When Page and Brin began creating Google it was based on the hypothesis that a search engine that could analyze the relationships between the different websites could get better results then the techniques that already existed. In the beginning the system used back links to estimate a websites importance causing its creators to name it Backrub.

Pleased with the results the search engine had on the Stanford University’s website the two students registered the domain google.com on September 14, 1997. A year after registering the domain name Google Inc. was incorporated.

Google began to sell advertisements associated with keyword searches in 2000. By using text based advertisements Google was able to maintain an uncluttered page design that encouraged maximum page loading speed. Google sold the keywords based on a combination of clickthroughs and price bids. Bidding on the keywords started at five cents a click.

Google’s simple design quickly attracted a large population of loyal internet users.

Google’s success has allowed it the freedom to create tools and services such as Web applications, business solutions, and advertising networks for the general public and its expanding business environment.

In 2000 Google launched its advertising creation, AdWords. For a monthly fee Google would both set up and then manage a company’s advertising campaign. Google relies on AdWords for the bulk of its revenue. AdWords offers its clients pay-per-click advertising. AdWords provides adverting for local, national, and international distribution. AdWords is able to define several important factors in keywords when and ad is first created to determine how much a client will pay-per-click, if the ad is eligible for ad auction, and how the ad ranks in the auction if it is eligible.

By following a set of guidelines provided by Google, webmasters can ensure that Google’s web crawlers are able to find, index, and rank their websites.

Google offers a variety of tools that have help provide information about add sites, updates, and sitemaps. Google’s Apps have changed how my company also communicates internally and externally. Two years ago we changed our email, calendar and contacts from MS Exchange to Gmail Apps. This has made our lives so much better and has reduced the cost of upgrading software in our firm.

The major factor behind Google’s success is its web search services. Google uses Page Rank for its search engine optimization program. Page rank is a link analysis algorithm that assigns a numerical weight to every single element of a hyperlinked set of documents, like the World Wide Web. Its purpose is to measure the relative importance within the set. PageRank is a registered trade

While Internet branding offers vast opportunities for business, in order for it to be effective one must be able to attract and engage its customers doing this over the Internet is not an easy task. Internet branding is not as simple as putting up a website and adding your company logo and slogan. Your internet branding strategy should make your online brand visible and distinguishable.

Internet branding makes use of technological tools to create an online presence for your business. Graphics and animation, a compelling web copy, and overall website design that reflect your company’s brand are some of the important elements that will bring your online brand alive. Additionally, an attractive website that helps customers easily and quickly find the information they need is the key to get customer interaction and eventually, business. Your Internet branding strategy should incorporate good design elements and ease of use to create an effective overall impression of your company.

A strong online brand image will make the difference whether a customer will buy from you online or switch to your competitors. Remember, that online customers can just leave your site and go to your competitors in a click of a mouse. Therefore, a lot depends on the impression that they get from your site. Internet branding seeks to deliver an immediate unique message about your business to your target clients.

Visibility is also crucial in the online business world. There is no use to having a website if Internet users are not aware of it and because of the vast number of websites, businesses are competing to appear at the top pages of big search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Most customers do not look past the first few search pages when they make a search query so ranking high in these pages gives you better chances of driving customers to your site. That is why optimizing your site is another major consideration in Internet branding.

As you can see, there are many requirements for a successful Internet branding strategy. For small or large businesses, hiring an Internet branding or marketing specialist will be helpful to give you focus on your efforts in creating an online presence that will become a valuable asset to your business.

With a strong corporate branding strategy, a business is able to establish to the consumers immediately the unique value of their product or service such as credibility and high quality. This is why creating a powerful corporate brand and protecting it is critical not only for large businesses but for any business serious about its goals.

Corporate branding is the use of the company’s name as a brand name of a product or service. Some examples include Coca-Cola and Kleenex. This practice is effective in building product recognition. However, corporate branding is more than just advertising and marketing. It involves those processes but, at the same time, corporate branding incorporates other strategies such as investor and media relations. Corporate branding requires the participation of not just the marketing group but top management as well.

It is important to note that corporate branding is not the same as corporate identity. Corporate identity is the image of a company manifested in the company’s logo, product packaging designs, media advertisements and etcetera. It is just one strategy employed under the overall corporate branding strategy. Corporate branding involves the company’s values, philosophies and culture.

