Recently, Google introduced Carousel for local search results. Now, when you search for a local business like a hotel or restaurant, the results appear in an interactive carousel at the top of the page. Click on one of the results in the carousel and you'll see the address, photos, overall review-based score and links to the actual reviews.

Some might wonder what an SEO does or what it means, sometimes SEOs wonder the same thing. The simple answer is that an SEO optimizes your website to make it appear higher in the search engine page results or SERPs. If you didn't just figure it out SEO stands for search engine optimization, therefore as an SEO we are the optimizers. With that said what do the best of the best say are the most important search ranking factors for now and in the future? Moz, formally known as SEOmoz has released a preview of some of the data from their search ranking factors survey they produce every year or two. This year Moz surveyed 120 SEOs on various ranking factors.

89% of marketers say that social media generates more business exposure. That number alone should tell you that there is something to social media marketing. It’s the new kid on the block when it comes to online marketing, yet there are so many people saying this type of marketing is having a major impact on lead generation and sales. It’s great that marketers can say this about social media, however what do the hard numbers tell us? Social Media Examiner recently released it’s social media marketing industry report and Wishpond went on to do an Infographic on the topic to give a nice illustration of the study’s results.

Several studies from many different sources indicate that search engine optimization reaches more people on a daily basis than social media and pay per click advertising combined. As of 2012 Internet users conducted 1,873,910,000,000 searches on Google alone. That averages out to 5,134,000,000 searches per day. This is a staggering number and there was a study done by Forrester, which discovered that 54% of people found websites through organic search results otherwise known as results done through SEO. The second most preferred discovery method was social media at 32%. Pay Per Click or PPC came in at only 18% as a discovery tool for websites. The confusing part of this equation is that paid search spending is still on the rise.

Do you know what content marketing is? On paper, content marketing encompasses all marketing formats that involve the creation or sharing of engaging content. This is typically done with the goal of attracting prospects or acquiring and retaining customers. The types of content can vary widely and includes videos, white papers, infographics, memes, articles and blogs to name a few. The whole point of content marketing is to both engage readers and provide valuable information.

Though just about everyone in the online marketing business has something to say about the latest Google Penguin Update, conflicting information and mass confusion are abundant. Even the so-called experts are struggling to understand and articulate the effect that Penguin has had across the web. There have been numerous blog posts on Search Engine Watch and Search Engine Land trying to make sense of the latest update. In addition, Google's system of numbering the Penguin updates hasn't helped.

In a news release today, Facebook announced that they are adding support for clickable hashtags, which the social network Twitter popularized.

Like many in the online marketing business, we are fascinated by Google Glass. Who wouldn't be with it's very futuristic and very cool design (or ridiculous, depending on who you ask). Whether or not we'll someday consider Google Glass users when we're developing online marketing strategies remains to be seen. Remember, there was once a time when we didn't put any thought into mobile devices like iPhones and iPads. Maybe Google Glass will catch on and we'll all be talking to our glasses and taking a picture with just a wink!

More than 1 billion unique users visit YouTube each month and over 4 billion hours of video are watched. YouTube is the third most visited site, just behind Google and Facebook (source: Alexa). Some of those videos go viral, creating YouTube sensations. Where would Justin Bieber be without YouTube? (Probably back home in Canada). 

No formula exists to make a video go viral but you can take advantage of YouTube for SEO. The more you optimize your videos, the better chance your videos will be found in Google search results, perhaps even page one! YouTube's recently launched, YouTube One Channel, gives you plenty of opportunity to promote your brand and best of all, it's free!

Promote Your Brand!

What YouTube really wants to do is help advertisers engage their target audience by encouraging and pushing users towards channel subscriptions. This will allow advertisers to grow a community on YouTube. As a brand, you will receive several benefits from the One Channel design.

1. First Impression: Use the new trailer feature to win over new subscribers.
2. Dress Up: Design on your desktop and look good on tablets and all other mobile devices.
3. Uniqueness: Nobody's channel will be like yours. Organize your videos and playlist to fit your one of a kind brand.

Yesterday, Matt Cutts, the head of Google's Webspam team, announced the roll-out of Penguin 2.0 which is said to affect 2.3% of all search queries on Google. To catch some of you up, Penguin 2.0 is the fourth release of Google's spam-fighting updates. Some people will be calling it Penguin 4, but it contains Penguin 2.0 technology, which Google states is a new generation of technology that should better stop spam. That means, this is not a data refresh, however a new algorithm set to ward off spam even more and hopefully reward those of us that are actually doing SEO the correct way. With the update now live it is said that webmasters and SEOs should expect major changes to the search results.