marți, 17 aprilie 2012

How to Improve Your Rankings with Semantic Keyword Research

How to Improve Your Rankings with Semantic Keyword Research

How to Improve Your Rankings with Semantic Keyword Research

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 02:01 PM PDT

Posted by neilpatel

From Google’s Panda, Search Plus Your World and Venice updates, in the last year alone the SEO landscape has changed. And while that means your SEO strategy will change, too, there is one thing that remains the same…keywords.

Keywords remain important to your content and link strategies. 

But there is one change coming down the Google pipeline that will change keywords…semantic search technology and the human element.

What is semantic search?

Basically, semantic search is technology that tries to determine what users mean when they type in a certain keyword.

They explore the semantics of those words…or the meaning behind them.

For example, if someone typed in “laptop” do they mean:

  • That they want to buy a laptop?
  • Have one repaired?
  • Upgraded?
  • Are they even talking about a computer, but something entirely different?

In the real world most people don’t search with one keyword…additional keywords give additional clues.

Even then search engines aren’t always right. Google guesses because all it has to go on are the keywords you enter into their engine.

Semantic search will look at how those words relate to each other and look for clues on how you entered them…location being crucial.

Say you used Google search on your smart phone to find “laptop repair.” Semantic search will recognize your location via your GPS on your phone and deliver you “laptop repair” results based on location.

In other words, results related to “laptop repair + [your city].”

How does this impact SEO?

In your SEO campaigns semantic search means you will have to identify the right keywords based upon user intent in the real world…and then create content around those terms.

This is where the semantic keyword research comes in.

In the world of keyword research you simply sought out the keywords with the highest search volume. The meaning between your list of keywords and the content you created was equal. There was a one to one relationship.

“SEO strategy tools” meant “SEO strategy tools.”

In the semantic keyword world, you build a database of keywords that are full of meaning...”SEO strategy tools” could be used in four different contexts.

Your job is to figure out how.                                                   

What are the advantages of semantic keyword research?

Having a database of semantic keywords to create high-converting blog posts is one advantage…but there are other benefits, like improved CTR and PPC optimization as Wordstream explained: 

  • Higher click-through rate – Whether it’s in your emails, landing pages, text ads or blog posts, highly-targeted semantic keywords will improve your CTR. When all these elements of the conversion funnel are aligned semantically…your results will go through the roof.
  • Lower minimum bids – Higher relevance and targeted action with your content due to semantic keyword enhancements will lead to lower minimum bids on your PPC campaigns.
  • Higher quality score – When you achieve high relevance around your semantic keywords…the search engines will reward your content with a high quality score that leads to better rankings.

Tools you can use to find semantic keywords

Employing a semantic keyword plan is crucial. But how do you come up with those keywords? Here are five approaches to use…including recommended tools.

Using Google advanced search

Google’s advanced search results provide a quick way to generate some semantic keywords. Just type in a query like “laptop discount codes” and click “Show search tools”:

Then click “related searches”…

…and then you’ll see all of the semantic terms for “laptop discount codes”:

As you can see from the results above, when searchers think of “laptop discount codes” they are thinking in specific terms of a brand for the most part.

In other words, the term “laptop” was changed into a brand…giving you semantic options.

And don’t forget to use Google Instant for further ideas on keywords:

By the way, all those keywords are completely different than what you got in the “related search.”

Now let’s look at a reverse case of semantic keyword use. In this case we’ll look up the term “laptop repair”:

“Laptop repair” is synonymous to screen repair, brand laptop repair and even different ways of looking at repair like “troubleshooting.”

And this is where it gets interesting. Look at the Google Instant version of “laptop repair” and you see this:

You get all the options related to location.

Keep in mind that your job isn’t simply to scoop up all of these up. You have to decide what people are thinking when they search with these terms. In some cases it will be obvious…in others it won’t be so obvious.

That’s what semantic keyword research is all about.

You can refine your results with Google Insights for Search where you can narrow keywords down via categories, for instance.

Semantic keyword research with bookmarking tags

If you want to find out how some searchers think about keywords, examine how tags are used at social bookmarking sites like Delicious.

Here’s a search on their database for my blog QuickSprout:

As you can see, there are a total of 578 posts that have been bookmarked in Delicious.

