Generating traffic to your site means more sales, more income and more points toward your search engine results. This in turn means even more traffic, more sales, income and so on.

So how do you generate more traffic to your site? Of course there are many ways and one of them is through the creation of a HubPage.

A HubPage is an all-inclusive page that informs the reader about a subject. So to create your HubPage you will need to pick a topic. Let's say your topic is plumbing. You may want to focus in on one aspect of plumbing, say for instance, how to change out a faucet.

Before writing your article, you may want to have a list of at least three keywords that you will use throughout your article. Your article should be between 1000 to 1500 words long. You want to look for a keyword density of around 2%. There are websites and software that will help you evaluate your keyword density within your text that basically takes the total words and divides it by the number of times your keyword is represented. Make sure one of those keywords is in your title. Creating a title that is enticing and has a keyword can take some thought.

Now to write an interesting article without it appearing as if you are stuffing it with keywords. Keep your article's content interesting and unique. Second, if you want people to read your article, write about a topic that maybe nobody else has thought to write about. Give your reader something worth their time to read. Also, for formatting purposes, place plenty of paragraphs in your text making it easier to read. Include bullet points if possible or lists as they are also easier for your reader to view.

After you have written your article you will now want to insert photos or images. Include at least 3 images, preferably 5 images. Don't forget that they must be royalty free in order to include them on your HubPage. There are hundreds of sites that offer stock images that you can either purchase or pick up for free. Images make your page more attractive to read and search engines see images as additional data to the text you've written and add value to the overall way a search engine reads, ranks and lists. Hide keywords within your image by renaming and tagging images before uploading them to your page. If your keyword is 'faucet repair', name your image faucet_repair.jpg or something similar. Also give your images alt tags. Search engines look for keywords both on the page and off the page, so take the opportunity to utilize everything you put together in a meaningful way.

Next, include a video. Search Engines rate videos highly and if your HubPage links to video's that are already on the search engine listings, it will give your HubPage a better ranking. Try and include at least one video, and a maximum of three. (Use YouTube or Google for the best results). There are millions of videos you can find on YouTube that will match up with what it is you are trying to educate your public about. Use an image from the video along with a link to the video within your hub page. Again, this is a good opportunity to include valuable keywords.


Now link everything up. Link at least three of your keywords to related resources. You will also have links from your images and video that go to related resources. You can link to sources such as articles, forums, or websites.

Last, many people prefer to write a 150 word summary description of their hub page. Include in this summary your main keywords as this will appear next to your hub page listing on the search engines. Now your page is ready to publish your hub page and bring in the traffic!

Pamela Ravenwood is a copywriter for ArteWorks SEO. She is an award winning writer, journalist, SEO specialist and strategic planning consultant. To learn more about this search engine optimization company, visit www.arteworks.biz.

If you are new to the business of owning and operating a website then the understanding of analytics and search engine optimization may at first seem overwhelming.

But like anything, it first requires a grasp of the terminology. Knowing the terminology, you will have a better understanding of what types of website goals you are shooting for.

Maybe you are now saying, my goal is just to sell more products or services. True enough. But to sell more products or services, one must understand who their customer is along with whether you are reaching that customer and if you are holding that customer's attention long enough to make a sell. To do this, one must understand the interaction between customers and your website and this is done through Website Analytics.

Website analytics requires analyzing data on the back end of your website. A marketing specialist or search engine optimizer is going to look at these figures to help create and modify a marketing plan for you. So what types of things is this specialist looking at?

1. Unique Visitors - We all want to know if people are finding our website and if so, how many. This number can be tricky to determine. In the old days, people installed 'hit counters" which gave the owner some obscure number regarding the number of times a person opened their website. The problem with hit counters is that they do not accurately count the true number of people who visit the site. Why is this? Hit counters are typically not sophisticated enough to separate a visitor from the data that comes up on your site - therefore, counters will show more hits than there truly are. This sounds complicated but this is how it works. For instance, if you gave a gallery page on your site and it shows twenty thumbnail pictures, each picture that loads is counted as a hit. Text on the page, other images, external stylesheets, external javascripts, links and other elements that require the server to pull a file to build the page register will count as a hit. One visitor may end up appearing as up to 100 hits.

