Announced today on CNBC, Facebook will likely have their much anticipated IPO during the first quarter of 2012. Although a price per share has not been discussed (as that is over a year away) the company is projected to be valued at over $100 billion.

Announced today, Google will be adding “Google Webmaster Tools” data directly to their Analytics platform. This is a big deal for SEO companies as a new section titled “Traffic Sources” and “Search Engine Optimization” with sub-sections displaying data of summary, queries, and landing pages.

Announced today, eBay, Inc. will acquire Magento, a popular (and highly reputable) ecommerce platform. Magento was founded several years ago and has grown from a basic open source platform to an industry leader. eBay is planning to use Magento to create a new open commerce platform, called “X.Commerce”.

Social media creates a second identity for the user; an online identity. Two part, social media is all about leveraging your online presence whether you’re a business or individual user, however, with that, comes an extreme amount of reputation management that can be easily damaged. The importance, therefore, to properly influence your online visibility must be done with careful attention.

Yesterday, Google rolled out their version of a mobile payment platform called “Google Wallet”. Their plan is to enter the multi-billion dollar mobile payments industry, which PayPal originally started many years ago. Amongst this news, PayPal promptly filed a 28-page lawsuit in the state of California against Google for allegedly stealing their mobile payments secrets.

WebiMax, the #1 rated SEO company in the United States, is pleased to announce that their SEO services have been rated #1 in Australia, where the company recently expanded operations.

Social Media firm LinkedIn plans their initial public offering (IPO) of common stock on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker: LNKD at tomorrow’s opening bell. The company will release tonight (Wednesday) in the after-market trading the official share price. Experts expect the price to be between $42-$45 per share. This concerns some investors, however, as the company has a slowing revenue growth and has not released projected profits for 2011. At the offering, however, the company will be valued at $4.11 billion.

Announced yesterday, Microsoft’s search engine bing will now favor websites that have been “liked” on Facebook by your friends. This obviously changes the rules of search engine optimization (SEO) in that it doesn’t seem to matter the PageRank of the website, if users are logged in to Facebook (as indicated in the top banner) then PageRank is favorably given to websites that your friends have “liked” or recommend. It does not matter if the website contains original, quality content, or even if it normally ranks far off in space of search results, as long as it is “liked” then it’s going to show up high.

The Quarterly Benchmarking Report was released today by Marin Software indicating that advertisers are continuing to shift their advertising dollars from traditional advertising methods to online advertising. The report clearly states that paid search has increased some 61% from last year. This rise in demand however has not driven up the cost per click (CPC).

WebiMax offers many products and services. One of our more requested areas of service stems from our SEO consulting services division. Here, we focus on clients that have internal teams and require additional consultation to efficiently leverage the effectiveness of their current staff. Below are some of the examples in the consulting services we offer:

Today, at the Google I/O Developer conference in San Francisco, CA, Google plans to announce an online music locker service that will allow users to digitally purchase, store, and access their online media wherever they are. The idea of a “cloud” based music service was first announced earlier this year by Amazon.com, and Apple Inc. has been in the talks of launching a similar music service.

In a report released today, Apple has surpassed Google as the world’s most valuable brand. Apple is reportedly now worth $153 billion, de-thronging Google who held the rank for 4 consecutive years. The report, released today by BrandZ, who conducts a study of the world’s top 100 brands each year, was released in London, U.K., where WebiMax recently opened an international office.

The newest addition to Google’s Analytics platform is the ability to track page load speed. This is HUGE! Improving site load speed is absolutely vital to websites (not to mention search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns).

Today, Google announced at the Social-Loco conference in San Francisco, that they will be updating their famous Places tool to include the interior photos of local businesses. This will be most useful in downtown local business districts where the cliental are regular visitors. It will be mostly advantageous for bars, restaurants, and coffee shops to be featured, to show off the interior set-up of their business.

Although somewhat comical that our blog post today is on the importance of writing them, we at WebiMax strive to provide additional resources and information that people can use and benefit from. Now, on to today’s topic, the Importance of Using Blogs:

Research conducted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) at the beginning of 2011 states that video ad spending will increase 22% in 2011. The report states that this is due to the fact that video advertising provides marketers with more reach, consumers are more engaged, and it is easier to track the overall return on investment.

Kenneth C. Wisnefski, Founder and CEO of WebiMax, the #1 rated search engine optimization (seo) firm in the United States by TopSeos.com, announced today that the company is receiving tremendous success with its use of video search engine optimization (VSEO), a product that was added to WebiMax’s portfolio in early 2009.

Looking for an innovative way of marketing your company or brand that sets you above the competition? Go Viral! Viral marketing breaks from the traditional methods of marketing and acts to create an interactive, fun experience for both the buyer and seller. Typical methods include blogs, eBooks, flash movies, YouTube movies, and more. Usually, these are integrated with a social media campaign.

WebiMax has been closely following the updates and results of Google's recent Panda International Update.

Today, Facebook deals went live in 5 U.S. cities including Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego and San Francisco. In November, Facebook announced “Facebook Deals”, and in March, the first release was sent out in Atlanta. Now, that original release is titled “Check-in Deals” (which has 15,000 likes) and the new deals site is live.

In February, we reported on Overstock.com who was caught by Google for using questionable search engine optimization (seo) tactics in improving their PageRank. In a report announced by the company today, Google officially lifted their ban on Overstock, a ban that had sent them to no man’s land on their search engine results.

Ken Wisnefski was covered in the Business Section of the Press of Atlantic City today.

Let’s say that your company thrives on seasonal revenue and you want to maximize sales this summer. If you’re a small business that has a specifically defined geographic market (i.e. golf course, marina, shore resort) then consider using a search engine optimization (seo) company for your most important sales months.

Today, Google released a new updated version of their Analytics platform. Google analytics lets users view real-time data related of their webpages. The new update lets users create multiple dashboards, set interaction goals, and compare statistics over a period of time. The update also includes a performance enhancement that speeds up data processing.