Weekly Address: Fighting for the American Jobs Act

Your Daily Snapshot for Saturday, October 1, 2011   Weekly Address: Fighting for the American Jobs Act President Obama discusses the letters he receives every day asking for action on jobs and calls on Congress to pass the American Jobs Act right away to cut taxes, create jobs and provide a win for the American people. Watch the video. President Barack Obama tapes the Weekly Address in the Map Room of the White House, Sept. 30, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy) Weekly Wrap Up Here's what happened this week on Whitehouse.gov:  LinkedIn Town Hall: On Monday, President Obama participated in a live Town Hall meeting with LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network, out in Silicon Valley, California. Taking questions from a live audience and online submissions, the President talked about the American Jobs Act and how it will create jobs and boost the overall economy. Ending Violence Against Women: Vice President Biden travelled to New York City Tuesday to sit down with the women of The View. The main topic of discussion was his campaign to end violence against women and his current initiative to reduce domestic abuse among younger Americans. The Vice President said the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 is his proudest legislative achievement, and that it has decreased domestic violence by over 50% since being signed into law. ‘Set your Sights High’: The President welcomed students back to school in his third annual Back-to-School speech at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C. Admitting that he was not a perfect student himself, he explained that doing well in school carries weight beyond college admissions. “Because you’re not just kids. You’re this country’s future. You’re young leaders. And whether we fall behind or race ahead as a nation is going to depend in large part on you.” Rebuilding America’s Schools:  President Obama visited Denver’s Abraham Lincoln High School to discuss how the American Jobs Act is going to not only put workers back on the job, but also rebuild and modernize schools across the country.  The President is proposing a $25 billion investment in school infrastructure to repair and upgrade at least 35,000 public schools because, “Every child deserves a great school – and we can give it to them. We can rebuild our schools for the 21st century, with faster internet, smarter labs and cutting-edge technology.” Talking to the Hispanic Community: During a roundtable conversation with three of the largest Hispanic online outlets, the President discussed a range of issues from immigration and education to Social Security and the American Jobs Act. Jose Siade from Yahoo Español, Karine Medina from MSN Latino and Gabriel Lerner from AOL Latino and Huff-Post Latino Voices joined the President in the White House Map Room for an hour-long chat centered on the issues that matter most to Hispanic Americans. West Wing Week: Check out your video guide to everything that happened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Get Updates Sign up for the Daily Snapshot Stay Connected     Facebook Twitter YouTube Flickr iTunes       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 e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com | 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

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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• ECRI Calls Recession Based on "Contagion in Forward Indicators"; Just How Timely is the Call?
• Real Disposable Personal Income Drops Second Consecutive Month; Drop is Highly Deflationary
• Shilling Sees Evidence of Deflation in 5 of 7 Key Areas; Bernanke Begs Congress for Fiscal Stimulus, Admits Fed is Out of Bullets
• Germany Retail Sales Decline 2.9%, Most Since May 2007; Retail Sales in the Eurozone Fell Fifth Consecutive Month

ECRI Calls Recession Based on "Contagion in Forward Indicators"; Just How Timely is the Call? Posted: 30 Sep 2011 04:52 PM PDT A number of people have asked me to comment on the ECRI's recession calls. Link if video does not play: Economist Says U.S. Recession Is `Inescapable' Tom Keen: "Single Sentence, why recession now" ECRI's Lakshman Achuthan: "Contagion in Forward-Looking Indicators" Select Quotes from the Video "We are looking at forward looking indicators, over a dozen leading indicators on different aspects of the US economy, and it's wildfire" "Anyone who is looking for a job has a right to call this a depression" "It's going to get worse" "Spain never left recession, I don't care what the GDP numbers say. Italy's on the verge, and the [European] core is not looking so good." "Dr. Copper is a short-term leading indicator. This thing has room to run. Global industrial growth is not turning up anytime soon" "Government bond yields can go even lower. Look at Japan" "Future inflation gauge for Europe is heading down" Superb Interview I have to give Achuthan credit. I think that was a superb interview. However, I still do not appreciate the half-truths and hype in