I have seen many people base their unique visitor count primarily on the free hits counter that their hosting company provided or free software they downloaded, which leads them to believe they were receiving great traffic. After looking at their Google Analytics unique visitor count, the number was quite different and extremely low in most situations, which was highly disappointing to the new website owner.

A web analyst not only looks at the true number of visitors that visit your website but they also look at how many of those are Return Visitors in contrast to how many are Unique Visitors. Both are important numbers. Return Visitors can indicate a strong interest in your site and a likeliness of an action being made by that visitor such as a purchase. Unique visitors are valuable as well as it shows how many new people you are attracting.

2. Page Views - This term describes how many different pages a visitor looked at while on your website. The question an analyst is asking is, did this person just look at your front page and leave or did they browse around, click on your links, or read about your product or service. For marketing purposes, it is important to make sure potential clients are spending time on your website and finding everything they need. If they are not and leaving right after finding your website or what is called 'bouncing' out, you will want to analyze the reasons why. Did the person not find that they were searching for, was your website too obscure and difficult to maneuver, or are you even targeting the right audience? All of these are questions to be asked if your Page View statistics remain low.

3. Referrers - Discovering how people found you is also valuable. Did your visitor come from a website that linked to your website or did they find you through a search engine? Which search engine did they use? Which websites are linking to you that is providing you with traffic? Did your visitors find you through social media such as Twitter, Facebook or a blog? These answers can show how well your website represented in the web world and on a global basis?

4. Search Terms - Once an analyst determines how people are finding your website and you discover it may primarily be through search engines, the next logical question is, what words or phrases did that person type into the search engine. A search term or search string can show you if the terms people are using are correct for what your website represents - for example, if you have a large number of unique visitors, a small number of page views and people bouncing off the minute they find your site, you may wonder why? If you are a company for instance that sells model airplanes and your unique visitors are typing in the word 'model' in search of models or even 'airplanes', not using the two words together, they connotation is completely different and you may not be finding your correct audience.

5. Entry and Exit Pages - Another piece of information a web analyst studies is which pages on your website are visitors entering through and exiting? Did you pull your guest in, guide them through everything you wanted them to see or did you lose them right away or consistently on a particular page? Understanding which pages your visitors are looking at can help you identify the high interest pages to the low interest pages of your website.

While these are just a handful of terms used by a website analyst, it may help the new and even seasoned website owner understand how to improve their online rankings.

Pamela Ravenwood is a copywriter for ArteWorks SEO. She is an award winning writer, journalist, SEO specialist and strategic planning consultant. To learn more about this search engine optimization company, visit www.arteworks.biz.

So you’ve secured some first rate rankings for some of your target keyphrases and you are looking to expand that traffic. Well, there are about a hundred ways to do this, but one of the most simple solutions that many people neglect is modifying your keyphrases to include some long tail. What’s long tail? Well, long tail keyphrases are considered those that are three or more words that may not have a huge amount of traffic, but that traffic sure is relevant and valuable, which is why utilizing this method can really make a difference your search engine referrals.

First you will need to start with some keyphrase research to find out what phrases are going to be the most relevant while also producing a reasonable amount of traffic. Now, the key to this is that these keyphrases should also include the phrases for which your site already ranks. For example, if your website ranks will for “dallas real estate” (which would be quite fortunate for you), you might start looking at phrases like “dallas real estate for sale” or “dallas real estate investment.” Though these only show approximately 1360 searches per month combined, they are more relevant and less competitive. The odds of securing rankings for these phrases with your highly ranked pages are quite good.

So once you’ve picked out these phrases, what now? Well, you don’t have to stick them in everywhere, modifying your title tag and every reference to the already ranking phrase. In fact I would not recommend this. However, using this long tail phrase in an Hx tag or two as well as in regular text and maybe even an alternate image attribute can be very effective.

