It’s 2012, and that means it’s time to allocate your budget for the year. How much do you plan to spend on marketing? Getting your business’ name out into the public eye is no small feat. And the public’s eyes are online. Make sure you are, too. But don’t be a guppy fish about it, do it right:

1. Make your site even more user friendly. Let people know what you’re all about, and don’t leave them with any questions other than “Why haven’t I done this already?”
   Ex. If it takes me even 1 whole minute for me to get from your site that you sell insurance, you may have a problem.
2. Update your local listing. Since local results are combined with regular listings, consistency is crucial. Make sure that your address, phone numbers, and website are listed identically across the web.
   Ex.  It’s either your office line or your toll-free number. You have to pick just one.
3. Let people find you through social media. If you don’t have accounts set up with all of the major social networking platforms, your company is behind the times.
   Ex. How can your passive-aggressive customers let you know what they’d like to see changed if you don’t have an account for them to complain on?
4. Refine your SEO key terms. It’s okay to sacrifice mega-volume for quality leads. Often better than okay. An accurate key term with responsible link building will get the right people looking at your site.
   Ex. Be clear but not general. (*Salute.) If you’re looking for potential customers, your key words should reflect that. Someone searching “shoes” wants a desktop background; someone searching “leather upper charcoal saddle shoes” is probably looking to buy.

This concept of “+1″ or “Like” is generally viewed as a stamp of approval by users for other users to take into account as they browse the Internet. And now that images have this same feature, you can “+1″ the most relevant photos that you come across so that others will access them even easier in the future.

In my opinion, the Facebook “Like” and the Twitter “Follow” both make sense as a powerful social media marketing tools. They use a push and pull type of marketing, which motivates fans to continue to interact by offering incentives. On the other hand, while the “+1″ does not necessarily maintain an active fan base, these recommendations from other users may increase the site’s click-through rate. Oftentimes sites with a “+1″ increase a site’s visibility because it shows that other users have been satisfied with the content in the past.

With images, however, I don’t see the real value in a “+1″. Finding an image that many people have liked and used in the future isn’t necessarily something that you’re going for if you’re trying to create original content. Yes, you want the image to be relevant, but not overused. Will this new development be a productive change, or is it just a Google update for the heck of it?

What are your thoughts on the +1 of an image? Will it help you in the future, or would you rather just search on your own?

Google Caffeine with Momentum

This latest update is centered around providing users with the most fresh content possible. This is somewhat of an extension of Google Caffeine, which launched in December of 2010. Google Caffeine is a way to crawl and index the most recent content on the web very quickly, and this updated algorithm will help even more. Google will now bring up the most relevant and up-to-date news in the searches, and approximately 35 percent of searches will be affected by this change.

An Update Example

If you do a Google search for the word “Olympics,” chances are that you want content related to the upcoming Olympic games in London next summer, as opposed to the Olympics that took place in 1900. Even though you haven’t been entirely specific in your search (such as adding on “2012”), Google will still bring up the most up-to-date results due to its freshness algorithm.

How it Affects You

Of course there are some searches that will still be relevant long after they’ve been posted, like the best recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. But on the other hand, if I’m looking for the score of the Patriots game, one week old may be too late.

So what does this Google algorithm update mean for you or your website? The answer is simple: keep your content fresh. The more recent your content is, the more likely you will come out on top of a Google search list. This can be a great benefit to those who update often—this, in a sense, becomes a form of cheap search engine optimization. Start updating today!

Now it seems that they are having a hard time. According to a Nikkei report, an English language news program which focuses on the Japanese economy, Nintendo earnings is set to be a loss of approximately $1.3 Billion from the past 6 months.

One of the biggest products out for Nintendo right now is the Wii.  The Wii has been out for a while and have been struggling in sales recently.  This has to deal  in part with the fact that the graphics on the Wii are not as good as those on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.

Nintendo is planning to come out with a new system called the Wii U which will have better graphics.  It is yet to be seen if it will be as good as the competition.  Sony and Microsoft’s systems have been out a while and it is predicted that they will come out with a new system with better graphics in two to three years.