today's ECRI report U.S. Economy Tipping into Recession Last year, amid the double-dip hysteria, we definitively ruled out an imminent recession based on leading indexes that began to turn up before QE2 was announced. Today, the key is that cyclical weakness is spreading widely from economic indicator to indicator in a telltale recessionary fashion. Why should ECRI's recession call be heeded? Perhaps because, as The Economist has noted, we've correctly called three recessions without any false alarms in-between. In contrast, most of those who've accurately predicted a recession or two have also been guilty of crying wolf – in 2010, 2005, 2003, 1998, 1995, or 1987. A Look at ECRI's Recession Predicting Track Record The ECRI does not call recessions in advance. Perhaps they caught this one, but we will have to wait and see. I suspect the NBER will date this recession back to June or July and if so the ECRI will be about a quarter late. More importantly the ECRI totally blew the the recession that began in 2007, as well as the strength of it. As long as the ECRI persists in its false claims, I will persist that people take a look at ECRI's recession predicting track record. Flashback November 2007 ECRI Vol. XII, No. 11: Weakness In Leading Indicators Not Yet Recessionary Please consider the following image snip. Highlighting is mine. ECRI: "The difference this time is that, even though the shocks have arrived, good leading indicators like the USLLI are not showing recessionary weakness ... This is a key reason why the economy is not yet in a recession. .... weakness is not pronounced, pervasive and persistent enough to be recessionary. .... leading indexes are still holding up sufficiently for a recession to be averted." Window of Opportunity Friday, January 25, 2008 ECRI Says There Is A Window of Opportunity for the US Economy The U.S. economy is now in a clear window of vulnerability, given the plunge in ECRI's Weekly Leading Index (WLI) since last spring. Yet there is a brief window of opportunity within that window of vulnerability to avert a recession. That is why ECRI has not yet forecast a recession. .... This is why, having correctly predicted the last two recessions in real time without crying wolf in between, we are not forecasting one yet. ECRI Denial The ECRI laid it on pretty thick, openly mocking the "best advertised [recession] in history" while claiming "This is why, having correctly predicted the last two recessions in real time without crying wolf in between, we are not forecasting one yet." The irony is the recession was about 2 months old at the time. Recession of Choice Friday, March 28, 2008 ECRI Calls it "A Recession of Choice" The U.S. economy is now on a recession track. Yet this is a recession that could have been averted. In January, given the plunge in the Weekly Leading Index, we declared that the economy had entered a clear window of vulnerability. Yet we emphasized the brief window of opportunity within that window of vulnerability for timely policy stimulus to head off a recession. It is a somewhat different story with regard to GDP, because the cyclically volatile manufacturing sector still accounts for 36% of GDP. A mild downturn in that sector should limit the decline in GDP in this recession. Marketing Spin In contrast note the spin from The Great Recession and Recovery. Accompanying that slide the ECRI said "And we issued a clear Recession Warning noting that: "The magnitude of oil and interest rate shocks are near recessionary readings." A month later, as we now know, the recession began. Compare that slide, with the above image snip above. The ECRI was clearly bragging not only about besting the yield curve, but also said "The Difference this time is that, even though the shocks have arrived, good leading indexes like USLLI are not showing recessionary weakness. ... as Chart 1 shows, the level of the USLLI is already a little lower now than it was three months earlier. However, this weakness is not pronounced, pervasive and persistent enough to be recessionary" It's Different This Time! After the fact, the ECRI took one statement out of context, a statement they went to great lengths to refute, then has the blatant gall to claim they issued a "recession warning". Recessions Predicted in Arrears Once again, I think Lakshman Achuthan did an excellent job in the interview. He stated the recession case well. However, the ECRI has a history of waiting until a recession is baked in the cake, then proclaiming it before the NBER and calling it a success. The revisionist history in regards to "no misses" is plain to see. The ECRI totally blew the call in 2007 and early 2008. That is not the galling part. Calls are easy to miss. The galling part is the ECRI's revisionist history related to the blown call. The ECRI's integrity will remain in question as long as it continues to perpetuate the myth of a perfect record. The simple fact of the matter is no one has a perfect track record at calling recessions, interest rates, the stock market or anything else. 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.