Of course, the work doesn’t stop with these on-page content/code modifications. Now you need to get some great anchortext links using these new long tail phrases. I will leave it up to you how you decide to accomplish this. The long and short of it is that many companies are missing out on some great traffic they could be snagging from work they have already completed. Long tail modifiers utilize the page rank and relevancy of a page you have already worked hard to achieve high search engine visibility, so why not utilize it as much as possible? So get started on that research. It is well worth the investment.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. His interest and experience in search engine optimization is largely focused on social media optimization and multi-media facets of exposure specifically video SEO. To learn more about this search engine optimization company, visit www.arteworks.biz.

Though it appears they have been testing this for some time, the search bar appearing in actual search results is a new one for me. A friend of mine saw them when doing a search for various photo sites and brought it to my attention. Don’t know what I’m talking about? Do a search for the query “Wikipedia.”



As you see, in the top listing for the main Wikipedia website, a search bar is included below the other site navigation results. As you conduct more searches, you will see that it seems a little odd that some major websites have the search box feature while others don’t. What do you suppose is the criteria for this? Are the sites that have a search bar in their name results hand picked by somebody behind the Google gates? Some notable searches that render a search bar in the top results are:

“imdb” “microsoft” “flickr” “youtube”

Then there are a few searches that surprisingly do not get a search bar in the top listing such as:

“film critic” “apple” “picasa” “google video”

Okay, fine, so some get the search bar and some don’t, but do you see any similarities between these two lists? I intentionally chose searches that would retrieve very similar results for companies that are very similar in size and nature. Is this just some addition to the sitemap that I do not know about? Perhaps some of you can shed some light on this for me?

Regardless, I think it is pretty slick. When you type in a search and proceed, the search engine provides a healthy list of results within that particular website that match your query. What might be even more interesting is to learn a little more about what that search algorithm looks like. What makes one reference to a keyphrase more relevant than another within the same website? I’m pretty sure it is not based on page rank, or maybe it is? And does this mean anything for those working on search engine optimizaiton for these major players?

Thoughts?


About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. His interest and experience in search engine optimization is largely focused on social media optimization and multi-media facets of exposure specifically video SEO. To learn more about this search engine optimization company, visit www.arteworks.biz.

Well so am I! I guess I am a little behind the wagon train because I just signed up on this recent addition to Google’s bag of tricks. A “knol” as defined by Google is a “unit of knowledge.” Of course, I am a bit unclear about what a “unit” of knowledge really means and if it is supposed to be a metric or US unit, but nonetheless, it is some type of unit. Upon visiting knol.google.com, I signed up for my own profile, for which I was then required to verify over the telephone. It felt like I was sucked into that early 90’s movie Sneakers - “my voice is my passport, verify me,” though I am not comparing myself to Robert Redford in any way. Once I was in and all verified up, I was then allowed to write my very first Knol, and how exhilarating it was to create my very own “unit of knowledge.”

As the initial excitement began to wear off, I found myself quite familiar with this Wikipedia style content submission, the main difference being less focus on terminology and definitions and more on full articles with unique titles. Just like Wikipedia however, other users can comment on and amend the submissions of other users. The idea being that information will continue to be revised and updated to provide the best information to readers.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that anchortext links are quite welcome and encouraged by the edit html tool found on the editing page for any knol. So of course I tossed in a link back to me and a few others to various sites I think worthy, so I guess we’ll see what that does. I was also able to add “bio” to my profile, which also included some anchortext, but the interesting thing is that this bio is also considered a knol. I suppose my life story (not really) is at least a unit or two of knowledge. You never know what you might be asked on in the final round of Jeopardy.