To examine the tags that people use to bookmark that content…in a sense, seeing how people are viewing the content and giving you an inside track to their mind…look at how people created “Stacks,” “Links” and “Related Tags.”

You can perform the same process on new social bookmarking sites like Diigo, Pinterest and Licorize.

Again, it’s important to think through how to use these keywords and not just scoop them up.

Building a semantic keyword cloud through social monitoring tools

Using social media monitoring tools to track the mentions of your brand is pretty common and an effective way to stay on top of the competition and conversation.

Using these same tools for semantic keyword research is just as effective to build a cloud of keywords around a particular sentiment.

For example, in Social Mention search a keyword you type in. Here I used “Virgin Atlantic.”

Then you can get a quick look at the top keywords being used around the brand.

Other social mention tools you can use to help you build a cloud of semantic keywords are TweetDeck, Raven Tool’s Social Monitor and Technorati.

Optimizing semantic keywords around trends

A great strategy to keep in front of the public and at the top of search engines is to optimize your semantic keywords around a trending topic.

This means you have to keep your eyes on high-volume topics. Here are the tools to do that:

  • Google Trends – This is the obvious place you should check first.
  • Ice Rocket – Search the latest buzz on blogs through this search engine dedicated to blogs. While you will see what’s hot on the blogosphere…one thing you won’t see is any older posts.
  • Trendrr TV – And if you want to keep on top of what’s hot on TV, then Trendrr is the place you need to look.
  • TweetVolume – While it’s offline for the moment, sign up to be the first to use this powerful tool to see popular keywords and trends on Twitter.

Gathering semantic keywords through social search

When it comes to researching on the social web, the first place I always look for keyword ideas is TwitterSearch.

The way to use it is to look up a keyword like “SEO strategies.” Then look at what people are tweeting about that keyword phrase:

What you want to find is how people are using that term. So look at the words surrounding the keyword…and then decide how to use it to build your own semantic keywords.

OpenBook – This site will let you see what people are sharing on Facebook. And just like Twitter Search, look at the context on how the keyword is used to determine query intent:

Conclusion

There are dozens of tools out there you can use to build a semantic keyword cloud. Hopefully you understand the approach that I’m recommending so that you can then apply these principles to other tools.

Keep in mind that as much as semantic keyword research is about finding actual keywords you can use in your SEO campaigns…it’s just as much about building a complete profile of your target customer. And the better you can understand your target customer the better your campaign results will be!

What other tools do you use to create semantic keyword groups? 

About the author: Neil Patel is the co-founder of KISSmetrics, an analytics provider that helps companies make better business decisions.


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

9 Tangible Linkable Asset Ideas and How to Build Links to Them

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 04:59 AM PDT

Posted by kaiserthesage

When I started to work as an SEO for an Australian-based SEO agency in early 2010, I never knew anything about the work (optimizing websites and building links to them) and definitely unsure of most of the things that I have worked on during that time.

All I did was to follow all the instructions given to me, build links in volume and research/learn all the basics of SEO from scratch. I got the hang of it after a couple of months, and I thought that I was doing great. Then I got fired.

I guess it was a tragic story, but not quite true, since I was immediately hired by Affilorama and Traffic Travis right after getting ditched by my former employer. Fortunately, this led me to getting acquainted with the works of Ross Hudgens, Garret French and Wil Reynolds in mid-2010 – the people in this industry who have really influenced my thinking on SEO, particularly in scaling almost all encompassed processes and methodologies when optimizing a website, which certainly include building and promoting “linkable assets”.

So let’s head over to the main topic of this post (sorry for the long introduction), and start defining what a linkable asset is. Basically, a linkable asset is any part of a website or organization that its target audience will genuinely perceive as worth citing/referencing to. It could be people, content, events or anything that can be really interesting to a specifically targeted market.

This aspect of a website is so important to any form of online marketing campaign, especially these days, seeing as these materials are able to benefit a site/brand in so many ways, such as:

  • Ability to continuously attract links to the domain
  • Strengthen a site’s online brand presence (substantiates the brand’s authoritativeness)
  • Generate more interested/fascinated brand followers and leads to the business
  • Becoming more visible through search and social channels (and yield more traffic to the site)

To give you a clearer picture of how linkable assets work, I’ll give several samples below as well as the link building methods that you can implement to promote each type of content.

