Happy April Fool's Day, everyone. I hope you are all enjoying playing pranks as much as I am. I mean, I have already sent the Google Nose BETA to my entire family. And the great thing about the annual Google prank is it doesn't hurt anyone, but still offers a good chuckle.

You are your reputation.

The Facebook Cover Photo –prime real estate for you to visually represent what your company is all about.  Are you adhering to the latest guidelines?  Is your cover photo compelling enough to draw user engagement?

In the past couple of years, we've been seeing Google bring a level of social activity and awareness to Google that was missing in the past. They've developed meta data approaches that enable authors to connect their Google Account with web pages they write at and contribute to. They've also set up a way for businesses to connect their sites to Google profiles as publishers.

Last Friday, I attended the 2013 Paradigm Award ceremony at the Hyatt at the Bellevue’s Grand Ballroom in Philadelphia, PA and I was fortunate enough to witness this year’s honoree, Denise Morrison of Campbell’s Soup Company, accept the prestigious award.  Presented by the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, the yearly luncheon was organized to celebrate and recognize prominent professional women in the area and their contributions to local businesses.

WebiMax is dedicated to bettering the online presence of our clients with best practice onsite and offsite marketing. However, our marketing efforts are only as valuable as the data and tracking information we use to mark the progress of our campaigns. Most online companies do use a form of data tracking; in fact, more than 17 million websites have Google Analytic accounts. But my questions are:

Choosing keywords for your business's website can be tricky. But it's something you have to do if you want people to find your business on the Web. I always like to take some time to learn about the site and understand what it will take for someone to get there. It’s good to put yourself in the searchers shoes and think about all the different words they may type into a search engine in order to get to where they want to be on the Web. In this week’s blog post I would like to briefly discuss some of the different aspects surrounding keyword research.

Think of the world of content marketing like an aisle in a grocery store. Google is in charge of stocking the shelves, and they place the best products right where the shopper can see them. In the world of supermarkets, companies pay for that prime space. In the world of organic SEO, Google chooses the products that offer their "shoppers" the best value.

To the technical uninitiated, it can be hard to tell whether or not a site needs SEO work or not. What follows is a general SEO litmus test you can perform on your site, using only a browser. No fancy tools, litmusitmus paper, or black magic required.

On February 19th, WebiMax's Danelsy Medrano will be presenting the "Internet Marketing 101" Webinar from the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce in Philadelphia, PA.

The paid search offering has many people torn over whether paid clicks are as valuable as free traffic. As the Paid Search department head at WebiMax, I see every day that when used properly, as with all marketing mediums, it is a great tool and can have a drastic impact for a business. From a common perspective, one can easily say that “I just glance over the ads,” but if you saw a text or display ad published that had an offer that you just couldn't refuse (sorry for being cliché) or an ad that reminded you of something that you were looking into last week and were just pulled away from researching the first time, tell me that you would not be engaged at all.

Linkbuilding isn't dead, and it likely won't be any time soon, but it has changed over the past few years, and the search engines are looking at other signals as well, such as social sharing...

2012 was a big year for SEO and arguably the biggest shakeup was the Google Penguin update. As you probably know, Penguin targeted web spam tactics like link schemes, exact match anchor text, blog networks and so forth. Link building tactics that had, for better or worse, been working fairly well for a lot of site owners are now penalizing those same sites and many site owners that were hit by a penalty are still struggling to recover. As a strictly white hat SEO professional whenever a Google update comes around I don’t panic and worry what is going to happen to my site’s search presence because I know that I’m not doing anything that might ever make my site (or the sites of my clients) show up on Google’s radar. Instead of looking for loopholes within the algorithm to exploit I’ve always focused on building high-quality links from a variety of sources that will serve as gateways to my site and help drive targeted traffic over time.

From celebrities to grandmas, everyone is using Twitter to share content and links. As one of the most popular social networking sites in the world, Twitter boasts a huge following. By increasing social influence on Twitter, businesses and individuals can reach a huge amount of people with little effort. Here are five ways anyone can gain Twitter followers fast!

A study published by the ad agency Chitika earlier in October of 2012 had found that over 24% of all Google search queries carried out have local intent. Yahoo and Bing users were slightly higher bringing the average of the 3 major search engines to just over 26%. With 1/4^th of all searches on the “Big 3” having local intent, the internet is a marketing space local businesses should learn to leverage. If done correctly, a Google Plus Business Page can yield increased local visibility in your targeted areas.

Internet browsers, like the rest of the technology world, are on a relentless march forward. An industry that was once dominated by Microsoft's Internet Explorer, is now one of the most competitive and fastest growing markets. Major competitors have emerged and offer consumers more choices than ever. Mozilla's FireFox, Google Chrome, and Apple Safari are all major challengers to the old giant's reign.

From the dawn of e-commerce, self-proclaimed Internet gurus have preached that bringing more visitors to your website will increase your sales (conversions).   So, the question is, do more visitors equal more conversions?  Yes, but there is a caveat.  You have less control over the amount of visitors that come to your website, and you need to substantially raise the amount of quality visitors to your site to see the benefits.

As part of our continued international expansion, WebiMax is pleased to announce it's official entry into the Chinese market and its strategic alliance with Oceania Media as an authorized reseller. Our WebiMax China office has been in strategic development and testing for quite some time and with the successes we have seen it was a natural decision to amplify our presence within region. A WebiMax China web site is to be launched within the next month to support Chinese businesses targeting English speaking prospects and customers.

People say you should learn from your mistakes.  Not me.  I prefer to learn from other people's mistakes.  It can save you a lot of headaches and sometimes a little embarrassment.

The Webimax blog went through a redesign recently, and one of the sections that we were happy to add was an ask the experts section, where people can submit questions about online marketing, and get an answer from one of the many professionals at Webimax.

Ken appeared on Bloomberg TV on January 15th to discuss Facebook's new search functionality with Mark Crumpton.

My parents always told me not to care about what other people think of me. But, let's be honest--we all care a little bit.

Not everyone is a creative genius—or at least, I’m not. Creating unique and compelling content over and over can be stressful, not to mention almost unsustainable. The more specific a niche, the harder it can be to create something you can truly be proud of. As the Department Head of Inbound Marketing, I am in charge of all guest posts for our clients. Below are a number of tools and websites I like to use when my creativity hits the proverbial wall.

It’s vital to have a definitive, long-term marketing goal in place for your business in order to truly achieve a greater presence and earn more business within the vertical or verticals it serves.  While virtually every brand can benefit from a solid digital strategy, it is important to remember the various components that are integral in creating your own “game plan”.

As we welcome 2013, many are not just making resolutions to lose excess weight; they are also contemplating how to reduce excess spending.  As a business owner, cutting costs without cutting the 'necessities' while still leaving room in the budget for ways to increase revenue can be a real challenge.  Subsequently, it is no surprise that over 90% of businesses utilize some type of Internet presence, either through localized optimization or social media; to gain leads, increase their customer base or simply just get their name out there.

I love Andy Cohen.

I speak with many business owners regarding their web sites, business objectives and challenges and routinely provide them solutions along the line of what an agency can do for them (or even what they can do for themselves).  These discussions are well received and provide a road map for work to be done.  A common theme I hear is that business owners know what needs to be done and have been told some of the strategies before but the drop off then happens after the consult.  So, is it a consultants responsibility to provide insights that both can and cannot be implemented?

Ken recently wrote an article for YFS Magazine discussing the core strategies of marketing and how to effectively create, monitor and adapt your marketing plan for a constantly changing environment.