There are many reasons people use Internet marketing or search engine optimization. One of them includes the improvement of their online reputation.

The term "online reputation management", or ORM, is defined, as the practice of consistent research and analysis of one’s personal or professional, business or industry reputation as represented by the content across all types of online media. It is also sometimes referred to as online reputation monitoring.

Those in marketing know and understand the value of branding and image. Combine this with the influence of consumer's decisions based on the Internet and one can see what businesses are using the Internet to market themselves. For instance research has shown that brands with the highest 'social media activity', including reviews, have seen an increase in revenue by as much as 18%. And today, over 51% of consumers are using the Internet before making a purchase in a shop to educate themselves on a company or product.

Consumers love to gather information. Therefore it is important that when they search for your company or brand name, they find it in the search engines. This is where SEO is tied into reputation management. Search engines do not automatically give credence to one company over another due to assets or value. It's all about who understands how to get online visibility.

So let's say you are Company A and want to improve the name of your company and become more visible on the Internet. What strategy would you take to assist you with your online reputation management? To start you would want to combine a series of marketing, public relations and search engine marketing efforts. Having your website and company name highly visible and in important keyword positions is good for publicity. If you are a company that is highly visible but for all the wrong reasons, such as bad press, it is important to replace this with good press. A good SEO company will help you push out negative reviews in search engines and replace them with positive ones.

What are some strategies an SEO company will take to help your company in addition to monitoring results? First they will help you set up a blog and then provide you with articles with important keywords. The articles can be about anything related to your company or product, the idea is to have them point back to your company website and push its value up on search engines.

Second, you will want to create a social media profile. Using social media is one of the most powerful and yet easy ways to help improve your online reputation. The top four social media sites have high authority in search engines that therefore affects your rankings. What are the big four media sites you should be participating in? They include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Linked-In
• MySpace


Once these simple steps have been put into place, the second step is to begin monitoring and participating. Creating an account with social media groups isn't enough; there are rules of engagement. You have to participate in a way that adds credibility to your profile. Participating isn't just about talking about your company and how wonderful it is, but truly engaging others in conversation, making meaningful exchanges and contributions. Doing this requires time and effort that is ongoing.

Last, you will need to monitor your results. You can set up Google and Yahoo alerts which will catch mentions of your company and product name online and let you know who is talking about you and where. You can track everything from the name of your company to key employee names.

You can also monitor, if you are not already, your website statistics. You will want to determine whether your website(s) are showing up with more frequency based on keywords and your namebrand or product names on the search engines. You can monitor everything from your corporate site to product or affiliate sites.

Online reputation management doesn't have to be difficult and yet it is quite effective. With a little work and a little monitoring, you can help your company's reputation move in the direction you choose along with improving its visibility.

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.

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 have been in sales or marketing for a while you probably have heard of the term "Relationship Based Marketing".

This type of marketing differs from other forms of marketing in that it recognizes the long term value to the firm of keeping customers, as opposed to direct or "Intrusion" marketing, which focuses upon acquisition of new clients by targeting majority demographics based upon prospective client lists.

Relationship marketing also relies upon acquiring the knowledge of what the consumer needs solely through existing customers in a mutual exchange. Relationship marketing is also dependent upon viral marketing for the acquisition of new customers. But as we have seen in very successful campaigns, viral marketing can have extensive effects.

What is viral marketing? Viral marketing refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses. It can be word-of-mouth delivered or enhanced by the network effects of the Internet.

So how are people using the Internet to utilize viral marketing - in many ways.

Web 2.0 and Social Media



According to Wikipedia, which is a perfect example of Web 2.0, the term Web 2.0 is defined as "commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Examples of Web 2.0 include web-based communities, hosted services, web applications, social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, wikis, blogs, mashups, and folksonomies."


Web 2.0 gives more tools to those who utilize relationship-based marketing to promote their product or service. With Web 2.0 you are not only reaching a large base of people but you are also giving more marketing power to your website through the spider web of connections behind each of these types of media. If you are promoting yourself through Wikipedia, you are getting a two-fold force of marketing, one, directly to your potential client and two, promoting your website's viability due to Wikipedia's highly spidered site.


Blogging



Blogging has probably been around longer than the other types of relationship based marketing techniques. What better way to promote yourself and your product then to sit down with a one-on-one conversation with potential clients? With your blog you can share your interests or passions with others who will then share that information and thus you have viral marketing.


If the idea of creating a blog scares you, this too has been made easier. Not only is there software out there making it easier and easier to blog but there are also people who you can hire to write blogs for you.



