If you're online and need a question answered, where do you go?  If you're like most Americans and many Europeans leveraging a search, you're using Google.  What would happen if Google didn't answer your question?  That's what happened to the Federal Communications Commission regarding their question of Google's Street View project.

Over the weekend, one of Google's co-founders, Sergey Brin, granted an exclusive interview to The Guardian in which he very openly discussed his thoughts on the future of Internet freedom.  In the interview, he targeted various governments and their attempt at passing legislation to censor the Web and also stated his opinions regarding social networking giant, Facebook and the electronics manufacturer, Apple.  Brin believes that the two companies are "restrictive" and intend to limit the functionality of the Internet.

As I discussed in a previous blog post, many businesses find themselves focusing the majority of their social media efforts through Facebook these days. While I still feel that Google+ is a fantastic alternative to this oversaturated social network, there are still several features on Facebook that make it an attractive platform for marketing purposes. In particular, it's the network's capability for pay per click advertisements that is a huge draw for many business owners. Aside from the site-wide ad initiatives that came about via the Timeline layout update, companies listed on the world's biggest social network will also soon to be able to take advantage of another potential marketing avenue.

Now that Rick Santorum has suspended his campaign and the race is on between President Obama and Mitt Romney, an unprecedented media war has begun. We've seen big media battles before. But in money, in woman- and man-hours, and in technical and strategic sophistication, this will be the biggest ever. Especially in Pennsylvania and other swing states, you'll see television ads from both camps, and from the semianonymous political action committees that have become the coin of the 2012 realm.  Read more

The Microsoft-Yahoo Search Alliance that began in 2009 is coming to the end of its full roll-out in the UK, Ireland, and France. The Search Alliance started a few years ago with Microsoft's Bing powering Yahoo search and transitioning the advertising activity on each search platform to Microsoft's adCenter. The transition has been smooth, but has taken considerable time to manage all the moving parts of such a transition for large companies and the synchronization of behavior and function for all the current adCenter users.

What can your company offer?  Does it address service needs for consumers?  How do you define a 'consumer?'  Could your business take a few steps in another direction, creating a different vantage point, and target market?  A recent article illustrates the emphasis of offering services rather than producing in factories.

Many business owners who are new to the world of online marketing often consider pay per click as their main channel of advertisement. As what is essentially the internet's oldest form of direct marketing, PPC ads continue to be one of the most prevalent methods of inorganic link building. It certainly doesn't hurt that every search engine website displays its own custom PPC ads on every SERP it shows. Although PPC usage remains constant across the web, the prominence of this popular marketing method is not even across all ad networks.

The US Justice Department interceded in the business affairs of Apple and Amazon lately, ruling on the side of lower-priced e-books.  The Department posed an antitrust suit on Apple and five other large book publishers.  The government felt the group of publishers was strategically attempting to raise the prices on e-books, prices which Amazon has lowered to $9.99 for new and popular books.

Purposeful targeting to drive traffic is the essential point of both organic SEO and paid search. Utilizing tools in each mode of internet marketing allows for the catering of specific messages to different contexts. This assists the ability to split test ads for paid search and bring localized web searchers to your web properties in terms of SEO. Now, new zip-code and location functionality out this week from Google allows for marketers using AdWords to target over 30,000 ZIP codes offering a greater ability to more specifically cater the ad message to a specific location.

Those business owners who turn to social media sites for customer traffic are known to rely just a little too heavily on Facebook. Sure, the world's biggest social network continues to expand its influence, and it's a given that it will grow towards a projected one billion users by year's end. 

Twitter, the most popular microblogging site on the internet, offers instantaneous communication and unique engagement opportunities for businesses to connect with members of their audience. Twitter indeed offers two-way communication, but a recent study by Conversocial shows that many big businesses, within retail clothing in this case, do not engage in two-way communication with their customers, and if they do it is limited. On social platforms other than Twitter, customers can message businesses directly, comment, and reach other in other ways.

Just weeks after touting a reorg that would set it on a new and profitable path, Best Buy has jettisoned its CEO of 28 years, Brian Dunn. Best Buy has been in trouble for a while and has not made enough strategic moves to improve its position, said Kenneth C. Wisnefski, founder and CEO of Webimax. "That is a reflection of the CEO and could shed light on the resignation."  Read more

The current prevalence of social networks in our daily lives is not to be underestimated. Although some sites such as Facebook have been showing a generally downward growth trend as of late, the medium that we refer to as "social media" is stronger now than it's ever been before. With nearly a billion users to be found between Facebook, Google+ and Twitter, it's clear that there is no end in sight for social networking.

Earlier today, Brian Dunn resigned from his position as CEO of Best Buy.  This is just one of many, albeit more drastic examples of the company's recent troubles.  However, Best Buy is not the first major electronics retailer to face such hardship.  The company's former competitor, Circuit City, met its demise in 2009 after failing to adapt to a changing marketplace and suffering diminishing revenues.  