Real Disposable Personal Income Drops Second Consecutive Month; Drop is Highly Deflationary Posted: 30 Sep 2011 10:57 AM PDT Inquiring minds are digging into the just released Personal Income and Outlays Report for August 2011. Personal Income Personal income decreased $7.3 billion, or 0.1 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) decreased $5.0 billion, or less than 0.1 percent, in August, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Personal consumption expenditures (PCE) increased $22.7 billion, or 0.2 percent. In July, personal income increased $17.1 billion, or 0.1 percent, DPI increased $14.4 billion, or 0.1 percent, and PCE increased $76.6 billion, or 0.7 percent, based on revised estimates. Real disposable income decreased 0.3 percent in August, compared with a decrease of 0.2 percent in July. Real PCE decreased less than 0.1 percent, in contrast to an increase of 0.4 percent. Wages and Salaries Private wage and salary disbursements decreased $12.2 billion in August, in contrast to an increase of $23.8 billion in July. Goods-producing industries' payrolls decreased $1.3 billion, in contrast to an increase of $6.3 billion; manufacturing payrolls decreased $2.9 billion, in contrast to an increase of $5.8 billion. Services-producing industries' payrolls decreased $10.9 billion, in contrast to an increase of $17.5 billion. Government wage and salary disbursements increased $0.4 billion, in contrast to a decrease of $1.8 billion. Real DPI, real PCE and price index Real DPI -- DPI adjusted to remove price changes -- decreased 0.3 percent in August, compared with a decrease of 0.2 percent in July. Real PCE -- PCE adjusted to remove price changes -- decreased less than 0.1 percent in August, in contrast to an increase of 0.4 percent in July. Purchases of durable goods increased 0.1 percent, compared with an increase of 2.2 percent. Purchases of nondurable goods decreased 0.4 percent, compared with a decrease of 0.5 percent. Purchases of services increased 0.1 percent, compared with an increase of 0.4 percent. PCE price index -- The price index for PCE increased 0.2 percent in August,compared with an increase of 0.4 percent in July. The PCE price index, excluding food and energy, increased 0.1 percent, compared with an increase of 0.2 percent. Some charts will help put these numbers onto perspective. Real Disposable Personal Income Since 1969 Real Disposable Personal Income Since 1989 Real Disposable Personal Income % Change from Year Ago The second chart is the same as the first except the time period is smaller to better show the decline in the last recession. Together the charts show an unprecedented decline in real personal income. The third chart shows percentage change from a year ago. Note how rare it is for this number to cross the zero-line. It is headed there again, following an unprecedented drop in 2008-2009. Unlike the 1970's where consumer prices were soaring this decline comes at a time when the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index is tame. Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index The above chart courtesy Personal Consumption Expenditures: Price Index for August by of Doug Short. It's Credit that Matters Inflationists will immediately howl over excluding food and energy from the price index (and they will be right). However, inflationists conveniently ignore the collapse in home prices, instead focusing on the price of a Big Mac. When energy prices send price index lower (which will happen shortly), the inflationists will conveniently ignore that data as well, preferring to scream inflation when commodities are rising while hiding under a rock when commodity prices fall. Moreover, and more importantly, focus on prices is silly in the first place because in a credit-based economy it is expansion and contraction of credit that matters, not modest increases or decreases in prices (totally ignoring the plunge in home prices to boot). Drop in Personal Income Highly Deflationary With real wages falling and jobs exceptionally hard to get (and keep), this drop in personal income will be accompanied with more unwillingness of banks to lend, and therefore must be considered highly deflationary. For further discussion as to a realistic approach to what inflation and deflation are all about, please see Shilling Sees Evidence of Deflation in 5 of 7 Key Areas; Bernanke Begs Congress for Fiscal Stimulus, Admits Fed is Out of Bullets Yes Virginia, U.S. Back in Deflation; Inflation Scare Ends; Hyperinflationists Wrong Twice Over Bizarro World Inflation; About that 2011 Hyperinflation Call ... 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.