Comment on Existing Blogs



Once you write your blog, it does your blog well to have people comment on it. This has to do with the way search engines work as well as plain ole viral marketing. To bring in more people to read your blog and comment, become a frequent visitor to sites that are related to your professional expertise and you may find yourself becoming the go-to person for those in need of that expertise.



Facebook and Other Social media


It is quite possible you have heard or even used Facebook by now. And if you haven't used Twitter, certainly you have heard the term. These along with MySpace, and LinkedIn are common forms of social media. Sites like Facebook and MySpace have a broad focus while LinkedIn is more business focused. Sites like Facebook, provide the opportunity to add a customized page you can use to promote a business.


Relationship based marketing takes time and patience but is possibly one of the most viable and reliable forms of getting your name and company out to the public with the greatest long term value.

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.

There are millions of blogs online these days and with those blogs are people finding ways to improve their website’s search engine rankings. Yes, blogs have more than one purpose.

Sure they are informative and have lots of fresh content, but they also link back to corporate or business websites, which in turn helps those websites move up the search engine rankings scale.

So why are blogs so successful in increasing your website’s rankings? To start, blogs have no specific special powers of high rankings on their very own. What they do have potentially is fresh, unique content. Most search engines tend to like this, regardless of the format. If the search engines know any given site is adding new articles on a frequent basis, they will come around often to index it and indexing in turn means better ratings.

This leads us to making sure your site’s content is fresh and how to draw people to that content. Good content is probably the best thing you can do to draw attention to your blog and maintain a following. To do this, try covering topics that nobody else is talking about. By writing about niche subjects, you can grab traffic that is looking for what you have to say. Second, spend the time and effort to research and write about your subject, don’t just repeat what everybody else is talking about.

Another strategy in creating a successful blog includes the writing of quality title tags with two audiences in mind. First and foremost, you're writing a title tag for the people who will visit your site or have a subscription to your feed. You also want to think about search engines when you title your posts, since the engines can help to drive traffic to your blog. Once you have finished your title tags, now you will want to make sure all of your entries are tagged. Technorati is the first place that you should be tagging posts. Tagging content can also be valuable to help give you a "bump" towards getting traffic from big sites like Reddit, Digg & StumbleUpon.

Tagging posts is one method if getting your content out in front of your potential audience, another way is through Twitter. Although Twitter is a social media tool meant to create community and relationships, it does have an SEO value. For example, Twitter can affect positively your Alexa rankings by sending visitors to your pages. Usage data is a sign of quality for Google and all the other search engines. If you can make people come to your site via Twitter, then this is an SEO advantage you cannot afford to miss. When using Twitter, don’t worry about shortening your URL’s, the link will still have value. These TinyURLs are dynamically created URLs that redirect users to the real URL via 301 (permanent redirect). Search engines do not index TinyURLs, but index and pass PageRank to the actual URLs instead.

While we are talking about the backend, make sure you are pinging your articles each time you write them. An easy way for search engines to quickly find your new content is through the process of pinging. Using a tool like Pingomatic is very helpful in this process. Pinging seems to help get blog posts spidered and indexed very quickly.

Last, add social book marking links to the end of each blog entry. This helps your reader pick your article and add it to their favorite book marking software and simultaneously promotes your site. Having your blog’s articles submitted to book marking sites such as Delicious helps you also build links back to your blog. Backlinks are important because each time someone links to your site it counts sort of as a “vote” for it, moving it higher up in the search engine results pages.

These are just a few ways your blog can grow and along with it your website’s rankings. With a little time and some patience, before long your site will surely make its way to the top.

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.

Sometimes it is the little things that make the biggest impression. This could be said for page titles.
A page title is the code behind your individual website’s pages that helps search engines identify it.

Do individual’s see page titles or just programmers? The answer is both. If you type in a website’s address such as www.arteworks.com you will notice in the tab is an identifier, this particular website’s reads “Search Engine Optimization Company SEO Companies | ArteWorks SEO Austin”. This is helpful for people who open many tabs or bookmark.

On the backend of your website, within the code, your title tag will be enclosed with brackets and labeled title.

Because page titles are seen by both your audience and search engines, lets look at the benefits of both.