It seems not a week can go by without Google raising more alarms within the SEO community. Online businesses that have been watching their web analytics over the last few weeks may have noticed some alarming trends. Traffic has been dropping steadily for many online companies, and the page rankings have been falling along with it. While not everyone has been affected by these disturbing trends just yet, more and more pages are experiencing the impact of Google's constant search engine revisions.

What would you do if you were Yahoo, consecutively coming in behind Google in search, and struggling to improve revenue flow? Yahoo plans to relieve 2,000 people of duty in the near future.   Unfortunately, one does not have to search far into the brand’s past to find layoffs.  This would be Yahoo’s sixth major layoff in four years.

I watched a great online marketing video last week hosted by a popular CEO.  He made excellent points throughout; yet, one message particularly hit home.  He voiced that the real problem with startups and young brands was not producing quality services and products; the real issue was marketing, gaining attention, informing people of your offered goods and services.

Today's post continues where yesterday's left off regarding the state of internet in Mexico, and further down what its advancement means for businesses and SEO. The difference in web use and access between urban and rural areas in the country is great, and closing this gap is important for internet's growth. In cities with more than 15,000 people (where 71% of Mexican homes are) only 40% have a computer and 30% are online. In the almost 190,000 Mexican towns under 2,5000 people, only 6% of the homes have a computer and only 3% are online. Penetration isn't terribly high in urban areas, and the drop-off to rural regions is significant. Reasons are infrastructure, the inability of many to afford computers, and the lack of education in the use of computers within some populations. The government has taken some actions already to make the technology more widely available and has set some goals to be reached by 2015:

I haven't spent that much time discussing the internet and the potential for internet marketing and SEO in Latin American -yet. It has been an area that just hasn't received great attention. This is largely due to the fact that internet penetration in Latin America has been slow and the market for building an optimized online presence is not fully developed. 

Tech savvy businesses have likely been following the recent news about Google Glasses that's been making its way around the web. Until only recently, all information known about the device was the stuff of pure conjecture. While the finer details behind the glasses are still being kept locked up tight so far, Google released a promotional video last week that's been causing quite a stir.
 
The company claims the glasses, currently referred to as Project Glass, will incorporate heavy search engine and social media functionality into the everyday life of its users. While the reveal video leads to big (and somewhat unlikely) promises regarding the integration of the internet into a new mobile device, there is one thing that is certain: the information that Google pulls for its Glass interface will certainly be pulled from its search engine results. For businesses of every size and shape, this means that the months leading up to the final release of Project Glass make improving page rankings and domain authority crucial.
 
Getting Page Rankings Ready for Project Glass
To put it simply, there has never been a more important time than now for companies to seek out the help of a top SEO company. As a leading internet marketing firm, WebiMax handles hundreds of companies in their search engine optimization efforts every day. Our clients rely on our SEO and social media optimization methods in order to climb to the top of the search engine result pages (or SERPs). For now, success means ranking well on web browser searches. Yet with devices such as Google's Project Glass looming on the horizon, our industry will begin to focus more actively on preparing clients for the next big tech push.
 
In the coming months, WebiMax will continue performing landing page optimization, PPC campaigns and various other SEO practices to improve the search engine friendliness of its clients and their web content. Although Google has not been entirely forward with how Project Glass will work, it's clear that only those sites that rank well will be shown in the device's user display.  For our clients, that means working overtime to get to those much-wanted SERP top spots. With that extra bit of dedication and hard work, Google Glasses users will no doubt see our clients come up again and again when the device is released this fall.

Most online shoppers have been there: You find a product you like online, you add it to the shopping cart and proceed to checkout . . . and then, at the last minute, you have second thoughts and close the window, telling yourself you'll sleep on it and come back later.  Read more

Blogging is a form of communication.  Offline, when a communicative process is not getting optimal results, a modification is in order.  For instance, if the reception of a cellular phone is bad, you'll move to get better service.  Blogging should experience the same trial-and-error processes.  Can you hear me now?  I've noticed a few wrongdoings with the blogosphere, committed by those writing, promoting, and commenting.  Consider the following wrongs and making modifications for the future.

Kenneth Wisnefski, founder and CEO of WebiMax, a leading search engine optimization firm, announced that WebiMax [the company] has seen a major growth in overseas markets through Q1 of 2012. In particular, the company has successfully partnered with over 200% more clients in Asian and European markets.  Read more

It comes as little surprise that Amazon is stealing Wal-Mart’s discount thunder, says Kenneth Wisnefski, founder and CEO of Webimax, which develops online marketing strategies for retailers such as Aéropostale (ARO) and Sam's Club (WMT).  Read more

Whether your business is based within a brick-or-mortar institution, or it is a solely online venture, one thing is certain: e-commerce is one of the most important aspects of your business to focus on. Why? Well, there is a great deal of data and statistics to support the fact that online shopping – and purchasing – is experiencing a huge increase that is not likely to be slowing down. More importantly, it will never reverse. If you want your business to compete in this new digital age of commerce, it is about time that you extended its products and services to the online world.