Making best use of social media websites can be beneficial to those small businesses looking to increase online revenue, it has been suggested.

Writing on Search Engine Land, Matt McGee claims that investing time and money into the right websites can help a wide variety of companies "come up with something that's unique and linkworthy".

He claimed that it was particularly "imperative" for small enterprises to look into social media in "order to decrease their reliance on traffic from one or two search engines".

Mr McGee advised that writing on blogs can help firms "open up a dialogue with your customers" and that leaving a company name and URL on comment to other blogs can help generate website traffic.

The use of social websites such as StumbleUpon and Reddit can also help firms generate traffic to their content if it is ranked positively by users.

He also recommended that companies investigate the likes of Yahoo! and Google groups to discover more about audiences with particular interests.

However, in an earlier Search Engine Land article, Neil Patel advised that by placing too many ranking buttons on blogs and social websites, companies can actually damage their internet marketing attempts.