SEO, SMO or Internet/Digital Marketing

I understand search engine optimization had to do with search engines, and social media optimization has to do with sites that invite the social media aspect to them.

There is not much clarity on the other terms. Internet or/and (as the case maybe) Digital Marketing. Is this something different?

Facebook is a social site, so this would go into social media optimization. However, when you put adds on facebook, this would be known as paid advertising, which is search engine optimization. So it’s like one is the other under different circumstances.

I check a number of websites out, and they all list things differently. Some of the things inter-twine into each other, so it’s hard to know what belongs to what. Is there any clear structure to what is what?

Paid advertising is never SEO, unless it has a do-follow link which allows it to be optimized for search engines.

In terms of viral marketing, digital marketing, internet marketing, any other terms that exists (if they are please share), are these all the same thing with a different label. It’s like they have purposefully created labels to confuse me… :rolleyes:

Digital marketing is a very broad term that would usually include SEO and SMO, along with any viral marketing campaigns and paid advertising.

It doesn’t really matter what you call it - different people use different labels for different things.

But one thing that I do need to correct you on - paid advertising is never SEO. Paid links should always be marked as “nofollow”, precisely so that you don’t get benefits in search engines from them. Paid links should only ever be used to attract direct traffic.