In order for corporate branding to be successful, a company must establish solid long-term goals and vision and infuse it in all of the company’s operations. Corporate branding takes time and a lot of research. Some large corporations that have built powerful corporate brands include GE, Disney, Apple, Microsoft, Nestle, Aramark, Nike,  Procter & Gamble, Sony and many more

A company, whatever size, will be successful in its corporate branding efforts if through time it will continually invest its resources and ensure consistent delivery of its business message in all level of operations – whether the message is commitment to customer service, innovation, or values like perseverance or integrity. Corporate branding allows businesses to be competitive by leveraging its unique business values and approaches in order to create brand awareness and loyalty among consumers.

Corporate brands are one of the most valuable non-financial asset a company can own. Protect them, because if your brand is tarnished in any way,  getting it back can cost you billions and maybe your job, just ask former BP CEO Tony Haywood if you think I’m wrong.

The year began with closing debates on health care reform, and the March 20th passage of the historic Affordable Care Act, with barely a majority in the House and just enough votes to avoid a filibuster in the Senate.  The highly contentious bill had to go through reconciliation in the Senate for certain House amendments to be included.  No sooner than the bill passed did we see its opponents take up arms and vow to take their fight to the courthouse with nearly two dozen mostly right-leaning states filing lawsuits that aim to repeal the bill.  The ultimate impact of the health care legislation is yet to be recognized, as most of its key provisions will not be enacted until 2014.  And between now and then, one can anticipate a great deal of lobbying as state legislatures work to implement key requirements related to Medicaid, Medicare, and Insurance Exchanges.

With healthcare reform enacted, the Democrats next charge was financial reform, a major part of the party platform during the 2008 presidential candidate.  In spite of what appeared to be a commitment from both parties to reform a financial system that almost brought the world’s economy to a halt during the latter part of 2008, both sides could not reach an agreement on reform and you even had the Democrats face a hard time reaching a consensus within their party.  The financial reform bill that was passed in July will now have to stand up to other tests as financial industry groups and lobbyists work to mitigate the regulatory impact of the legislation to preserve the industry’s ability to maintain profitability.

Coinciding with financial reform, was a growing bipartisan effort to draft a comprehensive energy and environmental bill in the Senate, an effort that all but seemed to come to a halt when national attention shifted to immigration in response to passage of Arizona’s now infamous Senate Bill 1070.  Then April 20, 2010 marked an unprecedented oil drilling disaster, as the Transocean drilling rig operated by British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico exploded.   The whole world watched for nearly 100 days until BP was finally able to successfully execute a “top-kill” procedure, which temporarily cause the oil gushing to stop.  The final verdict on this catastrophe might not be reached for years to come.  Declining support for the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, ethics trial of key House Democrats, the fight to lift the Cuban trade embargo, further debate on the Disclose Act, and a potential Supreme Court case on California’s Proposition 8 should suffice in keeping us occupied in the mean time.

Congress heads into this year with a lot of work left to be done.  Furthermore, we have yet to see how the year’s events will impact the outcome of the 2010 fall elections.  Earlier in the year, it appeared that Republicans were going to hang their hope of reclaiming congressional seats on the public debate on healthcare, while Democrats hopes relied on painting Republicans as “the party of NO”.  However, as the events of the year have unfolded it is unclear what the strategy on either side will end up being.  Republicans have gone from hoping for gains in the House, to believing they have an opportunity to reclaim both chambers of Congress.  On the other side of the table are the Democrats who believe passage of financial reform and the debate on immigration might be just the right combination to help energize their base and keep them in power for at least two more years (It, however, did not help that the President’s Press Secretary Robert Gibbs appeared on Meet The Press and proclaimed that Democrats were at risk of losing both the House and Senate).  Mainstream Republicans have struggled this year as we have watched experienced legislators like Utah’s Senator Bob Bennett lose his party primary, and veterans like John McCain have to run to the hard right to retain their seats.  Then there are the fights in Colorado and Florida where the Tea Party effect might have been just the poison pill that diminishes any chance of Republicans being reelected to the Governor and US Senate seats in those states respectively.

Upon Congress’ return from recess, they will be faced with decisions on what do regarding immigration, a comprehensive energy policy, an uncertain economic climate, above nine percent unemployment, mounting resentment on the Afghanistan war, and continually rising debt.   All said, this year’s fall elections bear no resemblance to the historic 2008 fall elections, however, with so much on the table your guess is just as good as mine on what the outcome is going to be.