Since the creation over eight months ago, Google’s knol has gained a bit of press in search engine circles. Various SEO’s have run experiments to see how the mother ship search engine treats this little toddler finding some pretty interesting results. It seems as though Google tends to give it some preferential treatment when it comes to ranking content from the Knol versus identical content posted previously on other websites. David Utter talked about this yesterday on a Web Pro News Blog. Personally I don’t see too much of a problem with it. They have been giving the same preferential treatment to their other services like adwords, analytics, blogging, and email for years, as do all of the other search engines.

By and large, I think this is a very interesting new space to explore, and I certainly plan on contributing quite regularly. I think Google is on the right track by introducing some more user generated spaces. The social media trend continues to grow, and they should continue to think of new ways to join the game in order to stay on top.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. His interest and experience in Internet marketing is largely focused on the social media optimization and multi-media facets of exposure. To learn more about reputation management and this search engine optimization firm, visit www.arteworks.biz.

In the old days, unless someone sent a letter to the editor or started an all out advertisement war, most big companies had little difficulty keeping a tight hold on their reputations. Unfortunately for some, the information age has turned the world of reputation management upside down. Anyone with a computer and a dial-up connection (or just an iPhone in their pocket), can post whatever slanderous thoughts they have or take out their frustrations on anyone in a very public way, and because search engines appreciate the authenticity of blogs and other user generated content, these comments, rants, and raves often find their way into extremely visible positions. Agreed, some companies probably deserve it, but the really sad thing is that many great businesses hurt by one person’s statements, suddenly lose an incredible amount of online credibility.

Social media websites have amplified the situation incredibly. These user-generated meccas are permeating search indexes and grabbing ranking results in virtually every possible market. Decide you don’t like the company you work for? Just give them a thumbs down in Stumbleupon and leave a nasty comment. It is so easy for a single voice to be heard that companies are walking on pens and needles, afraid of their social networking savvy employees or customers. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in a freedom of speech, but some of these negative claims have no foundation in truth, and in some circumstances, the company is just an innocent bystander.
Luckily, it is still possible to control online reputations using a very similar principle as in the old days.

Own the space.

By taking over the entire space for particular search terms, companies don’t have to worry about those one off bloggers or that one disgruntled customer (who was being unreasonable anyway). Consider a search for the phrase “hillary clinton.” I am quite certain that this senator as a large amount of slanderous material written about her online, but somehow a Google search does not reveal any of that material for at least the first two pages. Now does this mean there are not hundreds of blogs devoted to running her name through the mud? of course not. Because Hillary has a large amount of valuable and heavily linked online material associated with her name, she owns the search ranking space for her name.

Yes, this is an extreme example, but any company can take control of their name space by producing great content, building the strength of that content in the search engines, and using that content to build the strength of other websites in that space, are things that reputable SEO firms should have no problem accomplishing. Sometimes negative comments can stay in the rankings for years, and there is no reason why any organization or individual has to stand by helplessly as their reputation suffers. Online reputation management is a great way to protect your brand.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. His interest and experience in Internet marketing is largely focused on the social media optimization and multi-media facets of exposure. To learn more about reputation management and this search engine optimization firm, visit www.arteworks.biz.

One of today’s hottest topics for Internet marketing is “the future of search engine technology.” I received an earful of speculation from SMX West in Santa Clara, and you can find some mention of the subject in almost every SEO blog, forum, or website. Obviously the future of search engine technology will greatly impact the marketing and optimization infrastructure that has developed in recent years, so there is certainly cause for consideration, but the basic concepts of web marketing and search engine optimization will never change. Yes, there are always old tricks or new tricks that can manipulate the system for a short while, but a real SEO campaign should stand independent of shifts in algorithms or technology.

With that in mind, there are some exciting new ideas entering the conversation about the future search experience, and in order to understand why these concepts are developing, it is important to know how people search. The three basic types of searches are find, discover, and explore searches. "Find" searches are considered short sessions that have very specific questions, such as local listings, stocks, directions, etc, while a "discover" searches have the same clear need with a less specific answer in mind. These searches might look like shopping for a new car. Yes, the searcher knows they are looking for a car, but they spend any number of hours researching and searching for the right one. Finally, an "explore" search has no real answer or target in mind but seeks only to browse various subjects. The future of search will be entirely defined by these basic search types.

