WebiMax Blog

I have written about cultural characteristics often on this blog to affirm their importance for proper international SEO and general internet marketing efforts that are catering to specialized or international markets. [One side note is that cultures are not restricted solely to countries, as groups within an overall culture can have their own specific cultures with accompanying tendencies]. Understanding how they impact your business is paramount and it requires doing the necessary research on the local contexts and establishing how best to accurately adapt web content and messaging to improve the customer connection, among other things. International SEO companies work to assist businesses with their strategy and actions in this regard and help them gain a greater foothold on various international markets.

Large companies often have the luxury of investing in their employees by offering to pay for graduate education programs. While that is not always an option for small business owners on tight budgets, there are ways to implement continuing education strategies that will keep a workforce happy and informed without eating into a company’s bottom line.  Read more

There is some important and exciting news about Pinterest that a lot of businesses really need to pay attention to. As reported by a recent article on Mashable, it has been found that Pinterest is not just a heavy driver of traffic to companies' websites. Pinterest has now been shown to also be a driver of sales. This piece of information adds greatly to the mounting evidence that supports Pinterest's value to the world of marketing. This evidence purports that Pinterest possesses a great deal of potential for becoming an integral component of many companies' SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

Recent reports that some businesses and government agencies are asking job applicants to share their personal login information for Facebook is driving a heated debate on online privacy. Online marketing expert Kenneth Wisnefski wrote in the Washington Post that the debate could lead to litigation brought by job seekers and possibly to legislation protecting job applicants’ privacy vis-à-vis social media.  Read more

Businesses must cater to each local context - have I said that before on this blog? Yes, it is a recurring theme but only because it holds great utility for businesses and it bears consistent repeating. This is especially the case when others are offering the same advice, like say Tom Smith, managing director of the market research firm GlobalWebIndex.

There definitely have been more than a few businesses and organizations that were initially dismayed at the changing of their Facebook brand pages to the Timeline format. What they may not have realized yet, however, is that the Facebook Timeline format will turn out to be highly beneficial for meeting their SEO and social media marketing needs. In fact, what everyone really seemed to need was an article from Mashable, that was recently posted, which outlined and detailed the ways in which Facebook Timeline has been designed to enhance marketing on the social media network.

When it comes to cell phones, lower prices and competition among service providers transformed what was once a luxury for the privileged few to a necessity for the masses. They evolved from the expensive “car phone,” carried in bags, to today’s tiny-by-comparison smartphones, which are used for far more than making calls and sending text messages. Read more

I have written a good amount on the importance of local search for businesses with the rise in smartphones and more specifically, the rise in web searching on smartphones. The rate of search is impressive. In a recent Google study, 99% of global respondents indicated they use search engines on their smartphone, and searching for local businesses is one of the most popular searches. The essential point on this if you are unfamiliar, is that SEO companies and marketers can assist businesses that cater to local audiences by increasing their presence on local-centered platforms and features. SEO for geo-targeted search terms and optimizing pages on local features such as Google Places will improve the online visibility of businesses when searchers enter queries for their industry in their geographic area.

The introduction of Facebook Timeline for brands officially brought to light a very important aspect of marketing through social media: brands must be humanized. In other words, a brand must communicate with its social media audience on a direct personal level. This can provide dividends of benefit for companies, because it increases the trust that customers place in them, which in turn produces positive results in profits.

The Mega Millions lottery jackpot has hit a record $500 million. Would you quit working if you won it?  If you have a job interview this week, that is hardly an idle question. The lottery, to be drawn Friday, is on a lot of people’s minds this week, and as a result hiring managers may pull out a doozy of an interview question.  Read more

In yesterday's post, I looked at Google Autocorrect and how a Romanian brand responded to the unfavorable suggested terms for the Google search query "Romanians are…" launching a "Romanian are smart" campaign. The campaign was successful and more attractive terms replaced the undesired ones. Businesses and individuals can find themselves in similar reputation management cases where they seek the services of SEO companies to resolve the issue. Check out that post for thoughts on what companies can do in such a scenario. However, today we look again at Google's Autocorrect, but this time in relation to Japan and the object of unfavorable suggested terms is an individual rather than a nationality.