Audience

1. One of the best ways to attract repeat visits is to have someone bookmark your web page and because page titles are the default label for your browser bookmarks, it makes it easier for your reader to find you again. If your page title is not descriptive or missing, most people will not remember why they bookmarked your site in the first place.
2. Page titles are stored in browser history lists. Similar to bookmarks, browsers by default use page titles to label pages in the browser’s history. If your audience wanted to find your page again in their History, they would not find it easily if your page has a non-descriptive title.
3. Page titles show up in some search engines as descriptors of your website. If you want someone to click on your website among the millions of other choices they have then you must write a very informative and concise title. Many people start with the name of their business followed by a descriptor, others start with keywords followed by a call to action. People should know instantly what they will be clicking to the moment they choose your site, therefore don’t stuff your title with keywords and unnecessary information. Be honest with your reader while seducing them into your site.

Search Engines

1. Naturally, search engines rank pages with relevant titles higher than web pages without relevant titles. The basic idea is that you are helping the search engine understand your web page through the page title.
2. Unique titles to match each of your website’s pages helps search engines clarify who and what you are. To understand this, let’s look at how the search engine works. Spiders crawl the web and grab as much content (including links) from every web site they can find. This process is infinite and the spider just keeps sending content back to the search engine servers for processing. The algorithm then sorts through all the content that is sent by the spider and has to determine what is on each page, what the content is about, and how relevant that page is to each search that is conducted at the search engine. The task is then to make this process as simple as possible, by helping the algorithm see the differences between each page. When the spider reads your descriptions and titles and finds that they’re the same, it is too difficult for it differentiate amongst your pages, and is less likely to return that page in the search results. So you need to be able to show the spiders that each page is unique, not only with unique content, but by also adding unique page descriptions and titles.
3. RSS generators and content management systems use page titles to create headlines; again this is important for search engines to recognize.
4. Almost half of all the badly ranking sites found in many of the major search engines do not specifically identify the homepage in the page title. Most websites simply included the company name in the title, making it impossible for a user to know exactly what particular webpage a bookmark or search result relates to.

Writing a quality title page for each individual page on your website may seem like a lot of work but when you evaluate the pros and cons, you will discover it is certainly worth the time.

About the Author: 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.

This blog is a rant. I am not ashamed, even though I have never posted a ranting post before. A discussion entered Sphinn today based on an article about Google’s CEO Backing Obama, and it seems to have gotten some people really upset. Well, let me put in my two cents without taking up a full page of comment space.

The problem with our human interaction with media (including search media) boils down to something I studied back in film school. Have you ever heard of the “hypodermic needle theory” in regards to media? Well, it basically says that what we watch is what be believe. So if I see something that tells me that Dove soap is better than Ivory, I am likely to believe it, even if there is no logical persuasion (now all of you will go purchase Dove soap). As a young idealistic lad at the University of Texas, I thought, NO WAY. No way does that make any sense. People believe what they choose to believe, and these advertisements, politically charged TV shows, or morally biased films only add to the collective resources we have to make opinions. As you can imagine, I did not believe that way for long.

People are like sheep. By and large, we go where we are told. This can be a very scary thing to consider when people have the power to elect presidents, engage in mass riots, and wipe out other races. The hypodermic needle theory certainly has some weight.

Now, back to this article about a political bias in Google. The only thing that scares me more than the bias of one of the world’s most powerful media resources is not knowing what that bias is. Though it was probably not in his public best interest, it is good for us to know that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, has a democratic (or Obama) bias. A few comments in the discussion supported this idea, saying that Eric Schmidt is going to have a bias either way and he will most likely have some influence with that bias. The only difference with him doing it publicaly is that now we know about it and can adjust our interpretations of his company’s actions accordingly.

And this is great!

When the public hears things like this, the hypodermic needle theory becomes less effective. The more a reader or searcher knows about the company giving the information, the more they will put it under scrutiny and attempt to gather their own opinions. We should not be afraid of knowing the truth! I hope millions of people learn of Google's political affiliations and catch wind of other biases found in major corporations or other powerful entities so that we can begin to live as more analytical creatures than our less fortunate woolen friends.


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 marketing is largely focused on social media optimization and multi-media facets of exposure. To learn more about search engine optimization, visit www.arteworks.biz.

Did everyone see that update on your Facebook “Home” the other day? 100 million active users on Facebook, and no, this is not an Austin Powers reference. This social networking platform has consumed a population that is one-third the size of the United States. The more amazing part of this new fact is the “active users” part. This number does not include those fly by night posers that just sign up for an account and never return to that beautiful blue bar again. Now, what if we took a little liberty and substituted the word “users” with the word “viewers.” Suddenly we all see the dollar signs.



Think about the demographic that Facebook has captured. Traditional advertising has been fighting for this culture group for years. Want middle to upper class, 18-24 year olds? They’re on Facebook, and it makes sense when in fact the Facebook creator and world’s youngest billionaire, Mark Zuckerberg, is only 24 years old. You might say that he speaks their language.