Awards

Awards

Samples:

How to build links to online Award-giving Bodies:

  • Provide embeddable widgets – Offer widgets that the award’s nominees, finalists and winners can use and embed to their sites/blogs, which will link back to your site.
  • Get press mentions – find columnists and authority bloggers who will most likely be interested to cover your online event (particularly those who write about your business’ industry). Engage and pitch a newsworthy angle about your upcoming event. For a more in-depth guide on pitching news to authority news sites, you can check out Chris Winfield’s recent post on getting press coverage.
  • Reach out to content curators – identify the top curators in your industry, probably bloggers who have published lists of top blogs and resources in your field. Contact these people and ask if they’ll be interested to make a write up about your event, or offer to do a guest post for them.
  • Leverage social sharing to nominees, members and/or winners – encourage participants to share their entry, as the more your content gets across their network and audience, the greater chances of getting second wave coverage/links from small and medium-sized blogs.

News Voting Feature

News Voting

Samples:

A news voting feature is best built to already existing communities that have a strong following base, like industry-specific forums and blogs, since they already have users who can regularly submit articles and contribute to discussions. It’s also a great way to engage an already existing community, seeing that you can incentivize the approach by allowing your community to promote their own content within the site.

How to build links to a news voting section of a site:

  • Get press coverage – as always, getting links from news sites that have strong readership can help drive massive traffic to your site, especially in its launching stage, and can eventually bring more natural link acquisition opportunities from bloggers in your industry who might write about your site’s news voting section. Track and make a list of the people who’ll share the news articles about your launch, and segment those who have blogs, as you can also reach out to these people and ask if they’ll be interested to link to your news voting page.
  • Embeddable widgets for top members – you can also choose to offer widgets to your active members to generate more links to your site.
  • Acquire links from industry resources pages – Find resources pages in your industry and offer your news voting section to be included on their list of resources (you can start with queries like “keyword news” + inurl:resources). Given that this area of the site will be mostly user-generated, your link requests will have higher chances of getting approved.
  • Get blogroll links – start with blogs that have already linked to your site in the past and with individuals that you have already connected with, and pitch the idea of including your news voting site to their blogroll links. Psychologically, the request will have more impact, since the page will surely be offering fresh pages/articles about your industry around the web (which means the page is able to offer real value to possible click-through visitors).

Free Learning Tools and Extensive Lessons

Codeacademy

Samples:

How to build links to free lessons:

  • Contextual links from externally distributed content – cite your extensive free lessons whenever you contribute to other blogs through guest blogging. Place the links within your guest posts’ content and always vary your links’ anchor texts. You can also link to them through the other formats of you content you distribute, such as free whitepapers, slide presentations and newsletters.
  • Push content via social media – increase awareness by launching a social media campaign for your free lessons. With more people discovering the content, the more it can translate to possible editorial link opportunities and acquisitions. You can start with a Stumbleupon marketing campaign through paid discovery or by just promoting the shared links through su.pr to increase unique pageviews to your free lessons.
  • Linker Outreach – make a list of known linkers and social sharers in your industry and let them know about your free course. You can easily identify these people by tracking your competitors’ social and link data, particularly from your competitors’ strong content. To learn more about this method, you can check out this guide on linker outreach that I wrote several months ago.
  • Request links from .edu sites – this type of material will almost always have higher response rates when pitched to .edu sites, knowing that the offered content is providing high-value information. Search for .edu sites (ex: “keyword resources” site:.edu) who might be interested to add your lessons on their resources pages.
  • Build links through community discussions – search for questions that relates to the information supplied by your lessons on related forums and Q&A sites. Link to your free lessons’ page when contributing to these highly-relevant discussions and make the link serve as a reference.
  • Get featured on other bloggers' newsletters – if you’ve done your homework and have managed to build relationships/connections with bloggers in your field that have a substantial amount of email subscribers, then pitching to have your lessons featured on their newsletters is a very feasible idea. Absorb their audience to take a look of your site and try to contain them once they land on your free lessons page.

