Since the inception of the internet, collaboration and communication have been the primary focus of all traffic.
It is no wonder, then, that social networking sites, designed specifically to optimize communication between groups large and small, have grown at exponential rates.
For the vast majority of users - and the user base is indeed vast - social networking sites are merely a larger scale version of SMS/MMS.
However, for the opportunistic businessman, these sites are an endless sea of potential clientele.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the practice of tailoring web content to specifically target a certain keyword or keywords in organic search engines (such as Google).
SEO is important for any business website because high search engine rankings will drive more traffic to your site.
Any accomplished web marketer knows that more traffic will invariably convert to more sales.
However, there is more to SEO than just targeting predetermined keywords in your titles, URLs, and META tags.
Another important aspect of SEO is marketing.
With so many people today crawling around on every social networking site, never before has a more ideal marketing stage been set - and for free.
The major players in social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, have tens of millions of people subscribing to their services, and billions of unique visitors each day.
These sites are gradually becoming the majority of all web traffic, and marketing your site on these venues could easily lead to hundreds of thousands of exposures per day.
Creating Twitter and Facebook accounts can be done quickly and easily, and can lead to some immediate direct traffic.
Choosing an account name based on your business subject and following people in related fields will lead to more and more followers for you each day.
The more your network of friends expands, the more exposure your business will have.
Another major advantage of social networking sites for businesses is to utilize them to create back links to your website.
A back link is simply a link that points from one website back to yours.
These are exceptionally important for businesses, because Google and Yahoo search engines take the number of back links into consideration when ranking your website.
The more back links your site has, the more important the search engines will see it and the higher they will rank it.
Most popular social networking sites allow for personal links to be placed in your profiles or on other areas of the site.
This is where you will receive back links from.
Shooting your website URL out on Twitter is also a good idea, as it may be re-published by followers, resulting in even more exposure.
Another great option for back links are the sites Digg and Reddit.
These sites allow posters to share websites they find interesting or useful, and then they propagate them around to a large network of publishing points.
If others agree with your post, it will be promoted and receive extra exposure.
A lot of professionals tend to shy away from site such as these.
They often come across as juvenile, recreational, and unproductive, but a keen marketer will quickly realize they are truly none of the above.
Perhaps much of the content found on such sites is, but so is the majority of what can be seen on Television - the largest marketing platform in the world.