Shilling Sees Evidence of Deflation in 5 of 7 Key Areas; Bernanke Begs Congress for Fiscal Stimulus, Admits Fed is Out of Bullets Posted: 30 Sep 2011 01:41 AM PDT Shilling Sees Evidence of Deflation in Financial Assets, Tangible Assets, Median Income, Commodities, Currencies Shilling says "Forces of deleveraging and deflation are greater than the Fed can handle." I certainly agree and have been saying the same thing (correctly I might add) for several years. All the Fed has ever managed to do is slow the deflationary outcome and that is in spite of $trillions in both monetary stimulus from the Fed and fiscal stimulus from Congress. Once again, if you mistakenly think inflation and deflation are about consumer prices instead of vastly more important credit, you will come to a different conclusion. For further discussion as to what deflation is all about, please see Yes Virginia, U.S. Back in Deflation; Inflation Scare Ends; Hyperinflationists Wrong Twice Over Bizarro World Inflation; About that 2011 Hyperinflation Call ... Fed Out of Bullets In spite of what the Fed says and wants everyone to believe the Fed is Out of Bullets Let's Twist Again (and Not Much More) as I expected There were a lot of expectations regarding numerous options the Fed might take today. I did not expect the Fed would risk trying them. See Six Things the Fed May Announce Tomorrow (But Likely Won't); Would Any of Them Matter? Gaming the Reaction for details. The Fed said "Let's Twist Again" and not much more other than throwing a bone at mortgages. Neither will work and the Fed is out of bullets. Bernanke Begs Congress for Fiscal Stimulus In a question session following Bernanke's speech Lessons from Emerging Market Economies on the Sources of Sustained Growth (in which Bernanke proves he does not really understand what is really happening in China), Bernanke begged Congress for help and admitted the Fed is out of bullets. Yahoo Finance reports Bernanke: Long-term unemployment a national crisis Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday that long-term unemployment is a "national crisis" and suggested that Congress should take further action to combat it. He also said lawmakers should provide more help to the battered housing industry. Bernanke said the government needs to provide support to help the long-term unemployed retrain for jobs and find work. And he suggested that Congress should take more responsibility. In the question-and-answer period, Bernanke cautioned U.S. lawmakers against cutting deficits too quickly to reduce budget deficits. He has said that could put the fragile economy at risk. In practical terms, Bernanke was begging Congress for help, and in the Q&A session, Bernanke went even farther. Please consider Everyone Missed It, But Ben Bernanke Peed On The Fed Again Last Night by Joe Weisenthal. We've talked about this before, the fact that Ben Bernanke is growing increasingly vocal about his skepticism that monetary policy can do much to save this economy. This is a HUGE change from someone who once said that the Great Depression was entirely the Fed's fault, and that the Fed would never let that happen again! In his daily note, Art Cashin caught a key bit from a Ben Bernanke Q&A last night after he gave a speech, further emphasizing that Bernanke has radically changed his views. "Monetary policy can do a lot, but monetary policy is not a panacea," Bernanke said. That is a close an admission that the "Fed is out of Bullets" that you are ever going to see. 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.

Germany Retail Sales Decline 2.9%, Most Since May 2007; Retail Sales in the Eurozone Fell Fifth Consecutive Month Posted: 30 Sep 2011 12:42 AM PDT Those looking for evidence that Europe is already in recession can find it in this headline: German Retail Sales Decline More Than Forecast German retail sales declined the most in more than four years in August as concerns about the economic impact of Europe's sovereign debt crisis sapped consumers' willingness to spend. Sales, adjusted for inflation and seasonal swings, slumped 2.9 from July, when they rose 0.3 percent, the Federal Statistics Office in Wiesbaden said today. That's the biggest drop since May 2007. Economists forecast a 0.5 percent drop, according to the median of 18 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. Sales rose 2.2 percent in the year. The debt crisis is threatening to tip Europe back into recession, damping confidence even as falling German unemployment boosts household purchasing power in Europe's largest economy. While a possible Greek default has clouded the outlook, the Bundesbank still predicts a "robust" third quarter and growth of about 3 percent this year. The European Commission on Sept. 15 cut its euro-region growth forecasts for the second half and warned the economy, Germany's biggest export market, may come "close to standstill at year-end." The International Monetary Fund in Washington on Sept. 20 also lowered its growth projections for the euro region and Germany for this year and next. Deutsche Lufthansa AG on Sept. 20 lowered its full-year profit forecast and said it would deepen capacity cuts this winter after last month's results were weaker than expected and forward bookings slumped. Still, Germany's jobless rate fell to 6.9 percent this month, the lowest since the country's reunification two decades ago, as companies stepped up hiring to meet export orders. I will take the "under" on 