Search engines are still quite weak in terms of "find" searches. When searching for something very specific, there may be thousands of results and no real way to specify further. For this reason, the idea of personal search has surfaced, where the engine would learn through various means what types of results certain users are typically seeking. So when a construction contractor searches for “windows” he will come up with glass windows instead of the operating system.

Rankings determined by user interaction are another possibility for the future. In this case, the amount of times users choose particular sites from search rankings would be recorded and totaled to prove which sites are most valuable to the rankings. There has even been talk of artificial intelligence for search engine use. With artificial intelligence, search crawlers would actually read and interpret text, comprehend video content, and even analyze photographs. With this futuristic technology, the search index could be extremely accurate, providing the best, genuine content, and it might not be that far away.

Search engine technology is an extremely exciting field, providing information from millions of sources to people around the world. The information is out there, and the engines are in place, now it is only a question of improving those engines to make access to information as simple and seamless as possible.


About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. His interest and experience in Internet marketing and search engine optimization is largely focused on the social media and multi-media facets of exposure. To learn more about search engine optimization, visit www.arteworks.biz.

The development of blended search is an exciting new chapter in the history of search engine technology. Not only have search engines developed wonderfully intelligent means for sorting out spammers from authentic content, they are beginning to include images, videos, book results, recordings, and more in a multi-media search result environment. According to Google Senior Staff Engineer, David Bailey, the process for creating a blended search is similar to the previous web results model. The only real difference being that each form of content is classified into a particular “silo” of information that the search engine investigates. Results are first collected from all “silos,” or content categories, and then the engine creates a ranking decision based on the collective results. Of course, this ranking system is more complicated since comparing a video to a website, or a picture to a song, is quite difficult, not to mention collecting all of this data. David Bailey acknowledges this complication in terms of cost and accuracy, but continues to have a hopeful perspective toward the future of blended search and its ability to truly meet the needs of searchers.

So what does this mean for those interested in increasing their search engine visibility and rankings? I agree with Bailey, recommending that those pursuing search engine optimization should begin tampering with various forms of content. Marketers and optimizers should start publishing high quality and well captioned images, creating video and video sitemaps, updating business listings for local searches, submitting feeds to product searches, and creating high quality multi-media blogs. One must only consider the developments of the web’s most popular social media networks to realize how important these things are becoming. For example, StumbleUpon and Digg, two of the most popular bookmarking communities, have both introduced new submission and search possibilities that specifically focus on video and images.

Because blended search is so new, most of the space is open for the taking. Any relevant videos or images of minimal quality are likely to find their way into search results, especially when hosted on major posting sites such as Youtube, MetaCafe, and Flickr. So for the cost, videos and images can be excellent exposure tools. The studies are still young in regards to tracking actual conversions from videos and images, but an increase in website traffic never hurts. Now is the time to take advantage and explore blended search. Like the development of traditional search rankings, those who get start early are more likely to solidify a highly ranked presence.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. His interest and experience in Internet marketing and search engine optimization is largely focused on the social media and multi-media facets of exposure. To learn more about search engine optimization, visit www.arteworks.biz.

This past week, ArteWorks attended the Search Marketing Expo (SMX) in Santa Clara California, and I must say the experience is well worth it to anyone interested in any type of search engine marketing. Representatives from all of the major search engines as well as the most knowledgeable people in our field were in attendance. The seminars were focused, the keynotes were inspirational, but most of all, the networking was tremendous. This was my first conference to attend as a representative for ArteWorks, and getting to know so many brilliant and fun people in the industry was certainly a highlight.