“The results of this survey clearly demonstrate that public relations has moved multi-channel,” said Stefan Pollack, chair of the Worldcom Americas Region and president of The Pollack PR Marketing Group, a Los Angeles-based firm. “From a trend perspective, clients are looking for firms that can deliver immediate impact with sustainable value. These results provide insight to our partner firms about how to gear their client programming and to determine how best to continue to grow services and in what areas.”

According to the survey, the services respondents expect the decrease to include: media relations (19 percent), advertising (17 percent), and direct mail and marketing (11 percent). In general, the majority of firms are optimistic about business increasing in the next three to five years.

Moreover, an increase in multichannel services is a critical indicator for firms to move beyond media relations as a major source of revenue. For example, more than half of the respondents expected social media, interactive/web development and search engine optimization services to increase – 93 percent, 73 percent and 61 percent, respectively. Yet obstacles still remain for firms to determine how to increase revenue from these services; particularly search engine optimization – for example, no agency reported more than 10 percent of revenue from SEO.

In addition, one-third of the Worldcom Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and Asia Pacific region firms expect the percentage of work from their home countries to decrease. This represents an opportunity for global firms to acquire clients from beyond their home countries. Additional key findings included investor relations and influencer/stakeholder relations as other significant areas of revenue, and 37 percent of firms in the Americas targeting specific cultural demographics. The most commonly cited was Latino/Hispanic, with 10 percent.

Methodology
The online survey was sent to 104 Worldcom firms regarding services provided by their firms. Seventy-four firms responded, a response rate of 71 percent. Padilla Speer Beardsley’s research practice facilitated the survey.

About the Worldcom Public Relations Group
Worldcom Public Relations Group is the world’s leading partnership of independently owned public relations counseling firms, with 104 offices in 91 cities worldwide. Established in 1988, it was formed so that the strongest, most capable independent public relations firms could serve national, international and multi-national clients while retaining the flexibility and client-service focus inherent in independent firms. Through The Worldcom Group, clients have on-demand access to in-depth communications expertise from professionals who understand the language, culture and customs of the geographic arenas in which they operate. Visit www.worldcomgroup.com for more information.

Worldcom EMEA currently comprises 34 agencies with strong expertise in consumer, healthcare, travel & tourism, technology, energy & environment, financial services, investor relations, public affairs and crisis & issues management. Clients include Unilever, Johnson & Johnson, Panasonic, Sony Ericson, LG Electronics, the EU Anti-Tobacco Campaign, Verbatim and Palm. Visit www.worldcomprgroupemea.com for more information.

This is welcome news considering the fact that there has been significant uncertainty about the future of BP.  Its stock market value has been cut in half since the initial onset of the spill, and it was rumored earlier this week that a certain bank had warned its employees not to issue debt contracts to BP that extend beyond a year.   Then you take into consideration that FEMA the federal government’s disaster recovery arm has yet to recover from the barrage of floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and fires that have depleted its funds over the past five years.

It goes without saying that the federal government needs BP just about as much as BP needs the government right now.  The agreement by BP to the demands of the Obama administration should not come as a surprise to anyone paying close attention to what is at stake.  However, by being readily agreeable to the President’s request, BP effectively killed multiple birds with one stone.  In order for BP to survive they were already going to have to pay for the damages from this tragedy.  So by acquiescing to the  the administration’s demand, BP was able to cast itself as compassionate, while at the same time enabling the administration to show some stealth and build some political capital in the process.

Despite the staggering sum being set aside, some have speculated this amount would be insufficient to cover the long-term costs this disaster is bound to run. To offer some comparison, BP had gross earnings of $246 billion in 2009 with net profits being $17 billion.  So in actuality, BP is putting up all of last years profit and some change as a show of goodwill to the administration and the American public.  It is safe to conclude that we need BP to be alive and well in order to not only preserve 23,000 jobs, but also to ensure that our nation recovers from this catastrophe.

There are basically two types of search engines. The first is by robots called crawlers or spiders.

Search Engines use spiders to index websites. When you submit your website pages to a search engine by completing their required submission page, the search engine spider will index your entire site. A ‘spider’ is an automated program that is run by the search engine system. Spider visits a web site, read the content on the actual site, the site’s Meta tags and also follow the links that the site connects. The spider then returns all that information back to a central depository, where the data is indexed. It will visit each link you have on your website and index those sites as well. Some spiders will only index a certain number of pages on your site, so don’t create a site with 500 pages!