So what does this have to do with us, Internet marketers? This is obviously a major platform for exposure to one of the most impressionable and profitable demographics online. Time magazine even discovered that Facebook is more popular than porn with college students. How is that even possible?

So how do you get the stage for this audience?

Facebook advertisment is certainly one way to approach it. These have proven to be some of the most successful ad campaigns in the history of social networking (which I suppose is not that long). Every user has a “Home” page that gives them news and updates about their various friends, updates on Facebook changes, as well as short little ads. The most successful of these ads are the ones that make announcements about new products or offer some kind of update for users. You will also find image and text ads on the right side of profile pages, specifically targeted for certain demographics. In fact, in the Facebook ad creation form, you can actually designate the age group you would like to reach, where they are from, and specific keywords that might be found in their profiles. This is truly amazing ad control.

Also, most online marketers have long realized the importance of viral participation in major social networking communities. This is an excellent way to get your brand in front of target markets without beating them over the head with advertisement language. Company Facebook profiles and groups can accumulate quite a following, especially if there is useful or interesting information being posted, videos being uploaded, or other incentives for users. Most Internet marketers have barely tapped the surface of creating a Facebook presence but have already realized results. Facebook can produce citations/references, brand awareness, community interaction, and yes, even links.

If your company is not involved on Facebook, I hope these numbers give you a kick in the pants to get started. Take it step by step. There is no need to be afraid. Start by signing up and creating a profile, NOW!


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 marketing is largely focused on the social media optimization and multi-media facets of exposure. To learn more about search engine optimization, 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.

Yet another conflict arose at this year’s SMX Advanced here in Seattle, WA. Just a short jaunt from my home in Seattle, I was pleased to have a bit of controversy in my own backyard. Jay Young, of Link Fish Media stepped up to the “Blow Your Mind Link Building Techniques” session, intending to do just that. Among other “brass balls” techniques, Jay is a hearty advocate of Paid Links, suggesting that it is a perfectly legitimate marketing method and that SEO’s and small businesses should not be afraid of Google’s iron fist.

The Google Fist himself, Matt Cutts, later took the stage in a session called “You and a Session with Matt Cutts,” in which he proceeded to morally challenge the likes of Jay Young by questioning who wants to be in an industry like that. Unfortunately for Matt, it seems we are already very much in an industry like that, and I don’t know about you, but my arm was never twisted. To me it is almost like asking who would want to live in a world where money equaled power or sex sells products. The fact of the matter is that money does produce success, especially in marketing. Saying it is not fair for a company to purchase links for the sake of their online visibility is like saying it isn’t fair that one restaurant has a great location and atmosphere and therefore gets all of the traffic, while the taco shack on the corner has much better food (not a perfect analogy I know, but you get the point). In a perfect world the Internet, and all search engines associated with it, would remain unbiased and reflect only the best, most relevant content. But even then we have a problem. The “best” is always subjective, and the “most relevant” content is certainly an opinion. Historically, we have always been told what is best by the government or the church, but mainly by big business. Themz the cold hard facts of life, and it will be no different for the Internet, unfortunately.

So while it may seem unjust or shallow, you must ask yourself the question, “do I want to play the game?” Perhaps this whole world of business is just too cutthroat, too self seeking, and too unfair. If that is the case, any type of marketing or profit seeking venture is probably not the best place for you. May I remind everyone that all of the major engines make a great deal of their profits directly from link sales. Anyone paying for Adword links? How are search engines exempt? Besides, buying and selling links can also produce a healthy dose of commerce and help people find already trusted companies who have achieved great financial success. In a funny way, bought links can actually produce better content for the web. Just as paid advertisement has allowed for the creation of some of the world’s greatest news stations, films, and television shows, so can link selling provide a great incentive for producing excellent web content.

Officially, ArteWorks SEO does not participate in link buying or selling, but I am not going to judge another for participating in what seems to me to be a perfectly natural way of doing business. Though I love the idea of a pure search engine that only brings me the best content and a world where all people help others before themselves, I am faced with the reality that not everyone is going to promote my business for me or give me the shirt off their back. I have to agree with Jay that this is marketing, not morality. The day I see Yahoo pages ranking in the top results on Google, and visa versa, perhaps I will give this some more thought. For now, I will call it a difference in ethical opinion in which both sides have their flaws.

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 and multi-media facets of exposure. To learn more about this search engine optimization company, 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 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.