Last night, I had the opportunity to speak at the fourth Agile SEO – South Jersey Meetup of 2012 at the WebiMax HQ in Mt. Laurel, NJ and thanks to the great audience and my fellow presenters, Ryan Buddenhagen, Chris Countey and Bill Slawski (who offered a thorough SEO audit to one of our attendees), it’s safe to say that this was one of our best meetups yet!

There was an excellent piece in the Atlantic last month about the power of “dark social.” Dark social is, essentially, the links to your site that you can’t account for. That is, you don’t know where your visitors are coming from. When looking at your analytics, you have to keep in mind just how limited you are. In many instances, a majority of your sites views won’t come from a specific referrer. There is no referrer data if someone comes from a dark social source, such as instant messenger or email.

Of all the popular social media companies out there, Facebook always feels like the most troubled. It also has more users than any of its competitors, so criticism is easy to come by. Ever since it's lackluster IPO, the company has been scrambling to come up with a way to reassure investors that they are worth the billions they were valued at. Responding to market pressures, Facebook has aggressively pushed the message that they are focusing their energy on becoming a mobile service first and foremost. As more and more users access the internet primarily through their phones, Facebook is rushing to change the way they operate in order to meet the needs of changing demographics.

New York and New Jersey are still recovering from the devastation brought by Hurricane Sandy. When it's all said and done, weeks and months will pass and the monetary cost will be astronomical, which is to say nothing of the lives lost.

Tonight at 7pm EST, WebiMax presents the fourth Agile SEO - South Jersey Meetup of 2012 and we have a lot in store for our attendees!

In recent years, mobile Internet usage has increased dramatically and smartphones, tablets and other mobile computing devices are now the primary point of connectivity for a rapidly growing mobile demographic.  For Internet marketers, reaching this massive user base is essential in creating more effective campaigns.

Every SEO wants the "perfect" link profile, amongst other things.  Many digital marketers hope to one day achieve a solid link profile consisting entirely of high-quality, high-authority pages from well ranked, reputable domains.  However, a majority of websites, at one point or another, have received a less-than-desirable link or two.  Despite the occasional (and virtually inevitable) flaw in an otherwise pristine link profile, there is one important fact that all SEOs must remember: A few bad links don't necessarily equate to bad rankings.

Earlier today, I read an article posted on Reuters.com discussing the impact of Twitter on this year’s historic Presidential election.  One quote within the article that particularly stood out was:

The results are in and Barack Obama will remain in the White House until 2016, but after participating in the most costly campaign to date, what really gave the President the advantage in the polls?

Ken Wisnefski discusses Obama's last-minute Twitter interactions during Election Day 2012 and how social media impacted his campaign.

Although this year’s election has been the most expensive in US history to date (with a total price tag of over $2 billion), the most significant platform utilized by both Romney and Obama to enhance their visibility throughout the campaign may, surprisingly, be the most cost effective, as well.  Social media first proved its worth in the political arena during President Obama’s groundbreaking 2008 campaign.  The usage of YouTube and Facebook to connect with a vast, diverse audience had undeniably helped Obama pull ahead in the polls and capture coveted demographics in crucial swing states such as Ohio.

As expected, social media is on fire this morning and will continue throughout the day as both President Obama and Governor Romney secure their votes from the American people.  Both candidates have a strong social media presence but it appears the incumbent has a slightly larger lead on Twitter, evidenced by the amount of activity and trending topics that involve Obama and not Romney.

SEO is almost constantly evolving, growing and becoming more complex, but regardless of how search engine optimization techniques change; content will always be an important component of online marketing initiatives.

”There is a spike because this happens once every 4 years,” said Wisnefski. “Social Media continues to be a trending phenomenon therefore constantly requiring expert insight and commentary. Election night I expect to be higher because it is completely an analysis and game of prediction and estimation.”  See the full story on Politico.

“Obama placed major emphasis on leveraging the Internet to engage with voters while John McCain virtually ignored leveraging social media and engaging with voters online,” wrote Kenneth Wisnefski, founder of the Internet marketing company WebiMax, in a statement. “Social media has only dramatically risen in prominence since then.”  Read more on I.B. Times.

The outcome of the Presidential Election is still unknown, but experts say that social media is clearly a winner.  Read Ken Wisnefski’s analysis on social media and its impact on the 2012 election.  Read more.

Apple has released their smaller tablet version of the iPad, the mini.  The mini is available today for sale however does the price defeat the purpose?  The mobile and tablet market is thriving and virtually exploding!   In fact, tablets are set to surpass notebook growth in 2016.  Research conducted by Display Search indicates that tablets are expected to be the driving mechanism for the mobile market over the next 4 years.  With this extreme growth and demand for mobile and tablet devices, Apple decided to launch the iPad mini to compete with lesser expensive and smaller sized tablets.  However, many consumers feel the price they offered is a bit too aggressive for the mini tablet.

WebiMax headquarters is located in South Jersey. This is our first day back in the office following Hurricane Sandy. Luckily, we have power and we did not experience the same levels of damage that the NJ Shore, Newark, and parts of Delaware, New York, and New England endured. Our thoughts are with those who lost their homes or worse – their lives. Among all of the chaos and destruction are brave and generous people who are stepping up to help each other everywhere we look – from neighbors helping to clean each others' yards to people opening their homes and their hearts all over our Facebook news feeds.

Recently, Facebook achieved one of its most significant milestones since its launch in 2004 when the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social network reached one billion users on September 14^th.  For Facebook, attaining a user base that consists of 1/7 of the world's entire population is a major accomplishment.  However, many of the small businesses which utilize Facebook as an online marketing and advertising outlet are still skeptical of the network's ability to enhance their revenues despite having the most massive user base on the Web.

For the last twelve months, Google's relationship with online businesses has been rather complicated. Regular readers of the WebiMax blog are no doubt familiar with the effects that the company's various search algorithms (Google Penguin and Google Panda) have had on the SEO community and their clients. Although the company maintains that the development and implementation of these updates all serves to better the SERPs for the end user, countless businesses have been negatively impacted by the recent alterations made to the search engine. The result of this has been a lot of hurt feelings between online companies, marketing firms, and Google.

Defending your Good Name Is More than just a Smart Idea

Kenneth Wisnefski, chief executive officer of the WebiMax consulting outfit in Mount Laurel, notes that the news release, posted to Don-O's Facebook account, generated more than 19,000 likes, 7,400 comments, and 6,100 shares.  Read more on Philly.com.

Because we're huge fans of Raven Tools, we had no choice but to offer you these 2 memes for your pinning pleasure:

It looks like Google is in the middle of a layout change. The left side navigation menu is now above results and I'm seeing fewer knowledge graph results.