that they never saw my website on Google. But, how can it be possible? After all, you are doing SEO right? Here is how it works:

Once you start working on SEO for your website or blog, it takes time for Google to recognize changes in the website structure. And once it does, it takes time for Google to rank your website. So, it is true that you won’t see quick results even after starting to work on SEO. But, the good news is that all this hard work will pay off in the long run.

SEO vs SMO: Which One Is More Important?

The answer depends on your business objectives. If your goal is to earn money by selling your products or services, then SEO is going to help you a lot in achieving your goal. It will bring a ton of highly targeted organic traffic to your site which will result in high conversion rates and high sales numbers.

On the other hand, if your objective is to increase brand awareness via social media, then SMO will be the right tool to use. And not only will it help you build brand awareness but also social authority as well as social signals which will all help you improve your rankings in the SERPs. In short, SMO will help you build a good reputation online which will eventually lead to increased sales and revenue via SEO.

I: What is SMO?

So now that we have a clear idea of what is SEO and why it matters a lot to a business website or blog, let’s talk about social media optimization (SMO).

In simple words, SMO is a branch of internet marketing where you use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn etc to promote your content and increase traffic to your site. But why social media? Because social media platforms have a huge user base and more than 90% of these users log in daily on these platforms to check new content and interact with other people. Now imagine the potential of using these platforms to promote your content and attract new customers/clients! That’s where SMO comes into play. You can promote your content and increase traffic to your site through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter etc. And hence, it is called social media optimization (SMO). Now that we’ve got some good basic knowledge of SEO and SMO under our belt, let’s take a look at what exactly is the difference between SEO and SMO. To make things easier for you, I will list down the differences one by one: Difference #1 – Keyword Density vs Keyword Stuffing The main difference between SEO and SMO is keyword density vs keyword stuffing. Let me explain each of them one by one: Keyword Density: Keyword density refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears on your page against its total number of words. For example, if you have 100 words on a page and ‘keyword X’ appears 4 times on this page, then the keyword density would be 4%. Therefore, keyword density tells us how many times does a keyword appear on a page against its total number of words. Now let’s talk about keyword stuffing: Keyword Stuffing: Contrary to keyword density, keyword stuffing refers to the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase appears on your page against its total number of characters. For example if 10 words are present in a paragraph with ‘keyword X’ appearing 2 times in this paragraph then keyword stuffing would be 20%. So it means that against 10 words, 2 words are keywords in this case. Keyword stuffing doesn’t look professional because Google hates spammy sites that overstuff their pages with keywords just to rank higher in SERPs. The main purpose of using keywords in any piece of content should be informative not promotional. That’s why keyword stuffing doesn’t look good in the eyes of search engines like Google or Bing because it looks like you are trying to mislead them by stuffing keywords in your content just to rank higher in SERPs. On the other hand, seo experts recommend using keywords in content depending upon their relevance and necessity otherwise it will look like keyword stuffing which Google doesn’t like at all! Difference #2 – Keywords vs Content When talking about SEO vs SMO one cannot miss out on the differences between keywords and content! Let me tell you what I mean by keywords here: A keyword represents a word or phrase that describes an information need or action performed by people looking for information online. The more targeted keywords you use the more visitors/clients will visit your site thus increasing traffic to your site which leads to increased sales and revenue eventually. Now let’s talk about content: Content refers to the writing style used on your website or blog while presenting information to visitors/clients while performing different actions like reading posts or clicking links etc. The more useful content you create the more visitors/clients will visit your site thus increasing traffic to your site which leads to increased sales and revenue eventually. Difference #3 – Backlinks vs Social Shares You already know what backlinks are (right?) but what about social shares? Let me explain them both one by one: Backlinks refer to links shared from one website to another website through text link anchor text or image alt tag etc Backlinks tell Google whether or not other websites link to your website. Backlinks are like votes cast by other websites that vote for your website by linking back to it thus helping it get ranked higher in SERPs Social Shares refer to shares shared from one social media platform (Facebook, Twitter etc) to another social media platform (Facebook again etc) through text link anchor text Social shares tell Google whether or not other social media profiles share links from your website/blog thus helping them get ranked higher in SERPs You can use backlinks from other websites or blogs with high authority as well as social shares from popular social media profiles with high authority plus add-ons such as images, videos etc all together in order to rank higher in SERPs Difference #4 – External vs Internal Linking External linking refers to linking from one page on a website/blog to another page on a different website/blog External linking tells Google whether or not other websites link from their pages to your pages thus helping them get ranked higher in SERPs Internal linking refers to linking from one page on a website/blog to another page on the same website/blog Internal linking tells Google whether or not there are internal links within the same domain which help users navigate from one page on a website/blog to another page with ease thus helping them get ranked higher in SERPs Difference #5 – Off-page vs On-page SEO Off-page SEO refers to activities done outside a website/blog for improving its rankings in SERPs Off-page SEO includes activities such as link building (backlink building), guest blogging etc On-page SEO refers to activities done inside a website