Video Series

Samples:

How to build links to a page with series of videos:

  • Embed and incorporate videos when submitting guest blogs – this will make your guest posts look more comprehensive and it also gives you the right to link back to the category or main page of where you host your videos.
  • Promote via Stumbleupon – this social platform is a home to millions of cerebral and social media-savvy users, they basically know how social media works, so you’ll definitely want to have your page filled with high-quality videos in front of their users. You can invest $20 - $100 on paid discovery just to get a jumpstart with your social media campaign and probably expect to have your pageviews multiplied if you’ve positioned your social buttons well to act as obvious CTAs. The more the content gets exposure from these types of viewers, the more opportunities your page get for link acquisition.
  • Track the links and social shares from your competitors’ videos – you can use tools like Topsy and Ahrefs to identify the sites and Twitter profiles who have shared their content. List these people/blogs and try to be in touch with them, and then ask if they’ll be interested to see your videos and perhaps share and/or link to it as well.

Job Boards

Job Boards

Samples:

How to build links to Job Boards:

  • Blogroll links – most independent blogs are publishing tutorials to help their readers learn, earn and probably get a job, and with that being said, requesting for them to link to your site’s job board makes it absolutely reasonable and relevant. Start with blogs who have already linked to your site in the past, as these blogs are already aware of your brand and somehow trusts you as a resource in your field of expertise. You can eventually expand to your other link/blog prospects along the process of building relationships with them.
  • Acquire links from those who are posting job offers in your site – some of these businesses could be a good link/content partner for your site, so it’s best to build relationships with them as well.
  • Encourage visitors to socially share their entry or the job board page – building social signals is quite important these days, as it will not just help in making the page more visible through search and social, but it also denotes high-activity and usage of the page.
  • Request links from .edu sites – there are tons of .edu sites that list job vacancies/openings from different companies, primarily to make it easier for their students to find jobs right after they graduate. Use Google Search to find job resources pages from .edu sites and make contact to ask if it’s possible for your site’s job board to be included on their resources page. Specificity is the key to get high approval rates from your link requests. Ensure that the jobs being offered in your page will bring value to the page you’re trying to get a link from.

Graphic design jobs

Bonus tip: You can use this scraping method and CitationLabs’ contact finder to easily extract each of your target .edu site’s contact details, because they really do reward links to job listings.

Data Visualization

Samples:

How to build links to these types of rich-media content:

  • Create news through your data and pitch the story to news sites and authority blogs – journalists and top/pro bloggers love data and numbers, so if you can do an extensive research about your industry, which can provide stats that could be helpful to build a newsworthy story, then you can improve your chances of getting solid links from authority domains just by presenting your data to columnists/bloggers who specifically write about your industry.
  • Offer embed codes – make it easier for others to copy and embed your rich-media content to their own blogs (that links back to the original source of the content – your site).
  • Feature it on your guest blogs to increase approval rate – you can also build more content that supports the data/information provided by your infographic/video and submit those as guest blogs, along with your infographic/video embedded within your guest entry. This will then amplify the reach of your data, as more brand signals will be sent out to people (your blog prospects’ audiences) who will be able to see your contributed content.
  • Promote heavily through social media – reach out to known influencers in your industry and ask for feedback or if they can share your content on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc...). It's important to evaluate your content, if it's really compelling and share-worthy, before sending your pitch.

Coin a term

Inbound Marketing

Samples:

Creating your own brand’s industry term or technical terminology is a form of thought-leadership, and it’s definitely a linkable asset, wherein people will give credit to your brand whenever they use the term you have created. That’s why it’s imperative to build a definition page for the term(s) that you’re planning to invent, which should clearly define the meaning, usage as well as the history of the word, to own it in the SERPs.

How to build links to your technical terminology’s definition page:

  • Use it frequently when distributing content externally – use the term and make it link back to your term’s definition page (hosted within your domain) when you’re submitting guest posts to other blogs, participating on community discussions and distributing free downloadable ebooks or slide presentations.
  • Create a Wikipedia page for your industry term – use your definition page as well as other high-authority pages/articles that have used the term as references.
  • Set up Google Alerts for your term – track blogs/sites that might use your term through Google Alerts, and try to ask for link attribution whenever you see it getting mentioned by other sites (if it’s not linking back to your definition page).

