Don’t worry you are not alone in this struggle, more than half of the digital marketers are confused in between these acronyms. Digital Marketing is one of the largest and most cost-effective marketing available throughout the world. It is the marketing or promotion of brands, products, services to consumers by utilizing the internet as digital media. And SEO, SMO, SMM, and SEM are all the parts of digital marketing just like print media, radio, television, referral programs are part of traditional marketing.
Now the main question, is what exactly these all stand for and what are they?
So the answer is down below I tried keeping it in brief.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization):-
This relates to the ranking of the website on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). SEO techniques are to increase the search engine ranking of a website, provide more visibility and hence, more traffic. This technique involves optimizing the website, adding keywords in the Title, Meta tags, content, and Meta descriptions, frequently updating the website and increasing the speed of loading it on desktops and mobile devices.
This means that if your website is optimized according to SEO techniques, the chances of your website appearing in the first and second position in SERP for search queries related to your work are very high!
SMO (Social Media Optimization):-
It means developing social media profiles about your business/website so that members of that network can view and share your profile/page with others. For example, if you have a blog, the best way to promote it is to create a Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn profile and share relevant information with people who may be interested in your work. This can work as a gateway to acquire a large audience and generate traffic to your website without spending a rupee. All you need to do is choose the right social media channel for your business/website and follow a good set of guidelines to promote it.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing):-
Closely associated with SEO, SEM can be defined simply as the use of paid search engine traffic to gain visibility on SERP. Paid results tend to appear in the upper right of “organic” search results. The largest platforms for using SEM are Google, AdWords, Yahoo!, Microsoft adCenter and Search Marketing.
SEM has many features and tools that have been developed by creators of advertising platforms for webmasters. If you want to enter the paid traffic field, you must consider all the keywords associated with it, such as geographic location, click-through rates (CTR), cost per click (CPC), ad copy and other factors.
PPC, or pay per click, is one of the major and important SEM techniques for driving in traffic toward your business/website. When a PPC campaign is launched, you don’t have to wait for days and days to see the results, because you can start seeing the results almost immediately. If you compare SEO vs SEM, with SEO you are at the mercy of search engine algorithms and updates but with PPC, a feature of SEM gives you more control. It works quickly and generates a lot of traffic that not only increases the visibility of your online business but allows you to customize your ads based on geographic location, time of day and your budget

SMM (Social Media Marketing):-
It means promoting a channel through social networks. It gives you the opportunity to access a large community of social networks available on several channels. It also tends to include “Paid social search” or paid advertising on social media channels. Although the paid social search is similar to SEM, it adds behavioral trends to the search equation. However, most of the advertising is the same as SEM, where an advertiser only pays when a user clicks on their ad.

Endnotes:-
As easy as it may seem, we know it is not. Generating organic and quality traffic requires time, creativity and patience. While generating paid traffic, the amount requires money. However, this challenging task may be easier if you build your website from scratch and then add a well-researched campaign. But if you need any guidance or assistance on that we are always here to support you and to make your businesses bloom.
All of these above-mentioned techniques are required in online marketing and no one is better than any other, it’s just what suits best to which online marketer and their clients.
Do share your views and thoughts on this article, in the comment section down below.
Actual Content Source:- https://www.peritusinfotech.com/blog/seo-sem-smo-smm/