Nintendo has also come out with the Nintendo 3DS but it is not doing as well as previous mobile platforms that Nintendo has come out with.  Adding to the struggles of Nintendo, the Yen is now strong and causing currency exchange loss against the dollar and euro.

Kaspersky Lab, an authority on tech security, has announced the first cases of infectious QR Codes and tampering. In Russia, users thought they were downloading an Android app called “Jimm,” when in reality, the app requrested an SMS codes to an unknown number that charged the user for each message. Even though setting up these types of numbers is more tricky for cyberhackers in the United States, it is likely that this will become a bigger problem in the near future.

We don’t want to discourage overall use of QR Codes, because they can do a great amount of good. Using QR Codes as a strategic marketing internet solution can be a beneficial source of lead generation for your company. However, there is no need to worry about scanning QR Codes right now. Researchers at McAffee say that with a harmful app, there is an interim step that requests SMS. If this happens, DO NOT enter any information or “okay” the transaction. This could only harm your mobile device.

Part of Google’s algorithm has always been the number of links to a site, and Google is aware that this system can be manipulated through link spam. Over the past few years Google has changed its algorithm to try and minimize such manipulations.

Link spam happens when a new website receives a lot of new inbound links from other sites including other sites that are owned by the same person.

If Google feels like a site has too much link spam it will not give the links the same amount of credit which in turn will not allow your website to rank. When you go from ranking to not ranking in a short period of time, it is possible that your site is in the Google Sandbox.

It has been found that there are two main factors that would cause this to happen: the active age of a domain, and how competitive the keyword used in the links is.

Active age of a domain refers to the amount of time that has passed since Google first indexed the website, not the date of registration of the website.

A more competitive keyword refers to how often a keyword is searched on Google, the higher the frequency of the search, the more likely that the sandbox filter will take effect.

It has been debated for years If the “Google Sandbox” actually exists or not. Google has not come out and said anything about it. However, as the sandbox effect refers to a specific set of filters that are used for anti-spam purposes, it is not likely that Google would provide too much information about it.

How can you tell if you are in Google’s Sandbox?

Now that you have an understanding of the Google sandbox, the question becomes how can you tell if your site is in the sandbox? To do this it is important to find out if the entire site has been dropped from Google or if the rankings have just dropped for particular keywords.

The easiest way to do this is to complete a search for your site in Google by typing in “site:www.yourdomain.com” (replace www.yourdomain.com with your website’s URL).

If your Google search comes back with your website in the results and your website has recently made a big drop in the rankings, you are still being indexed by Google, but have probably been placed in the sandbox. If it comes back with no search result it means that you have been dropped entirely by Google.

How do you Escape From The Google Sandbox

The best way to get out of the Google Sandbox is to start acquiring quality links from high PR websites to your website. If you sit and do nothing you will end up staying in the Google sandbox for a longer period of time, or you may never get out.

If you stick with a long term link building plan and keep adding quality inbound links the filter used will stop having such a large effect on your site and your rankings should return to normal within a few months.

Websites that are constantly being optimized during the time that they are in the sandbox were able to see a high ranking for their targeted keyword once the sandbox effect ended.

This Sandbox effect just happened to my friend’s site who is trying to sell HCG Drops. They began with an aggressive link-building strategy to a new site and moved to rank as high as 142, and then the next day there were not ranked.

The site is still being indexed by Google, but because of the competitive keyword, new site, and aggressive link-building activity, they were sandboxed.

Make sure that if you are hiring someone to do search engine optimization for you that they understand these factors to make sure that your website does not go into the Google Sandbox.

Gravatars can be created and attached to a specific email address.  A gravatar is the abbreviation for Globally Recognized Avatar.

Many people don’t know how to create a gravatar, but it is really easy and quick to do.  The first step is to go to http://en.gravatar.com/ and sign up for an account.  You will be prompted to enter the email that will be attached to a gravatar.  After that is completed a confirmation link will be sent to that email.

Once the email is received, follow the link and create a username and password.  Then choose an image to become your gravatar.  It is possible to get a picture from your hard drive or straight from the internet.

