Where was all of this directed outrage when Net Neutrality passed and gave FCC regulatory control over the Internet? How about when the US Department of Justice outright seized Full Tilt Poker, was there outrage then? Not from Google. There were gamblers that I knew that were upset, but with many people those website seizures didn’t even register. SOPA and PIPA are just the latest in a long line of misguided efforts by the government to place control over the Internet, though these seem to be the most egregious examples. Why all of the outrage now? We really could have used these protests when the California legislature decided that they were going to tax everything sold to their residents. I have news for people, THE GOVERNMENT ALREADY REGULATES, CENSORS AND CONTROLS THE INTERNET.

Will you, or did you miss Wikipedia during the threatened blackout to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act? I am amazed about how the internet community has gotten behind the idea of protesting this piece of overreaching legislation. What I can’t understand is how many of these same voices were squarely in support of “Net Neutrality” which provides the FCC with regulatory authority over the internet. Why is government regulation of the internet – good in one instance, but bad in another? Wouldn’t the Ron Paul supporters agree, as Libertarians that we’re all better off with less government interference?

Will a Wikipedia blackout in any way influence anyone to do anything? Questions have been raised about how credible Wikipedia is. Maybe it is because their model of information dissemination isn’t really all that reliable. Many colleges will not accept references to Wikipedia as research unless that research can be independently verified. Wikipedia is infused with politics and political viewpoints that skew the nature and need for unbiased encyclopedic information. Wikipedia is controlled by a tribe. Again, I fully understand the protest against SOPA, but in the case of Wikipedia which is teetering on the brink, and desperately in need of money, I doubt that they are in any kind of position to shoo away users – not even for just 1 day. Luckily, about 15 minutes into the day, someone figured out that you could easily turn off the Wikipedia blockade if you really needed to get at that knowledge.

Many were calling on facebook to also match the blackout. I can say with certainty, that if that would have happened, I would have deleted my own facebook account because I have long running privacy concerns about facebook that have not been relieved. Therefore, if facebook did anything more in the slightest way to give me bad customer service, I will have reached the tipping point and pull the plug. It is because of people like me, that facebook did not participate in the SOPA/PIPA protest. They know that just shutting off for 1 day would have had a chilling effect on their user base from the people who have reached a fatigue level with their lax privacy. Facebook can’t afford to be taking those risks prior to their upcoming IPO release.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the MMPA have acknowledged that the SOPA/PIPA protest has done nothing whatsoever to open their eyes to their blatant disregard of technology. This is just like when the record companies tried to outlaw blank tapes, for fear of the widespread abuses of recording executive pocketbooks that they feared.

While protests serve a purpose in drawing attention to an issue, I think that this is not a battle that will just die down. The US Congress is going to continually look for ways to restrict liberties and place increasing control over the Internet. For example, wasn’t the Digital Millennium Copyright Act supposed to solve all of this online piracy nonesense? This is precisely why Congress calls themselves “Law Makers”. They seek to remove personal liberty and freedoms from those who elected them, and for whom they are supposed to serve, and in exchange replace that liberty with draconian regulations. They seek to do it on an increasing and never ending basis, that is their charge as “Law Makers”. Next time you hear someone complain about a “Do-Nothing Congress”, relax, it could be worse, they could be “Making Laws”.

Content farms are sites that routinely employ large pools of freelance writers who create high volumes of copy for the Internet. Typically this content is all about quantity rather than quality, is specifically written with an emphasis on keyword placement, is designed to raise search engine ranking and is primarily used for cheap SEO purposes.

Even though Google insists they are making a more concerted effort to lower the value of these content farm articles in their search results, website owners and search engine optimization specialists remain savvy about the fact that when combined, these content farm articles generate plenty of inbound linking, a significant amount of search traffic and ultimately gain search engine trust.

However these content farms are being targeted by plagiarists, spammers, unscrupulous website owners and less than reputable Internet marketers who make it a regular practice to lift content off of them and knowingly use the copy to unfairly direct traffic to their sites.

In contrast to RSS scraping, which has little or no impact on bloggers or content creators, content farm plagiarism can damage a sites reputation as well as have a negative effect on how well it performs with search engines.

Although content farms are trying to clean up their image by implementing anti-plagiarism strategies including editors and software programs to ensure that work is original, there is a problem with plagiarism not usually being recognized until after it is already posted on the Web.

