WebiMax Blog

Watch small business owners and experts, including Todd Bailey, VP of Digital Strategy and Marketing at WebiMax, discuss President Obama’s healthcare. Watch here.

Two days ago, Neil Young joined Twitter. Nearly 26,000 users are already following him, including me. So what did the massively influential singer-songwriter have to say as his first tweets?

It's a problem I've seen time and time again from business owners that are new to search engine optimization. After a few months of striking out on their own and using popular SEO methods to increase their visibility on Google SERPs, they end up giving up seemingly out of the blue. They've gone through their company site and improved the presence of keywords, updated meta tags, set up their social media listings, and even run a fairly robust PPC campaign. Yet, despite their best efforts, they still aren't seeing the conversions they want.

It's an error in judgment that is often made by many business owners over the course of their careers. All too often a person is quick to dismiss a lack of results from a new initiative as being representative of a no-win battle. Before new strategies can be proven one way or the other, these operations end up being dropped in favor of tried-and-true tactics that yield consistent but altogether few results. Although there is certainly something to be said for cutting losses before they go spiraling out of control, most people poorly assess the potential strength of their advertising and miss out on the rewards they could reap with the right approach.

How many of you have friends that don't use their real name on Facebook? Perhaps you do this yourself. If you're like most people, a decent portion of your friends list has people swapping out their last names for their middle names. This all seems harmless enough, right?

Recently, the National Football League has been at the center of a controversy surrounding its replacement referees and the ongoing labor dispute with its regular officials.  In my last article on PR News Online, I discussed the importance of utilizing public relations to address the issues at hand and keep the situation from becoming a significant problem for the NFL brand.  Additionally, I contributed a piece to The Washington Post in which I discussed the strengths of the league's fan base and how their loyalty has helped the organization remain successful.

Maps are not my friend. Or at least they haven't been in the past, whether lost on the side of a road with a big unfolded paper map that I can't find myself upon, or driving directions from Google or Yahoo or Mapquest that get me 99% of the way to my destination only to lose me in the last mile. Maps don't seem to be Apple's friend lately either, with a lot of negatives hurled their way in recent weeks over their new mapping program that launched with the new iPhone 5.

This summer, Google announced that they were coming out with a program called Google Now, which seems to be Google's answer to Siri. As a digital assistant, it anticipates your informational and situational needs almost before you do.

Over the years mobile communication has drastically changed. What started as a simple hand-held mobile phone that offered a limited amount of time to talk, but the ability to be used wherever, has significantly expanded in functionality and design. Today, with their small, compact size and various technologies and features, cell phones have not only captured the interest of people everywhere, but have become an integrated part of the lives of many.  From texting to sending emails, browsing the internet to playing games, people have become heavily dependent on cell phones.

Most marketers, I hope, are familiar with traditional push-pull strategies.  But, me being me, I don't like to assume things--we all know what happens when you do that.

SEO has come a long way since its murky early days of link farms and obvious keyword stuffing. Not only are these practices unsightly and suspicious looking to potential customers, but now they will also get you into heaps of trouble with Google. The Penguin update that's been causing site owners to nervously check their analytics has changed the way we view content. While keyword stuffing has been a bad idea for a long time, it's now a serious offense.

This weekend, I read a blog post by our own Todd Bailey in which he discusses Scott Van Nuzer's recent photo opportunity with President Obama at his pizzeria in Florida.  After reading Todd's blog (and subsequently, watching the the video which accompanied the post), I decided to research the topic a bit further and surprisingly found that according to Google's suggested search… Scott Van Nuzer doesn't exist.

The popularity of blogging continues to grow with countless new blogs created each year and massive spikes of traffic making its way to blogs. Businesses have also recognized the many benefits that a blog provides their business. A blog allows businesses to easily and quickly reach a large online audience. Blogs not only help generate traffic, but also give a business more online exposure and increase a business's credibility. Also, online audiences favor blog content because it delivers a more personal message to readers in which readers feel connected and valued.

WebiMax Founder & CEO, Ken Wisnefski's appearance on Fox News.

WebiMax Founder & CEO, Ken Wisnefski's appearance on Fox Business

WebiMax Founder & CEO, Ken Wisnefski's appearance on Fox Business.

WebiMax Founder & CEO, Ken Wisnefski's appearance on Fox Business.

WebiMax Founder & CEO, Ken Wisnefski tells us about some common website design mistakes.

WebiMax Founder & CEO, Ken Wisnefski's appearance on Fox News.

http://youtu.be/ms-eTS6mEok
WebiMax Founder & CEO, Ken Wisnefski discusses the role of social media in the violent flash mobs of Philly, and what precautions can and need to be taken to curb this behavior in the future.

WebiMax Founder & CEO, Ken Wisnefski's appearance on MyFoxPhilly.

Love in the late 90's was complicated.  So Carrie Bradshaw would make it seem.

On Sunday, a pizzeria owner from Fort Pierce, Florida named Scott Van Nuzer was responsible for one of the most notorious photo opportunities in Barack Obama's Presidency and the 2012 campaign thus far.  When Van Nuzer bearhugged Obama in front of several onlookers and photographers at his restaurant, Big Apple Pizza; he most likely expected to experience a rapid influx of positive mentions of his establishment online.  However, the social media backlash that the photo generated may have actually had negative impact on his business.

On Monday night, I had the chance to give a presentation for the Agile SEO Meetup at the Webimax headquarters in Mt. Laurel, New Jersey. There was a nice turnout, including many Maxers* who started their day early, and stayed late or returned for the presentation. It takes a team to make a meetup work, and I wanted to express my thanks to the Maxers who set up the presentation equipment and the live-streamed webinar, who set up tables and chairs and signs, who made sure we had something to drink, and who helped promote the event. I'm not going to mention names, because I'm sure I'd leave someone out, but you know who you are.

When you watch TV this week, you may see ads for a new show called Elementary, which is another take on the original Master of Deduction, Sherlock Holmes. In the past five years, Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved detective stories have been adapted several times in film and television, and their popularity made me wonder how Mr. Holmes would handle SEO. In particular, I wondered how he would see social signals in the overall scheme of things. While nobody knows for certain what Google's algorithm is, there are certainly some clues that might help us deduce social signals. Let's take a look at what we do know.

On behalf of WebiMax, thank you for joining the Agile SEO Meetup featuring SEO experts Bill Slawski and Chris Countey.