March 3, 2010 | No Comments »
Late last week I had the opportunity to attend an economic forecast by renowned economist Alan Beaulieu of the Institute for Trend Research. His view is that we will experience a slight recovery over the next 2 to 3 years (he called it bouncing along the bottom albeit increasing slowly). He also noted that it is highly unlikely that the US will experience growth like we have over the last twenty year cycle. Growth going forward will be much slower. He also noted that the early indicators of the recovery were already showing before the stimulus programs were passed. Mr. Beaulieu also does not expect the US to have a double dip recession. Other positives included:
-Retail sales excluding automobile are now trending upwards
-The recovery of the USA is looking to be faster than that of Europe and Japan
-The “Purchasing Managers Index” and “US Industrial Production” are trending upward. Both are good leading indicators that the economy has bottomed out and recovery has started.
-US Industrial Production is trending upward
-Personal credit is trending downward and personal savings are increasing…both healthy for the long term
-Orders for durable goods are trending upwards
Mr. Beaulieu also noted that there are some negatives adversely affecting the economy and recovery:
-The current 10 year deficit projection will lead to significant fiscal strain. At this rate of growth, the cost of borrowing money as a percent of the total federal budget increases from 10.9% in 2009 to 34.1% in 2015. This growth is unsustainable and the pressure will lead to either significant tax increases or dramatic cuts in government spending.
-Taxes are already going up
-Over the next couple years oil prices will likely increase to $120 per barrel and inflation is estimated to increase to the 7.5% range over the next two years.
-Money will continue to be tight and banks are not likely to increase lending significantly in this environment.
-Non residential construction is still trending downward
-The “unemployment rate” will appear to improve soon as the benefits expire and those unemployed are no longer counted. The real unemployment rate will remain high.
-Tourism in still declining.
The news isn’t rosy but at least there some encouraging signs that a modest recovery has already started.
March 2, 2010 | No Comments »
HubSpot reports that blogs that are frequently updated receive 7 times more organic search traffic:
A follow-up study shows that the mere act of blogging does not guarantee more site traffic. Anyone can set up a blog and leave it idle as initial excitements fade. Businesses that actively manage their blogs, however, fare much better than those without blogs.
A study of 2,168 HubSpot customers shows that businesses that published at least 5 blog articles in the last 7 days draw 6.9 times more organic search traffic and 1.12 times more referral traffic than those who don’t blog at all.
Via Small Business Search Marketing.
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Bird Rock Surf Shop
If you have a website for your small brick-and-mortar business ( and we hope you do ) you’d probably like to have your customers be able to find you online. You want customers to get a link to your site in a search engine when they do web searches that are related to business, and to do that, you need to optimize the content of your website for those searches. While there is a lot of good advice about optimizing for local searches at places like Local SEO Guide there is one tip that is both important and incomplete.
If a customer is doing a local search on a search engine, the customer is likely to use the name of a city, neighborhood or zip code, and that local term may not be the one in your address. Including your address on your web site is not good enough.
Suppose you have surf shop in the Pacific Beach neighborhood of San Diego, but you also serve people from Mission Beach, Bird Rock and La Jolla. You customer might be doing any of these searches:
- surf shop san diego
- surf shop pacific beach
- surf shop 92109
- surf shop la jolla
There are probably several dozen searches that the customer might use, so in addition to your address, your website should also include the zip codes and neighborhood names that you serve.
Also consider that your customers might be searching for a particular product, such as Sanuk sandals. Your customer might be searching for:
- sanuk bird rock
- sanuk 92037
- sanuk mission beach
- … etc …
So, you’ll want to have your zip-codes and neighborhood names on the same page as your top brand names.
Clarinova’s Front Window microsites do this automatically when the retailer enters the zip code and brand names for their stores. For instance, the Sanuk microsite for Mitch’s Surf Shop includes this text at the bottom of the pages:
Mitch’s Surf Shop serves the communities of North City, Cardiff by the Sea, Del mar, Rancho Santa Fe and Solana Beach. Mitch’s Surf Shop is conveniently near the zip codes 92075, 92091, 92007, 92014 and 92130.
Here is the text for the microsite for the Sanuk microsite for Pacific Beach Surf Shop:
Pacific Beach Surf Shop serves the communities of Pacific Beach, Bay Ho and San Diego. Pacific Beach Surf Shop is conveniently near the zip codes 92109, 92169, 92167, 92037 and 92138.
Text like this helps ensure that what every your customer’s search for, they will find your website.
February 24, 2010 | No Comments »
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