Google also has announced that it is aggressively renewing its efforts to crack down on duplicated content and the search engine promised they would be continually updating its algorithms to target spammers and plagiarists as well as content farms that churn out low-quality albeit original content for cheap SEO.

According to Google, there has been a slight uptick in spam as a result of its recent updated algorithm to increase freshness and improve its spidering but the search engine assures users of their dedication to regulate spam, plagiarists and other sites that they don’t want in their index.

Even though spamming and plagiarism are not likely to be eliminated any time soon, it is vital that website owners and search engine optimization specialists protect their online copy by regularly checking to see if their content is misused.

internet marketing trends for 2012

In 2012, it is forecasted that 9 out of 10 online adults will be using social media. This is information that Internet marketing companies of all sizes are definitely taking note of. Increasingly business models are including Internet search engine optimization strategies to help them leverage all of the latest social media marketing tools, including the especially the powerful medium of video marketing, to establish, increase and dominate the Internet marketplace.

Social media is quickly transforming the ‘networking’ system under which business is conducted. Advertising and product branding are virtually light-years more cost-effective due to the availability of the multi-platforms offered through social media.

Because of the skyrocketing speed and scope that social media offers an ever-growing number of savvy Internet marketing companies are finding that developing relationships with consumers is no longer the time consuming process it once was.

More and more businesses are beginning to rely on social media as an integral part of their internet marketing campaigns. They are starting to redirect their efforts into taking advantage of all the emerging social media platforms to keep their marketing fingers directly on the public’s pulse and stay in touch with consumer trends.

MOBILE MARKETING:

The fastest growing trend in marketing today is geo-targeted mobile marketing. Brought about by Smartphone technology, mobile marketing is exploding with legions of almost ridiculously convenient apps enabling businesses to dialogue with customers 24/7.

Internet marketing companies have the ability to know where potential customers are located, what their preferences are and what their consumer behavior is at all times.

As a result marketers have the ability to send consumer’s real-time relevant advertising, making it possible for customers to find local deals right at their fingertips rather than only when they are bound to a laptop or PC. This should mean that offline shopping and face-to-face sales will be once again on the rise in 2012.

MULTI–CHANNEL MARKETING

While multi-channel marketing has been around for some time, the actual number of channels that will be available in 2012 is something new. Businesses can now choose from a wide variety of interactive marketing campaign channels that include sponsored search, QR codes, SMS, and all types of social media.

In 2012 even larger segments of broadcast news and entertainment will be moving online which will provide additional opportunities for sponsorship and advertising, as well as the ability to process the results from all of these channels into a single marketing platform.

HANDS FREE MARKETING

With iPhone 4S and “Siri” the movers and shakers that are doing business will soon be doing it completely hands-free.  with a public recently released from the leash and no longer reliant on a laptop for updates and analysis, Internet marketing companies are focusing on building real-time relationships with customers  focused  on providing location based special deals and promotions.

In 2012, what has been nicknamed “smarketing agents”; or rather the Internet marketing companies doing the “smarketing” will be able to dialogue, track and cater to consumers wherever they go.

In 2012 Internet marketing companies will have a never ending stream of campaigns that will simply be accessed by consumer voice commands to find the best deals, venue locations and product ratings and reviews.

Now that Google has turned on its location identified search results local Orange County business owners are finding that their sales are enjoying a significant boost as a result of their listings showing up at the top of search results based upon a user’s location.

The new service essentially works as a filter that automatically localizes search results to deliver listings based upon an individual’s geography. Even though a smaller business may not have the top ranking in a standard search, because of its close proximity to the user’s location their site will pop up near the top.

This is good news for the smaller businesses that are able to get the exposure usually reserved for the bigger chains with higher page ranking.

The impact of this is even more significant due to the fact that an ever increasing demographic is relying on online information for goods and services.

Not only does Google’s location identified search results provide users with a convenient way to find what they desire precisely when they are in need of it, but also provides local businesses with many new creative opportunities to advertise.

As a result more and more small business owners are enlisting Orange County SEO specialists to help them develop creative campaigns to use these location based services to their best advantage.

Through geo-targeted advertising businesses have a myriad of channels open to them to invite interaction with consumers through ratings, reviews, blog comments, testimonials, news letters, tips, videos, coupons and other special offers.

Google also allows users to target their own searches by inserting a box conveniently located on the left side of each search page stating a user’s location that can be adjusted manually to redirect the search towards any desired destination.