The conference started Monday evening with a networking bash (with drinks provided), which was a great way to break the ice with people I have only known in the blogosphere. The next morning the keynote started early, lead by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land, focusing mainly on blended, personalized, and social Search. After a break, the seminars began. The next three days would be a solid chunk of focused info sessions ranging from social media, to video, to reputation management, to Q & A with search engine engineers, and beyond. Each seminar would be lead by a panel of experts in a particular field and was open to email questions at the end. I concentrated on the social media and blended search oriented seminars as this is what I am most interested in, and I found the presentations to be quite useful. Though I am already familiar with most of the concepts and strategies addressed, I felt like I was going down the laundry list of factors that make up a successful Internet marketing campaign and reevaluating my approach. For someone new to the industry, these types of seminars would be absolutely invaluable.

Now on to the parties! Each night there was an organized “networking” function that encouraged chatting with new people in the industry while letting loose a little bit. I felt that the atmosphere was extremely open and friendly, and a fantastic avenue for getting to know some of the most knowledgeable people in Search as well as those just getting started. Not only did I make some of the most valuable business connections ever, I genuinely had a great time doing it. We are not alone, all you Search Marketers out there!

If you have ever considered attending one of these events, I hope you will take my recommendation and make it happen. SMX offers so many great advantages in this industry, and it would be a shame to miss out.


About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media marketing. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization.

The value of social media is no secret to this year’s United States Presidential Candidates. Beyond the beautifully designed, Web 2.0 websites of candidates like Obama, McCain, and Clinton lie incredible social media infrastructures that are fully developed and extremely connected. In fact, most SEO’s have a thing or two to learn from these intense Internet marketing campaigns. Some existing for only a year, they have accomplished more than many businesses have ever considered, and thus social media makes history as a powerful player in the Presidential race.

For starters, every candidates’ website has buttons or links to multiple social media sites for bookmarking or social profiles. Check out the bottom of Hillary Clinton’s Website at hillaryclinton.com. There you find links to Facebook, MySpace, Youtube, Flickr and Eons profiles, each of which are thoroughly developed and active. Her Flickr page is studded with outstanding photos that are titled and tagged, her MySpace page is customized and has over 186,000 friends, and her Youtube channel is enormous. There are currently 264 videos posted!

Obama is no stranger to the online community either. Notice at the bottom right of his campaign website (barackobama.com) a fairly extensive link list of social media connections. These include the sites mentioned on the Clinton site as well as Digg, Twitter, Eventful, LinkedIN, Faithbase, Glee, BlackPlanet, and more. These candidates are taking the social networking world by storm in a way that is unique to our modern times, executing social media strategies that have SEO’s drooling. Their efforts are explosive but honest and real at the same time, and I don’t see any black hat operations going on here.

Part of the reason these types of social media campaigns are so successful is that they are not overly burdened with the need to build links and get noticed on the search engines. They are using social media largely as an intensive viral marketing strategy with the goal of saturating political, social, and economic channels with content. Presidential candidates are more concerned with branding and image than how they rank for particular keyphrases, and as a result their online presence is huge, subsequently showing some impressive search engine rankings as well.

Now, I know that they also have incredible budgets. However, many of the avenues they are using are free, the only cost being a knowledgeable social media teams to organize and execute the campaigns. Compared to paying for network television commercials or spreads in national magazines, social media costs are minuscule, and if you don’t think social media can have a huge impact on the success of your business, ask yourself, “Why are these political campaigns so invested in social media?” I guarantee you it is not just for kicks and giggles.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media marketing. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization.

The use of video for Internet marketing strategies is predicted to become to a $3 billion dollar industry by the year 2010 by eMarketer Report. What an incredible figure, considering it has only really exploded in the last few years. Why are investors, businesses, and marketing/advertisement firms so excited about video? The answer lies in the numbers. The mass of viewers is so great, that anyone seeking to promote products or brands would be silly not to consider such a huge portion of the population. According to a market trends expert named Brian Haven, 53% of all adults using a broadband connection state that they watch videos online. Considering the current viewing audience and realizing the potential of online videos, it would be would silly not to invest in such a cost effective, wide reaching medium.