The spider will periodically return to the sites to check for any information that has changed. The frequency with which this happens is determined by the moderators of the search engine.

A spider is almost like a book where it contains the table of contents, the actual content and the links and references for all the websites it finds during its search, and it may index up to a million pages a day.

Example:  Ask, Excite, Yahoo, Bing and Google.

When you ask a search engine to locate information, it is actually searching through the index which it has created and not actually searching the Web. Different search engines produce different rankings because not every search engine uses the same algorithm to search through the indices.

One of the things that a search engine algorithm scans for is the frequency and location of keywords on a web page, but it can also detect artificial keyword stuffing or spamdexing. Then the algorithms analyze the way that pages link to other pages in the Web. By checking how pages link to each other, an engine can both determine what a page is about, if the keywords of the linked pages are similar to the keywords on the original page.

For additional information, please visit our partner agency at www.ideafolder.com, thank you.

• Create a site with valuable content, products or services.
• Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.
• Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.
• Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.
• Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.
• Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.
• Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.
• Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.
• Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.
• Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.
• Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.
• When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer’s experience fast and easy.
• When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.
• Don’t look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

For additional help with this and other SEO issues, please contact our partner agency  at www.ideafolder.com or contact me at hector@carrenogroup.com

The product or service has to add value for the sender, as well as, the receiver.

1. The offer has to be deliverable. You don’t want to offer a product that you can’t deliver if demand grows rapidly.

2. The offer has to be easily transferable to others. E-mail and Web pages provide the best medium to facilitate this.

3. The vest viral marketing campaigns use existing networks to move the message along.

The basis of viral marketing has been around for a long time. The idea is that you incite your customers or referral sources to pass on something about your business to their network of colleagues and friends. Those that pass on your information get something in return. The something might be a gift or service related to your business.

Using e-mail makes it incredibly easy to pass information on to a friend or colleague, especially if it involves something fun or free. With millions using the Internet worldwide, the potential for exponential growth is tremendous. The great things about viral marketing are that it is free and works virtually by itself. Once you make an offer and provide the facility for referrals, viral marketing spreads like… well… a virus…but the good kind.

To implement viral marketing at your business; first, start with your customer base. Incite existing customers to refer new ones. Second, go to your referral sources. Service providers, your outside network and colleagues can be encouraged to provide referrals that lead to business.

If you need help in creating a viral marketing campaign, feel free to contact us at hector@carrenogroup.com.

Early in the wake of the disaster, several industry experts asserted that controlling the crisis would rely primarily on BP’s, who has led the efforts, ability to determine the best method by which to plug the hole.  Efforts to control the spill have been unsuccessful up until this point, despite varied attempts at utilizing a multitude of techniques to curb the spill.  The lack of progress has led to increased frustration and calls for President Obama and the administration to take over the efforts to control the spill. The administration, however, has taken no formal position on whether or not they intend to take control of the situation with the spill.  Last week Interior Secretary Ken Salazar went as far as saying that BP had to either control the situation or prepare to get out of the way, but he has since had to backtrack from his earlier statements.

The growing calls for the federal government to take charge are now being uttered by several lawmakers including Ben Nelson (D) of Florida, who think that the oversight of the response and cleanup can be handled by the military.  The question as to whether or not the administration ought to take over is one that most people are split over, and the response depends in large part on who you talk to.  Residents of the gulf coast boiled over with frustration are urging that the administration needs to step in and take over the process, as do a host of legislators including members of the President’s party.  Industry experts and observers, however, continue to insist that the only option is to let BP continue with its ongoing efforts in hopes that it comes up with a solution.

Neutral observers like myself are more inclined to believe that the best path forward is to let BP continue to spear head the efforts.  It is no secret that the US government has no expertise in oil exploration, and as a result is not equipped with the technology, knowledge, or tools that it takes to operate an oil rig, much less contain a catastrophe such as this.  The administration’s main focus going forward has to be on monitoring the effort to control the spill, ensuring that the affected areas receive the appropriate assistance, and that the accountable parties own up to their social and financial responsibilities.  Most importantly, the administration needs to step in and give the public a sense that they are taking charge of the situation, and will protect the public’s interest.