Extremely Useful Apps and Browser-based Tools

Open Site Explorer

Samples:

How to build links to Web-based tools:

  • Every major tool version update is newsworthy – if your site is offering free web-based tools, you should take advantage of its major updates, as you can publicize it through content distribution (press release and blog posts). Google is doing it, why shouldn’t you?
  • Get links from bloggers (experiential reviews) – reach out to highly relevant blogs, and see if they’ll be interested to try out your tools. Provide them with all the resources that they might need to help them understand how your tool works, as this can somehow make them more interested to write about your tool. You can also check this list of alternative blogger outreach techniques to improve the chances of acquiring links from them.
  • Obtain links from list pages (top and best resources/tools in your niche) – find pages that list the best tools and resources in your field. Engage the publisher of the content and invite them to try out your tool. Send a link request if they’re satisfied. You can also use the broken link building method to speed up the process of acquiring links from these list/resources pages.
  • Guest blogging – write advanced tutorials on using your tool and/or on how it can improve its target users’ productivity, and then submit it to high-traffic and highly relevant blogs. Use strong calls-to-action on these guest entries, to have better chances of absorbing and converting their readers.

Custom Categories

Eric Ward's Best Practices

Samples:

Custom categories or high-quality resources pages can easily attract links, seeing that it contains links to highly resourceful pages, in which the traffic it’s able to acquire will more often than not save/share/bookmark the page, particularly if they have found the links that the page host very useful.

This type of page also has greater chances of achieving higher search rankings for industry head terms, since the absolute relevance of the content (based from both internal and external links it hosts as well as the anchor texts used pertain to thematically related subtopics).

How to build links to custom categories:

  • Guest blogs – build contextual links to your custom categories through your guest blogging campaign.
  • Interviews – link to it whenever you get a chance to be interviewed by other bloggers, given that it’s a good page to refer their readers to, wherein they can see almost all of your published works in one place.
  • Author, Social and Forum Profiles – building links through your external profile pages (from other web communities) is also a great way to make this page more visible to your target audience. This will also allow search engines to regularly crawl the links in your custom category/resources page (as well as the new links that will be continuously added to the page).
  • Constantly drive new traffic to gain more natural links – based on my experience, once the page is constantly generating new visitors (when it’s ranking highly for its targeted head terms), the more it can naturally attract and acquire links.

Finding possible linkable assets

There are also other types of web content that could possibly fit as a linkable asset that you can work on for your link development campaign. It could be a well-researched blog post, crowdsourced content, a forum thread, or even sales/product pages.

You can simply find and identify these strong pages resting within your site through assessing and sorting your site’s pages by:

  • Most linked pages or pages that are naturally attracting links (via Google Webmaster Tools)

Google Webmaster Tools

  • Most visited pages with high user-activity, particularly from search engines (via Google Analytics)

Google Analytics

Once you have distinguished pages that can possibly help you build more links with minimal effort (by just constantly bringing targeted traffic to the page that have high probability of sharing or linking to it), start enhancing these pages to strengthen its ability to automate a fraction of your link building process. Enhancements could be on areas/elements of the page such as:

  • Design
  • Usability
  • Length Content
  • Call to action
  • Sociability
  • Internal links to the site’s other important pages
  • More inbound links to the page

It’s also best to understand the linking behavior from your newly discovered assets (or even the linkable assets of your competitors). Know why people are naturally linking to it, so you can have more ideas of how you can replicate the approach for your content as well as to your site’s other possible linkable assets.

Discerning the natural linking activities to your pages will also enable you to create powerful outreach templates that you can use to build more solid links to these pages, as you’ll be able to weigh the value that resonated to your previous linkers, and could then be elaborated as the value proposition of your outreach copy.

Prolong the purpose of the content

Optimize for search

Optimize the page to target industry-specific keywords as it will have better chances of competing for tough keywords, given that you’ll be working on to drive powerful links to the page, as well as with the page having the capability to attract links (where natural linkers will mostly use the content’s title as anchor text when linking to it).

Always Test and Update calls-to-action

This is vital, especially if your site’s strong and link-worthy pages are constantly driving new traffic to the site, as you can always change its call to action whenever you have new offers and/or products, which will allow you to effectively convert new visitors.

Brand strengthening

Let the continuously driven traffic to the page know who created the content. Highlight brand and trust signals on some parts of the content to improve brand retention.

Social CTA to force multiply social sharing

Make the content’s social buttons very visible, to continuously gain social shares, along the process of getting new visitors to the content (probably from search engines and other referring sources).


Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!
Publicat de 1 la 10:24 0 comentarii

It's Tax Day: Calculate Your Tax Receipt

The White House Your Daily Snapshot for
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
 

It's Tax Day: Calculate Your Tax Receipt

Today is tax day, and while Americans across the country are rushing to file, take a minute to find out how and where your tax dollars are being spent:

Tax Day Taxpayer Receipt

In Case You Missed It

Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog:

More from the Summit of the Americas
In Colombia, President Obama announces that the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement will enter into force on May 15th.

The Buffett Rule Would Make Sure Everyone Plays by the Same Rules
While the wealthiest Americans earn near-record shares of the national income, their average tax rates have plummeted. The Buffett Rule would eliminate special tax breaks and loopholes that allow the best-off to pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle class families pay.

Celebrating America's Greatest Asset: Our Volunteers
Wendy Spencer, CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service, kicks off National Volunteer Week, a time to recognize the extraordinary benefits of service to individuals, communities, and our nation.

Today's Schedule

All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

10:15 AM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing

11:10 AM: The President delivers a statement announcing a plan to increase oversight and crack down on manipulation in oil markets WhiteHouse.gov/live

11:30 AM: The President meets with senior advisors 

12:30 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney WhiteHouse.gov/live

2:00 PM: The President meets with Secretary Geithner

4:50 PM: The President honors Tony Stewart’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Championship WhiteHouse.gov/live

7:45 PM: The Vice President attends a campaign event in Washington, DC

WhiteHouse.gov/live Indicates that the event will be live-streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live

Get Updates

Sign up for the Daily Snapshot

Stay Connected

 
  facebook Facebook twitter Twitter youtube YouTube flickr Flickr google+ Google+  
 

This email was sent to e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com
Manage Subscriptions for e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com
Sign Up for Updates from the White House
Unsubscribe | Privacy Policy
Please do not reply to this email. Contact the White House

The White House • 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW • Washington, DC 20500 • 202-456-1111

  

Publicat de 1 la 08:14 0 comentarii

Seth's Blog : "I was just kidding"

"I was just kidding"

The haute couture designer who brings out a few designs that look like they came from a truck stop.

The fancy chef who sends out a chocolate-dipped Oreo as part of dessert.

The book designer who uses Comic Sans as the type on the cover of a prize-winning novel...

In each case, they can get away with it because we know they're capable of so much more. In each case, the irony is apparent, they're not hacks--they're only pretending to be hacks.

Before your digital work is shipped, you need to understand whether people will look at your blog or your lens or your ebook or your landing page and say, "hack," or "wow." It takes a while before you can claim your LOLcat or bizarre tweet was just a joke, not the acme of your taste.



More Recent Articles

[You're getting this note because you subscribed to Seth Godin's blog.]

Don't want to get this email anymore? Click the link below to unsubscribe.

Your requested content delivery powered by FeedBlitz, LLC, 9 Thoreau Way, Sudbury, MA 01776, USA. +1.978.776.9498

 
Publicat de 1 la 03:27 0 comentarii

luni, 16 aprilie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Trends in Nonfarm Employment, Civilian Employment, Weekly Unemployment Claims

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 09:31 PM PDT

Initial unemployment claims have generally been trending lower, but in a very choppy manner. One way to smooth out the weekly claims reports is to use seasonal adjustments. Another way is to use 4-week moving averages.

However, both methods are subject to fluctuations around floating holidays such as Thanksgiving and Easter.

Adding a couple of extra weeks to the moving averages and comparing not-seasonally-adjusted numbers to the same six weeks in prior years helps even more. Here are a couple of charts to consider.

Unemployment Claims 6-Week Moving Average vs. Same 6 Weeks in Prior Years



Certainly the number of initial claims has fallen dramatically but claims are still above levels from 2004 through 2008.

Workers With a Job Covered by Unemployment Insurance



The above chart shows 6-week moving averages of employees with a job and with benefits, compared to the same 6 weeks in prior years. Self-employed are not eligible for unemployment benefits.

Reader Tim Wallace who prepared the above charts at my request writes ...
Hello Mish

Anyway, here is the last six weeks filing average compared to prior years. Note that only those years in known recession are greater than the current number of claims in spite of the steep drop.

Also note the six-week moving average of covered employees shows we are at 2001 levels.