An enormous number of videos are produced and posted to the Internet every day by amateurs and professionals alike. From funny happenings to how to videos, there is an amazing surge of content, and it is inspired by the fact that anyone can be heard. Literally, anyone who makes a video and posts it on Youtube, Google Video, metacafe, or something similar, has the opportunity to be viewed by thousands, if not millions of viewers. It is a fantastic opportunity and an excellent way for businesses to make themselves known. This is without even considering the impact video can have on search engine rankings.

Like any content, video can also be utilized as a form of “link bait,” meaning it is valuable material that other websites, blogs, or forums might want to link to. If the video is posted to a video sharing website and optimized correctly, those links in turn bring recognition to the keywords and links associated with that video, which should all be pointing back to the creator. This practice is extremely new, and the results vary somewhat due to the current limitations in search engine indexing, but it may prove to be the most effective strategy. For now, the sure fire way to make sure videos bait to a particular website is by posting directly on that website. While also gaining viewers by submitting to Youtube and others, the object of posting directly to a website is to drive traffic directly to that site. This can be done in a variety of ways, such as a strategic social bookmarking campaign.

There is a video revolution on the move, and those who join will certainly surpass the competition. Not only can videos produce brand or product recognition, they can increase a website’s authority in the search engines and bring in great, relevant traffic. So why not start kicking around a few ideas?

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media marketing. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization. If you would like to view the free educational SEO video series, please visit www.arteworks.biz.

Throughout the history and development of the Internet, social networking has inherently played a key role due to vast telecommunication possibilities. We started with chat rooms, forums, and eventually developed networks like Friendster and Myspace, resulting in an explosion virtual connectivity All of these networks were simply designed to connect people without the issue of distance. Well, at some point people started to realize that networking is also a valuable tool in another major aspect of life, business. Networking is a powerful business tool practiced by politicians, businessmen, and entrepreneurs since the establishment of human commerce. Today it has become so imperative that many businesses pay big money to attend industry specific networking events. Everyone knows the old saying, “its not what you know, its who you know,” and it could not be more true. With the creation of business and professional networking sites, now businesses can legitimately network throughout the web, gaining leads, partners, advice, and an abundance of other useful ventures.

LinkedIn, Fastpitch, Ryze, and Tribe are all social networking sites specifically designed for the professional world and might quite possibly become the most valuable business resources on the net. The set up is simple. By signing up, putting together a basic profile and connecting up with a few friends, you are already well on your way, and networking sites like these make it easy. The setup for each network is relatively the same, but each network has its own advantages and disadvantages, and some are more relevant for specific industries. LinkedIn has begun to rise to the top because of its simple methods of increasing and maintaining your social network. With an easy upload from your existing email or IM contacts, LinkedIn can show you which people you already know on the network, and once you have even a few friends, the network can expand quickly through the friends of your friends. Not only that, but you can easily search for users with names or even keywords.

Once you have established a profile, business networks can be used to post jobs, search for jobs, find services, make partnerships, negotiate sales, consider new ventures, and so much more. It is not at all uncommon for businesses to hold meetings or discuss propositions from the introductions made on a social networking site. Like Internet dating, social networking makes it possible for people to meet that might never have crossed paths in the real world, which greatly expands the limits of possibilities.

The best thing about social networking right now is that most of it is free! What some pay thousands in order to join networking events or groups, they can do for free with the help of online social networks. This will probably change in the future, so now is a great time to get involved and build a network.


About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media marketing. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization. If you would like to view the free educational SEO video series, please visit www.arteworks.biz.

Have a few minutes? Want to spend some time checking out fascinating websites that relate to your specific interests? Maybe you want to see what is out there on astronomy, the environment, or even the entertainment industry. StumbleUpon is an amazing one-click stop to meet your curiosity needs. With over 4 million users already, StumbleUpon makes it easy for people to surf the web in a care free, channel flipping sort of style, stumbling on the most interesting material the web has to offer.

