Over the last few months, an interesting trend has occurred on the world’s largest video sharing network and Google subsidiary, YouTube.  While the primary ranking factor for YouTube search results used to be video view count, audience retention is now the most important component in determining a video’s position in the YouTube SERPs.

Let's be honest, the SEO industry has been marred by scams in the past. Less than reputable companies would often promise things that there was no way of honoring and use unfair measures to attempt to keep their word in order to syphon more money. These promises included getting a company on the first page of Google rankings for a keyword within a short amount of time, saying they'll submit a website to thousands of search engines and, most comically, they have cracked the Goggle algorithm. All of these are not true, involve deceitfulness or require broad interpretation of the promise in order to live up to it. These are just some of the many ways SEO has been linked with scams.

MOUNT LAUREL, N.J., Dec. 5, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — via PRWEB – Kenneth C. Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax, a leading online marketing firm, is pleased to announce the unveiling of a new website redesign for the company. The new WebiMax.com was launched Monday and includes several integrated features including the company’s proprietary website analyzer.

The folks at Nielsen are pretty good at media market research and providing extensive (and more importantly accurate) data within various verticals including entertainment, advertising and recently, a growing industry which combines both:  Social Media.

Google’s ostensible goal is to create the best corollary to how users browse the web. Without impediment, this would allow Google to eventually provide near-perfect information to the user. Whether by commission or naiveté, the SERPs are not free of the static noise that is SPAM. As such, any methods Google perceives as disruptive to this goal will eventually be devalued or penalized, in an effort to clean up the results.

On December 2nd, 2012, WebiMax Founder & CEO Kenneth Wisnefski was featured in AP.org’s “The Big Story” discussing the hot topic of healthcare and how small businesses are handling healthcare reform in the U.S.

One of the most common SEO mistakes I encounter every day is the mishandling of 404 errors. URLs that return a 404 HTTP response code are a normal part of the web; just about every site has them. 404 errors can be served for a couple of reasons. Maybe you are trying to access a page that has been moved or no longer exists on the sites server, or maybe you misspelled the URL for that particular page. Although 404 errors do not have a direct correlation to your sites rankings, it is believed that too many of these errors can act as a signal to search engines that maybe your sites content isn't the best or most up to date for the query. The most important part is understanding how to approach them correctly in order to preserve user experience and link juice. This can be accomplished by creating a customized 404 page and installing 301 redirects when appropriate.

Kenneth Wisnefski recently appeared on HuffPost Live with Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss and Hukkster Founders Erica Bell & Katie Finnegan, discussing the new startup funded by Winklevoss Capital.

WebiMax Founder & CEO Kenneth Wisnefski will be appearing on HuffPost Live momentarily with Winklevoss Capital founders Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss, HuffPost Tech Editor Bianca Bosker and Hukkster Founders Erica Bell & Katie Finnegan.

Kenneth Wisnefski was featured by The Washington Times recently, in an article in which he discussed the popularity of mobile shopping apps and their prevalence and usefulness to shoppers on Black Friday.

With the 2012 Holiday shopping season officially beginning on Black Friday, consumers have begun to seek out product reviews and price comparisons in order to find the best deals for this year’s “must have” items and according to recent market research conducted by Adobe, search engines and social media will be the most effective tools for shoppers this season.

In early 2012, the Wall Street Journal reported that Google was exploiting little-known functionality within Apple’s Safari browser which allowed the search engine to install cookies even with Safari’s privacy settings set to disallow them.  Google was quick to respond to the accusations with a company spokesman issuing the following statement to WSJ in response to their article:

Since Apple first announced plans to develop its own proprietary mapping application earlier this year, Google Maps supporters were skeptical of Apple’s ability to design a more accurate and effective global mapping solution.  Following the release of the iOS 6 mobile operating system in September, many Apple users expressed frustration with the new Maps application.  Within a matter of days, the backlash was evident in the press, as well.  Numerous technology review sites, blogs and even tech and business news outlets were discussing Apple Maps and its lackluster user experience.

Throughout this year’s Presidential campaign, Twitter played an instrumental role.  Both candidates expertly utilized the network and kept voters engaged by addressing major issues and promoting their public appearances.  As our own social media expert, Mike Stricker pointed out in a comment on one of my previous posts; Barack Obama was even responsible for generating the most re-tweets in history for a political message on Twitter.

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and I can taste it already.  Can you?

At first glance, DuckDuckGo appears to be one of the most unlikely contenders to ascend to Google’s position as the world’s top search engine, but in reality, it may actually stand a pretty good chance in due time.  The small, privately-held company based outside of Philadelphia in Paoli, PA has grown rapidly and garnered substantial attention from the public and press without a multi-billion dollar ad campaign, but instead by simply offering an interesting alternative to the competition.

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!