How would you like to save marketing dollars by getting your brand valued within its community?  Wait.  The gentleman branding process doesn’t work for every person or brand.  There's something I would like to point out to business people, regardless of your industry.  There's one aspect which all of the online marketing, SEO, social media, black/white-hat tactics can't offer your company…personality.  I try to pass on sentiments of great people and branding onto readers; but, I honestly can't ingrain or grant character; that's the man-in-the-mirror's job.

When it comes to Pinterest, far too many people insist that the image-sharing site is mainly geared towards a female user base, especially one which falls within the middle age bracket. However, there have finally been some facts presented to disprove that myth. A recent article from Mashable features a slideshow of 11 men who are all heavy users and big fans of Pinterest. Their activity on the site serves as evidence that Pinterest has appeal to both men and women.

A heated debate has emerged over social media users’ right to privacy stemming from recent reports of corporations and government agencies asking potential applicants to surrender their Facebook login credentials during job interviews.  Read more

As search is their primary function and market, Google continually works to improve the search experience on their platform for their end-users. Google consistently rolls out improvements to their algorithm and search approach, some larger (such as Google Search Plus Your World) and some smaller (such as the continuous geo-targeting refinements), but all are detailed in their company blog, which is an important way that marketers and SEO experts keep abreast of the latest from the search giant.

Recently, I wrote a post leveraging the WSJ's high costs of high-speed technology sentiments.  Today I see more of the same money leveraging taking place.  In this scenario it involves the coming presidential election.  In many ways, the election involves huge marketing campaigns, where loyalists and foil-ists endeavor at outdoing one another.  Behind the liaisons, the campaigning, the slights at others, is the purpose of it all, to provide value to the nation, by elucidating its next best leader.  Like with services and products, ideally all of the marketing is to supply end users, the general public, with value, right?

For SEO professionals who have been grappling with the process of adjusting their companies' Facebook Fan Pages to the new Timeline format, here is some news that will inspire them to keep at it. A recent study was conducted by Simply Measured, a company that creates social media analytics software, on 15 companies that updated their Facebook Fan Pages to Timeline on or very close to February 29th, 2012, which was the date that Facebook made Timeline available to businesses on the social networking site.

The reason for the immense appeal of the social media site Pinterest lies in its basis on image-sharing. We are living in a society that is increasingly becoming more drawn to pictures than to words. People are gravitating much more readily to websites that feature many images versus those that contain a lot of written content. Anyone who has been paying attention to the evolution of website designs over the past several years can definitely attest to this growing trend among internet users.

Geo-targeting is a subject we have covered consistently on this blog, considering its prime importance for local and location-specific search. We continuously stress the value in incorporating geo-targeted search terms in on-site content and optimizing for them with a coordinated SEO campaign. Now, Search Engine Watch conducted a study to test the SEO merit of domain and site relevance to the target location. As the state of search evolves continuously, it is helpful to test certain practices in such a way and re-evaluate their worth, and the results give us some additional proof for what SEO experts have been finding in their work.

It's that time of the week again…More news about the exploding social media site Pinterest from yours truly. Just when you thought you had heard enough, I reveal how much more there is to add to your store of Pinterest knowledge. After all, every week brings fresh news of how various companies and organizations are making good use of the site for their marketing needs. In addition to that are the changes that the fledgling company is starting to implement, in its efforts to keep apace with the rapid growth of its product on an increasingly massive scale.

In yesterday's post, I introduced some research from Flurry that looks at mobile devices and their rise across the world. Specifically, I addressed the meteoric rise in mobile device activation in China and how Chinese activations have now surpassed the number experienced in the US, making them the fastest growing mobile device market in the world. This is very important for SEO companies and marketers currently operating in or contemplating operating in China as they can leverage mobile to further their exposure and achieve their goals. Today, let's turn our attention to Flurry's numbers regarding app use across the globe and see how marketers can maximize them.