Local business owners who are implemting Orange County search optimization companies are gaining an enormous advantage over their local competitors who are not utilizing this new service in their favor.

It is estimated that 55% of US consumers will trust a local business and tend to purchase their products more after reading positive online reviews.

The impact that ratings, reviews and comments have on consumer behavior reinforces the importance of Local business owner’s to leverage Google’s latest location based services for all they are worth by letting orange county SEO specialist create the campaign that will prompt users to select their business.

Yelp, the local-reviews network company founded in July of 2004, is no longer a fledging start up company in danger of being snatched up by the big guys on the block, Google and Yahoo, but rather is all grown up and filing for its very own IPO.

In an initial offering of $100 million, Yelp is proving it definitely thinks itself worthy of becoming a major player in the publicly traded market. Reports have rumored the company is seeking a valuation in the $1 billion to $2 billion dollar range.

Although Yelps latest maneuver comes as no surprise to industry insiders since the local- reviews giant has raised over $56 million in venture funding and has approximately 61 million users who log on to the site monthly while listing more than 22 million reviews, the move has still stymied some naysayers who considered it a dark horse with little chance of surviving long term as a standalone firm.

After being offered buyout deals from both Google and Yahoo to the tune of $500 million in 2010, Yelp opted instead to pair up with Elevation Partners for $25 million in hopes of the chance to become publicly traded on the Stock Exchange.

Because the company has enjoyed such rapid growth it garnered plenty of attention resulting in a few run-ins with the competition. Yelp accused Google of unscrupulously “scraping” some of its business listings and reviews for its use own use on Google Local service.

The spurned Google further threatened Yelp by acquiring its rival Zagat in September for $151 million, giving Google Local access to reviews in more than 100 cities.

Despite its problems Yelp is actively reviewing 43 U.S. markets as well as 23 cities internationally and is still dominating the online review industry proving that for every Goliath their truly is a David.

Google announced 10 changes to their algorithm and search results services. How will these latest changes affect Orange County businesses in regards to SEO strategies?

The following is a list of Google Updates  and what they will mean for Orange County SEO:

• CROSS-LANGUAGE INFORMATION RETRIEVAL

Because there is presently only a limited amount of information being listed online for specific languages, Google has changed an algorithm to accommodate the translation for relevant English web pages and will display the translated titles solely under the English titles in the search results. When users click on a translated title it will take them to a page translated from English into the original language. This feature may affect local Orange County companies who do business internationally and could result in a significant amount of additional traffic coming to English search results.

• SNIPPETS WILL INCLUDE MORE PAGE CONTENT

Google will now be displaying snippets with more frequency from actual page content in contrast to the previous practice of only displaying snippets from the header menu. This may affect Orange County companies by rendering search results a little more random and giving Orange County SEO efforts less control over what message is actually displayed.

• PAGE TITLES GENERATED BY RE-DUPLICATING BOILERPLATE ANCHORS

Google explains how it will affect search results by stating, “We look at a number of signals when generating a page’s title. One signal is the anchor text in links pointing to the page. We found that boilerplate links with duplicated anchor text are not as relevant, so we are putting less emphasis on these. The result is more relevant titles that are specific to the page’s content.”

• LENGTH-BASED AUTOCOMPLETE PREDICTIONS IN RUSSIAN

Since this particular change is relevant specifically to Russian the chances of it affecting Orange County businesses that do not cater to Russian clientele or directly deal with Russian markets will not be affected. Basically the change will simply reduce the number of long query predictions in the Russian language.

• MORE APPLICATION RICH SNIPPETS

What this new algorithm will provide for Orange County businesses is it will give visitors to their sites the opportunities to find applications through greater detailed queries.

• NO MORE SIGNAL IMAGE SEARCH

What this means for Orange County businesses is that images that were previously signaled to be displayed when prompted by a keyword or because the image was referenced in IPDF or other searchable documents multiple times will no longer be given priority. This can be good news for businesses who want to discard negative or no longer relevant images.

• FRESHER RESULTS

In essence this is just Google’s way of reassuring the Orange County’s online business community that they are on-top of things and will be doing their best to keep up with fresh content when queried.

• A PUSH FOR OFFICIAL PAGE DETECTION

Google’s new algorithm will more accurately decide which  pages are official and which ones are not. This will affect Orange County business by giving a higher rank to pages that they deem official than those they do not. Google justifies this by saying, “We try hard to give our users the most relevant and authoritative results. With this change, we adjusted how we attempt to determine which pages are official. This will tend to rank official websites even higher in our ranking.”

