Facebook is one of the best social networking platforms for small businesses to promote their business. However, businesses should not rule out Twitter as an important brand-building platform.

Twitter is big bigger than big. Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Twitter to send messages and ask questions.

In fact, more than 300,000 new users sign up for Twitter every day and, more importantly, Google, Yahoo and Bing use Twitter feeds in their ranking process.

Often, a Tweet will show up in the major search engines, which is why small business owners need to pay close attention to Twitter.

Here are a few ways that business owners can get the most out of Twitter:

' Profile: You need to write a top-notch description of your product or service, consistent with your existing website and concentrating on your popular keywords. Of course, you should also be sure to add your website address and location.

' Design: Be consistent and use a design or logo similar to what you use on your website and other social networking sites.

' Consistency: Because this is your company's Twitter account, not your personal account, refrain from Tweeting about your personal life. Instead, limit your Tweets to content that is relevant to your industry.

Twitter is a great tool for brand building and, now that major search engines pay close attention to Tweets, it serves as a great way to build authority.

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Changes to Google's search engine ranking algorithm have improved search results, while having a negative effect on businesses that had been fooling the system and re-using content from other websites. The recent update was aimed at content farms that produce low-quality information or republish content for the purpose of generating revenue in the form of advertising. Unfortunately, it is having a negative effect on legitimate ecommerce websites as well.

This update makes it clear that Google is emphasizing unique and high-quality results but, for online merchants, there are serious potential impacts.

First of all, ecommerce websites need to get out of the habit of copying and republishing manufacturer's descriptions. When a description appears verbatim on nearly 200 ecommerce websites, Google is going to favor the original.

This means that merchants will need to produce more unique, product-related content in order to boost traffic and avoid being penalized by Google. A good ecommerce website would have been doing this all along, but Google's update makes it a necessity.

If ecommerce websites want to attract customers, they must provide interesting and informative content. They should also avoid any form of search engine optimization that does not focus on well-organized, quality content.

This means that ecommerce websites need to use good HTML structure, with a CSS layout versus tables, proper title and header tags, and make a page more human-friendly, instead of spider friendly.

There is no doubt that this algorithm change produces better search results. At the same time, however, it requires online merchants to provide useful and unique content, while deemphasizing any SEO tactics aimed at tricking the search engines.

Copyright 2011 dzine it, inc. Web Design New York All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.