However, the economy did legitimately add 1,474,871 jobs in the past year, the first upward trend since 2008. Unfortunately, we cannot determine the quality of said jobs. Moreover, the economy will need to add 17 million more jobs just to get  back to employment levels of 2001 on an equal percentage basis to the workforce.
Here are a few more charts and statistics to consider.

Nonfarm Employment



In terms of actual non-farm employment, this "recovery" is now back to a level as seen in 2001. Note that the length of each recovery period has gotten longer and longer.

Here are some additional charts from my April 6 report Nonfarm Payroll +120,000, Unemployment Rate Fell .1 to 8.2%, Record 87,897,000 "Not in Labor Force"

Nonfarm Employment - Payroll Survey - Annual Look - Seasonally Adjusted



Actual employment is about where it was just prior to the 2001 recession.
 
 Quick Notes About the Unemployment Rate

  • US Unemployment Rate dropped .01 to 8.2%
    •  
  • In the last year, the civilian population rose by 3,604,000. Yet the labor force only rose by 1,315,000. Those not in the labor force rose by 2,289,000.
    •  
  • The Civilian Labor Force fell by 164,000.
    •  
  • Those "Not in Labor Force" increased by 310,000. If you are not in the labor force, you are not counted as unemployed.
    •  
  • Those "Not in Labor Force" is at a new record high of 87,897,000.
    •  
  • By the Household Survey, the number of people employed fell by 31,000.
    •  
  • By the Household Survey, over the course of the last year, the number of people employed rose by 2,270,000.
    •  
  • Participation Rate fell .1 to 63.8%
    •  
  • Were it not for people dropping out of the labor force, the unemployment rate would be well over 11%.

Over the past several years people have dropped out of the labor force at an astounding, almost unbelievable rate, holding the unemployment rate artificially low. Some of this was due to major revisions last month on account of the 2010 census finally factored in. However, most of it is simply economic weakness.

Between January 2008 and February 2010, the U.S. economy lost 8.8 million jobs.

Since a recent employment low in February 2010, nonfarm payrolls have expanded by 3.6 million jobs. Of the 8.8 million jobs lost between January 2008 and February 2010, 41 percent have been recovered.

Statistically, 125,000+- jobs a month is enough to keep the unemployment rate flat. For a discussion, please see Question on Jobs: How Many Does It Take to Keep Up With Demographics?

The average employment gain over the last 25 months has been 143,000, barely enough (statistically speaking) to make a dent in the unemployment rate. Thus, the unemployment rate fell because millions dropped out of the labor force.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Spain Government May Take Over Some Regions' Finances; Spanish 10-Year Yield His 6.15%, CDS at Record High; Mission Impossible

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 12:24 PM PDT

Madrid Threatens Intervention as Regional Debt Worries Mount

The Financial Times reports Madrid threatens to intervene in regions
Madrid has threatened to seize budgetary control of wayward Spanish regions as early as May if they flout deficit limits, officials said – as investors took fright at the fragility of some eurozone economies.

Concerns about overspending by Spain's 17 autonomous regions and fears that its banks will need to be recapitalised with emergency European Union funds undermined confidence in the country's sovereign bonds, forcing down prices and pushing yields up above 6 per cent on Monday – towards levels considered unsustainable.

The cost of insuring the country's debt also rose, with Spanish credit default swaps jumping to a record 510 basis points, according to Markit, the data provider.

One possible candidate for intervention is Andalucia in the south, Spain's most populous region, which has attacked Mr Rajoy's austerity measures. Mr Rajoy's Popular party had hoped to win a regional election last month and oust the leftwingers who have run Andalucia for 30 years but the PP did not get enough votes and the left remains in control.

Andalucia, however, is not alone in failing to obey fiscal rules. All the major political parties, including the PP, have exceeded deficit targets in the regions they administer.
Spain Government May Take Over Some Regions' Finances

The Wall Street Journal has additional details in its report Spain Government May Take Over Some Regions' Finances
Spain's government Monday warned it could take control of finances in some of its autonomous regions to slash one of Europe's largest budget deficits and shore up investor confidence.

A top government official, who asked not to be named, told journalists there will soon be new tools to control regional spending. Parliament is expected to pass legislation by the end of this month allowing Madrid to force spending cuts, impose fines and take over financial management in regions breaching budget targets or falling into deep difficulties.

