Or maybe you’re told it means Social Channel Optimization, then Search Channel Optimization, and then Sales Cycle Optimization.
The confusion ends here.
In this blog post, we will cover what SCO marketing is, the difference between SCO and SEO, and five SCO marketing strategies to increase your website traffic.
What is SCO Marketing?
SCO can mean three different things: Social Channel Optimization, Search Channel Optimization, and Sales Cycle Optimization.
However, in the context of digital marketing, SCO is most commonly understood as Social Channel Optimization.
SCO (Social Channel Optimization) refers to creating and optimizing content to gain more visibility and traffic from search engines and social media algorithms.
In the context of social media australia phone number resource it focuses on increasing engagement and follower count as well as driving traffic to your website from the social channel.
When marketers use SCO practices for their websites, it’s often referred to as Search Channel Optimization. The goal is the same: increase traffic and engagement through content that the search engine algorithm ranks well.
It includes various factors like on-page optimization, off-page optimization, search engine optimization , link building and more.
A key factor of SCO marketing is that it is multi-channel. Unlike SEO, SCO doesn’t just focus on improving the position of a piece of content on the SERP (Search Engine Results Page). It also enhances your other marketing efforts, such as SEO, by maximizing visibility on other channels, such as social media platforms.
What is the Difference Between SEO and SCO in Marketing?
SCO and SEO are often used as similar marketing terms, and they have very similar goals: increasing the visibility of your content and increasing website traffic.
However, these terms cannot be used interchangeably.
Essentially, SCO is an “umbrella” marketing term that SEO falls under. SEO is specific to search engine algorithms, whereas SCO covers many more channels.
For example, SEO involves increasing organic search traffic by getting content to rank higher on the SERP without paying for ads, but PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is part of SCO marketing.
SCO also includes social media optimization, video marketing, email marketing, improving app store rankings, increasing podcast subscriptions and listens, and more.
In a nutshell, SCO focuses on increasing website traffic by maximizing visibility across all your online channels, while SEO does this by simply optimizing website content for organic search.
How to Create an SCO Marketing Strategy?
Now that you understand what SCO is and the difference between SCO and SEO, let's look at five strategies you can use to improve your SCO marketing efforts.
#1. Target Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords and Related Hashtags
Rarely used keywords are keywords with high monthly search volume and low competition .
The goal is to maximize the search traffic you can get from the keyword, but not be overwhelmed by larger websites with much higher Domain Authority dominating the SERP .
A similar concept can be applied to hashtags on social media.
You’ll want to choose hashtags that have a significant amount of posts, are followed by a lot of people, and are relevant to your posts. However, you want to avoid getting overwhelmed by large accounts with 10k+ followers or hashtags that have content added every second.
Identifying underused keywords and hashtags relies on research.
You can use keyword research tools ( like SEMRush and Ahrefs ) to search for keywords and search queries until you find a few keywords with the perfect volume/competition ratio.
When it comes to hashtags, try longer versions of short, broad terms that fit the niche of your content.
For example, let's say a personal injury law firm like the Law Office of Attorney Brian White or a law firm SEO service like LawRank wants to find the right keywords and hashtags to use on social media and in blog posts to maximize their visibility.
Using the hashtag #lawyer on Instagram will make them get lost in the crowd – there are over 5.58 million posts.
However, using a longer, more specific keyword like #personalinjurylawyers would significantly increase their chances of being seen by their ideal audience, as this hashtag alone has just over 74,000 posts.
For keywords, SEMRush shows that “personal injury lawyer” has a keyword difficulty score of 81%.
SEMRush results for the keyword “personal injury lawyer”.png
But “personal injury attorney Austin TX” only has 43%.
SEMRush results for the keyword “personal injury lawyer Austin TX”.png
Alt text: SEMRush results for keyword "Personal injury lawyer Austin TX"
Keyword and hashtag research can be time-consuming, but it’s a vital step you shouldn’t skip, so I recommend assigning this task to a specific person on your marketing team or hiring a personal assistant for the job.
#2. Optimize Your Content and Publish Across Multiple Channels
Once you have a list of less-used keywords and hashtags, it's time to start creating content around those topics.
Target keywords without keyword stuffing (as a general rule of thumb, keyword density should be 10%) and include your hashtags at the end of your social media posts or as comments .
But optimizing your content requires much more than keyword targeting.
Research each platform you’ll be focusing on (Google, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Spotify, etc.) Then implement strategies specific to that platform to ensure your content reaches the highest ranking position possible.
Once you publish the fully optimized piece, start repurposing it to distribute on your other channels.
For example, if you wrote an SEO-optimized blog post on how to invest in stocks, share it on your social media profiles.
Next, ask your graphic designer or social media marketer to turn the blog post into multiple social media posts.