• BETTER TO DATE-RESTRUCURE QUERIES

This will affect Orange County business by providing customer queries involving a specific date more accuracy because Google has improved its efficiency when queries are made with a selected date range.

• PREDICTION FIX FOR IME QUERIES

This latest algorithm will affect Orange County business by allowing for more advanced Autocomplete capabilities and provide more comprehensive answers to IME queries. This particular change in Google’s algorithm could have a significantly positive impact on local businesses because customers will be able to have their queries answers correctly even if not all the pertinent information is available to them.

Tim Ferriss is the bestselling author who wrote the books The 4-Hour Workweek and 4-Hour Body. The books he writes tend to advance fairly unconventional methods to success. He is also an investor and technology expert who lives in the Bay Area.
The four hour workweek is more than just a book. It is more of a how-to manual for people interested in circumventing the current 9-5 workday paradigm. It has fantastic material on how to think differently about how to accomplish tasks, then how to build a workflow that derives from these new rules. The ideas that he presented in the book include outsourcing tedious tasks in your life overseas. He also outlines how he was able to outsource his dating life by having people from India and the Philippines set up dating profiles, then subsequently screen and schedule dates with those who responded to his profile. Tim is no doubt intense.

From hacking work to hacking workouts

The change of subject matter from the Four Hour Work Week to the Four Hour Body is one that shows Tim is not just interested things like outsourcing or in other workflows that drive tech business. The Four Hour Body is based on hacking the body’s metabolism and finding the minimum effective dose of exercise, and supplements that will effect change. He also cleverly built in a way to hack the human diet by allowing a 1 day “anything goes” day off to the diet side of the equation.
Continued on his current trajectory, Tim will no doubt present his next book to cover new territory, but it makes sense that he will probably continue on the themes of radically re-thinking something, life hacking, or unconventional solutions to conventional problems.

Steve Jobs

The loss of Steve Jobs this year, impacts not only the tech community, but reaches much further into the lives of everyday people. Since the iPhone has gained such wide adoption, it is hard to argue that the products produced by Steve and his team of designers have not been significant. Indeed the significance of these products means that people change the way they do things in order to embrace the new ways of doing things presented by the iPhone. This is meant in no way to discount the significance of the iPod, but it is the iPhone that merged communication device and entertainment device and unleashed the imagination of developers who make apps for it that offer new ways of doing practically everything.
What is both interesting and at the same time, perhaps unsettling, is that with Jobs having passed, the platform of new products remains in his wake, the iPhone 4 and Apple iPad 2 as platforms are not going away. They now are adopted broadly. The iPhone and iPad as platforms, are devices, which allow any programmer capable of developing something new to work on that platform. This gives those programmers the opportunity to become actors on the stage developed by Jobs and his team. This develops the support of community, followers, and loyal fans.
Apple has a new leader, Tim Cook the current CEO. The loyal fans of Apple products will no doubt hope that he continues Apple on it’s current trajectory of development, and that they continue their pattern of releasing products that are exceptional in every sense. Such would be the only fitting tribute to Steve Jobs.

Why Tim Ferriss will be the next Steve Jobs

Tim Ferris is not going to become the next CEO of Apple. Tim, much like an early Steve Jobs is a renegade. With his current books, Tim is developing the following that it will take. Tim’s accomplishments are impressive, but they are mostly TIM. I believe that if Tim continues his work and if he learns to pivot on his success and change the focus of his products from being Timcentric to being public-centric, then he may be able to put himself on a trajectory that matches or eventually eclipses Steve Jobs. This means that Tim will have to continue writing, but he has to stop using himself as the main character in his play. He has to stop posing for pictures of his abs, and talking about his own world record tango. He also has to stop breakdancing in bellbottoms. If Tim can successfully fully adjust to his new course, that means that the majority of his focus will become obsessed with how to help others build their ‘muses’ as he calls them. Tim will no doubt provide the next stage upon which we all become players.

Making the decision to hire an SEO company that will get you the results you are looking for can be a difficult and time consuming process. However, with a little guidance, you and your business can find a search engine optimization company that will not only raise your page ranking, increase your linkability but also add credibility to your business website.

Sometimes the simplest solutions are the most effective. Business owners who are seeking to improve their web presence on the Internet can definitely benefit by hiring a professional SEO company that is reputable and has the skills and experience to provide the tried and true solutions they need to get their business websites optimized to their peak performance.