The official said Madrid may move take over at least one of the country's cash-strapped regions this year, as lack of access to financial markets and plummeting tax revenue are undermining their capacity to fund themselves.

"The way things are going, the regions themselves will request the intervention," the official said. "There are regions with no access to funding, no way to pay bills. That's why we are going to have to intervene."

The official added Madrid should have more information by May on the state of regional finances, and on which might need to be taken over. The government has set up a new credit line to regions so they can pay off large debts to their suppliers. To access the facility they must present a plan to pay back the money and provide detailed information on their finances.

Separately, Spanish Education Minister Jose Ignacio Wert met regional education authorities to agree a series of measures, including larger class sizes and longer teachers' hours, to cut EUR3 billion from regional budgets. The government meets regional health officials Wednesday to find another EUR7 billion in cuts. These two social services account for the bulk of regional spending, and the regions have long complained they can't reduce it unless Madrid changes regulations governing the services they must provide.
Mission Impossible

Wolfgang Münchau a Financial Times columnist says Spain has accepted mission impossible
News coverage seems to suggest that the markets are panicking about the deficits themselves. I think this is wrong. The investors I know are worried that austerity may destroy the Spanish economy, and that it will drive Spain either out of the euro or into the arms of the European Stability Mechanism.

The orthodox view, held in Berlin, Brussels and in most national capitals (including, unfortunately, Madrid), is that you can never have too much austerity. Credibility is what matters. When you miss the target, you must overcompensate to hit it next time. The target is the goal – the only goal.

This view does not square with the experience of the eurozone crisis, notably in Greece. It does not square with what we know from economic theory, or from economic history. And it does not square with the simple though unscientific observation that the periodic episodes of market panic about Spain have always tended to follow an austerity announcement.

European policy makers have a tendency to treat fiscal policy as a simple accounting exercise, omitting any dynamic effects. The Spanish economist Luis Garicano made a calculation, as reported in El País, in which the reduction in the deficit from 8.5 per cent of GDP to 5.3 per cent would require not a €32bn deficit reduction programme (which is what a correction of 3.2 per cent would nominally imply for a country with a GDP of roughly €1tn), but one of between €53bn and €64bn. So to achieve a fiscal correction of 3.2 per cent, you must plan for one almost twice as large.

Spain's effort at deficit reduction is not just bad economics, it is physically impossible, so something else will have to give. Either Spain will miss the target, or the Spanish government will have to fire so many nurses and teachers that the result will be a political insurrection.
Market Screams Mission Impossible As Well

I too have been preaching the "Mission Impossible" idea for months if not years. More importantly, the market has once again latched on to that idea with credit default swaps on Spain's sovereign debt at record highs, and the yield on 10-year Spanish bonds back above 6% today, settling at 6.07% after reaching a high of 6.156% according to Bloomberg.

History suggests the more eurocrats resists a default for Spain, the bigger the resultant mess. Greece should be proof enough. However, eurocrat clowns have no common sense, no economic sense either, and they do not care about history. Expect a gigantic eurozone mess as efforts to kick the can do nothing but make matters worse.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Mish on Coast-to-Coast Radio Tonight 10:00PM PST Discussing the Global Economy

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 10:15 AM PDT

I will be on Coast-to-Coast late night syndicated radio talk show with George Noory to discuss the state of the US and global economies, jobs, stimulus efforts by the FED and ECB, housing, healthcare, the stock market, and gold.

Most major metropolitan areas of the country have a station that will pick up the broadcast. About three million listeners tune in nightly.

Here is a link to a map of Where to Listen to Coast to Coast in your area.

You can also pick up the broadcast on SIRIUS XM Satellite Radio - XM TALK 168.

Please tune in if you can. My scheduled time is at the beginning of the show but there may be a lead-in of general news for 5 minutes or so first.

I will see if Coast-to-Coast will agree to let me take come calls from listeners, and if so perhaps I will be on longer.

Update:

I will be on for most of the entire first hour, not 15 minutes as originally posted. There will be a couple short general news items before I come on.

The show is rebroadcast several hours later. Thus for those on the East coast, listeners can tune in at 1:00AM or 5:00AM.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List
Mike "Mish" Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.
Publicat de 1 la 23:03 0 comentarii
Abonați-vă la: Postări (Atom)