How does it work? After downloading the toolbar and setting up your personal category preferences on StumbleUpon, you are ready to go. With a single click on the Stumble Button, you are launched to one of many extremely high-quality web pages recommended by thousands of similar users. This creates an extremely valuable content source by sending StumbleUpon users directly to sites that match their personal interests. Not only that, but these sites have also been approved by like-minded individuals.

Many people might say that this is just one more of many social media sites that doesn’t really do anything. On the contrary, it has become one of the most enjoyable searching tools I have. I spend at least a few minutes every day “stumbling,” just seeing what is out their in my world. Everyone should give it a try. Once you have learned to truly enjoy this unique Internet community, you will also quickly realize its value for Internet marketing and search engine optimization.

As the number of “Stumblers” increases and ratings become even more relevant, StumbleUpon will increasingly impact search engine results as well as wide spread viral marketing. If your company provides content that is considered valuable by the relevant web community, features on social media sites like StumbleUpon will certainly increase exposure by introducing your brand as well as baiting valuable links. Social Media is the wave of the marketing future, and familiarizing yourself with StumbleUpon is just one way to capitalize on the ever-changing information age.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media optimization. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization. If you would like to view the free educational SEO video series, please visit www.arteworks.biz.

I wanted to take the time to write on a subject that has every company pondering. And if it is not, it should be. Social media has taken the world by storm with its viral, growing network of people, groups, and companies. Your employees, or marketing representatives, have the ability to impact your company image and increase your web presence simply by becoming active members of social media sites like MySpace, LinkedIn, and Facebook. However, many employers are very hesitant to allow this kind of work to be done on company time. It seems more like fun than work, and more importantly, can it actually be productive enough to pay for?

The answer is yes! Of course, every business is at a different stage, and the amount of time employees should spend on social media sites will vary depending on the type of business. For example, social media involvement might be more important for a business that only operates online than for a local brick and mortar, services oriented business, but I would submit that every business planning for a broader future, online or not, should invest some time and money into social media. Social media sites have become hubs of professional networking, information sharing, and personalization of the web. MySpace allows users to basically create their own website, sharing pictures, videos, stories, blogs, and more to the rest of the world. Others then view this content or contact the member and are able to comment, vote, and pass on content as they desire. LinkedIn offers a professional profile for employees where they can network with other professionals, give recommendations, post resumes, and more. Because these sites are already well indexed within the search engines and often have their own, more than adequate search engines, the right kind of regular posting can really create awareness of your business. In addition to that, clients or associates can get to know some of your staff or learn more about the inner workings of your business, thus becoming more familiar and comfortable with your people and operations.

According to a study by Pollara Strategic Insights, 46% of a 444 business sampling, believe that social media is now more important than TV, radio, Newspapgers, and Magazines, and 85% agree that it is a very important element. However, in the same study, 66% of those business owners or managers did not think employees should be compensated to interact with social media networks. What these people do not realize is that time spent on social media can actually be productive company interaction between employees, to management, or even to clients as well. All of these messages, shared stories, and more, can actually serve as useful content and buzz surrounding a business. This can drive traffic, increase rankings, improve branding, or simply serve to familiarize your employees with each other. The bottom line is that all social media sites and search engines reward those who participate in the online community. Creating profiles, adding posts, commenting, and content rating on a regular basis are great ways for your employees to improve your social media presence.

I would highly recommend talking this over with some of your staff and creating a strategy for getting your business involved with social media. Perhaps each employee has a required amount of time they spend online, or maybe they are just required to post or comment on certain facets of your business. Whatever protocol you devise, continue to modify and investigate your efforts to come up with the right amount and quality of social interaction on the web, producing the best results for your business.

About the Author: Peter Hamilton is the Project Manager in charge of the Seattle office of ArteWorks SEO. He has a Bachelor's degree in radio, television and film and extensive experience in social media optimization. Mr. Hamilton also heads up the ArteWorks SEO educational video series on topics related to Internet marketing and search engine optimization. If you would like to view the free educational SEO video series, please visit www.arteworks.biz.