When choosing a gravatar there are a few things to remember.  First, is that you want the gravatar to stand out and be relevant to what you want to be known for, or if you are running a Search Engine Optimization campaign, what the company you are blog commenting for wants to be known for.

It is important that you use a high quality image.   No one wants to see something that is pixelated.  Also, if you comment on white backgrounds often you might want something colorful that will stand out and vise versa.

That is all that you need to do to create a gravatar.  After you do this every time you input your email, your gravatar will automatically show up next to any comment that you make.

If you are commenting on the same blog, your gravatar makes it is easier for people to get to know you and the comments that you are making.

Also, when doing blog commenting, you may often come across similar blogs that you might have commented on, or a previous employee commented on.  With gravatars it is easy to quickly see if anyone from your company commented on that blog.

Gravatars are great and will help you stand out from others that comment on blogs.  It doesn’t take a lot of effort, and now that you know how to create gravatars you should use them to your advantage.

So why is this so great? Well, site administrators can now track how well campaigns are doing in real-time instead of seeing the results after the fact on Google Analytics. For example, the moment someone’s Tweet about your post stops driving traffic to your site, you’ll know. If someone’s link sparks inbound traffic, you’ll know immediately. This will help site managers know when a campaign needs to be stopped because it is unsuccessful, or when a campaign needs more attention because of potential traffic.

How do you get the new version? If you are already a Google Analytics user, simply click the “New Version” button at the top right of the Google Analytics homepage. If you can’t find this button yet, you will have to wait a few weeks before it is available to you. According to product manager at Google Analytics Josh Jersin, this new Real-Time feature has only been turned on for “a number of you.” A great perk of this new feature is the fact that it will be free, whereas other companies with similar real-time tracking features are, well, not so free.

Take your Google Analytics to the next level, and learn what kind of impact it can on have small business internet marketing (leadgenix).

Brief Recent History of Operating Systems

Is this a good sign for Microsoft users? From our experience, many people remember the controversy over Windows Vista in early 2007—this operating system was highly susceptible to viruses, malware, and of course suffered from overall security vulnerability. Then along came Windows 7 in 2009 with an improved taskbar and many performance improvements. And now, Windows 8 is believed to be released in late 2012.

Windows 8 Features

Because the product has not actually been launched yet, much of what we know are just rumors coupled with the information that we heard from the BUILD conference a few days ago. However, Windows 8 is said to be an operating system that is designed for touch. This means that there will be the traditional desktop application as well as a version for “vertical slate use.” The keyboard and mouse therefore become optional in both cases. So overall, whenever this new OS debuts, it will be capable of running on desktops, laptops, and tablets.

Another question lingers, however—will it really be called “Windows 8”? Steven Sinofsky, President of Microsoft, says that Windows 8 is just a “codename” for now, but also that “[they]’ll figure out the real name in due time.”

American Internet Users

Back in the year 1996 there were only 20 million internet users in the United States. Fast forward 15 years and that number has Duodecupled (meaning increased by 12 of course). There are now over 245 million internet users in America, totaling about 80% of all people living in the United States.

Average Web Usage of American

In 1996 the average American web usage for a month long period was 1/2 hour. That internet statistic is probably exceeded in a single day by most internet users today. In the present year of 2011 the average American web usage has reached 27 hours a month. I think you can say we use the internet a bit more today than we did back then.

Average Page Load Time

15 years ago you were waiting at least 30 seconds for a webpage to load, if not longer. That kind of wait time today would be a source of torture.  The time has now been cut down to no longer than 6 seconds, and most of the time a webpage is loaded within the blink of an eye.

Most Popular Sites

This internet statistic is measured in the percentage of internet users reached. Back in 1996 the number 1 website was AOL.com. It was closely followed by Webcrawler.com, Netscape.com, and Yahoo.com. Now a days the Internet is ruled by Google.com, Yahoo sites, Microsoft Sites, and of course Facebook.com.

Times have definitely changed. It’s always fun to think back on those early internet days. Let us know of some of the early internet memories you have.