Here Are 5 Easy Tips For Choosing An SEO Company that will give Your Business Website the Competitive Edge it needs.

Hire An SEO Company That Will Do the Work for You: It is important to find an SEO company that will not only promise to raise your page ranking but also significantly increase your website’s visibility while actually delivering on their promises.

Hire An SEO Company That Will Use Backlinks From Reputable Sites: Backlinks are extremely important for the successful optimization of any business website. However, if an SEO company is utilizing link farms or other similar sites you are taking the unnecessary risk of damaging your business website’s reputation as well as limiting the desire for other sites linking to it for fear of losing their own credibility.

Hire An SEO Company That Uses Analytics: Reliable Analytics are the best way to evaluate a website’s performance. Understanding how a website is driving the bottom line and inspiring users to respond to calls to actions is vital to find the solutions they need to keep them profitable. Built in analytics is one of the most valuable tools to estimate a website’s performance.

Hire An SEO Company That Utilizes Keyword Dense Content: Content dense with keywords is vital for page ranking. Effective content, which is keyword dense for ranking purposes is a high priority that should never be underestimated. However, making the content easy to read, timely and entertaining is also crucial to keep readers interested.

Hire An SEO Company That Takes Advantage Of All The Latest Social Media Forums Available: Website optimization that utilizes all of the latest advanced techniques offered by social media outlets not only signals users that the company is keeping up with the ever changing applications on the Internet, but also provides endless opportunities for branding, linking an establishing popularity while also staying on actively on the radar with users.

The Law of Attraction is the metaphysical belief that “like attracts like” and that based within this fundamental premise positive will always attract positive and negative will always attract negative.

If this same theory is applied to Internet marketing, then attracting quality traffic to a site is much like attracting a bolt of lightning to a lightning rod; it is simply a matter of building positive elements into a website’s design, such as effective SEO or an active social media campaign, and the end result will be positive attracting positive setting into motion a network of self perpetuating factors that will exponentially attract more and more quality traffic that will continually grow and be governed by the law of attraction.

To simplify, if website owners take advantage of the latest Internet marketing tools, they are taking the necessary positive steps that will direct traffic to their site.  One of the latest and most effective marketing tool to attract quality traffic is Social Media.

Social Media Optimization: Positive attracts Positive

Social media enables businesses to forge new relationships while opening up a dynamic platform for communication among vendors, partners, buyers and sellers.

Social media optimization is the newest wave of Internet marketing. It reaches far beyond the scope of traditional marketing and has so quickly become an industry standard that companies who do not utilize social media campaigns not only suffer from inferiority complexes but are also seen as lagging behind the times and unfortunately run the risk of losing credibility with consumers.

The Most Effective Social Media Platforms

Facebook — Recently hit 750 million users.

MySpace – 300,000 users sign up daily.

Twitter — The number of tweets per day has rocketed from 95 million to 200 million.

Flicker– Lists 10 million active groups.

LinkedIn – Caters to 100 million members in 200 countries.

YouTube –2 billion viewers per day.

Foursquare –Announced it had hit 10 million members and now has over half a million merchants.

Linking your business website with social media networks provides ample opportunity to attract positive attention and, according to the law of attraction, this is a very good thing indeed.

There are very few innovators who have changed the world as markedly as Mr. Steve Jobs, founder and chief executive of Apple.

Although Mr. Jobs passed away this week, his contributions for opening up new pathways of communications for the betterment of mankind will never be forgotten.

The products he has shared with us can be considered some of the most successful inventions of all time.

It is not just the tech world that will miss this “Sherpa” of technological advancement, but also the industries of music, movies and telecommunications that have brought us inventions such as the iPod, iPhone, iTunes, iMovie, and iPad and so much more I dare not go on.

His vision of a future of rapidly disseminated global information as well as his deep commitment to humanitarian causes has helped to effectively usher in a planet growing so rapidly in regards to technological advances that we are more capable than ever to handle the challenges of facing an uncertain tomorrow.

Mr. Jobs has given each and every one of us a gift: The freedom of information which in these trying times has allowed us the opportunity for a more optimistic tomorrow.

Firstly I would like to thank you Mr. Jobs for your humanity.

Secondly I would like to thank you for allowing me to make a living as a writer.

Lastly I would like to thank you for truly having been an inspiration to me.

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences of too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Thank you Mr. Jobs for you will be undeniably missed.