3% German GDP in the second half. Moreover, given the slowdown in Europe, the US, Australia, and now China, the ability of the vaunted German export machine to keep humming along is simply not believable. Retail Sales in the Eurozone Fell Fifth Consecutive Month Finfacts reports Rate of decline in Eurozone retail sales slows in September Retail sales in the Eurozone fell for the fifth month in a row in September, according to Markit's latest PMI (Purchasing Managers' Index) surveys. That said, the rate of decline slowed to a marginal pace as sales rose in both France and Germany. The survey data again signalled stubbornly high inflationary pressures in the sector, with purchase price inflation at retailers the strongest in over three years. The Eurozone Retail PMI is a single-figure indicator of changes in the value of sales at retailers. The PMI is adjusted for seasonal factors, and any figure greater than 50.0 signals growth compared with one month earlier. The PMI remained below 50.0 in September, signalling a fifth successive monthly drop in sales revenues. The current sequence of decline is the joint-longest in the past two years. But the index rose during the month, to 49.6 from 48.0, indicating only a marginal decline in sales revenues. The latest PMI figure suggested that the pace of decline in retail sales as measured by the EU's statistical office Eurostat (on a three-month-on-three-month basis) may ease in the coming months. Markit says Eurozone retail PMI figures are based on responses from the three largest euro area economies. September figures suggested that Italy remained the weak link, registering a seventh successive monthly drop in retail sales. The rate of contraction was the slowest since March, but still strong overall. German retail sales continued to rise in September, extending the current sequence of growth to 12 months. This is the longest period of expansion since monthly sales data were first collected in January 2004. The rate of growth slowed to a weak pace, however. French retail sales rose for the first time since May. The rate of growth was modest, however, and slightly weaker than the average for 2011 so far. The articles seem at odds with each other since they were both released in the last two days. However, the Bloomberg article was for August, Finfacts was for September. The important points are the European retail sales PMI is negative and Germany is weakening. 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.

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Title Tags - Is 70 Characters the Best Practice? - Whiteboard Friday

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Title Tags - Is 70 Characters the Best Practice? - Whiteboard Friday Posted: 29 Sep 2011 02:06 PM PDT Posted by Aaron Wheeler It's often pretty difficult to make a short title for a webpage that offers a lot of varied or super-specific information. At SEOmoz, we say that the best practice for title tag length is to keep titles under 70 characters. That's pretty pithy considering that the title also includes your site or brand name, spaces, and other nondescript characters. So, does it matter if you go over 70 characters? How important is it to strictly adhere to this best practice? Cyrus Shepard does SEO for us here at SEOmoz, and he'll answer that very question in this week's Whiteboard Friday. Think title tags could or should be longer? Shorter? Let us know in the comments below!   Video Transcription Howdy SEOmoz! Welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. My name is Cyrus. I do SEO here at SEOmoz. Today we're talking about title tag length. How long is your title tag? Bad title tag joke. For years, we've been telling people, the length of your title tag should be 70 characters or less. That this is best practices. But what does this really mean? Is it absolutely true? What happens if your title tags are longer than 70 characters? For example, the title of today's post within the meta description is 77 characters. Not this title, but the actual HTML title tag, if you look at the source code, you'll find that the title tag of today's Whiteboard Friday is 77 characters. We're actually over the 70 character title tag limit. Is that bad? Are we going to go to SEO hell for that? What does that mean? Well, recently people have been doing some experiments to see just how many characters Google will index within a title tag. For years, we thought it was 70s. It's fluctuated. But recent experiments have shown that Google will index anywhere between 150, one person even showed that they will index over 1,000 characters, and I will link to these experiments in the post. But does this mean that you should use all of those characters to your advantage? Can you use them to your advantage? Well, I got really curious about this. So I decided to perform some experiments here on the SEOmoz blog with super long title tags. We're talking extreme title tags, like 200 characters long, 250 characters long, just blew them out of the water just to see what would happen. Experiments On the first experiment, I took 10 posts that did not get a lot of traffic, but they were pretty consistent traffic from week to week. I kept the old title tags and I just extended them with relevant keywords up to about 250 characters long. The results blew me away. In that first experiment, my traffic, over about a 12-week period, rose 136%. You can see, I'll try to include a screen shot in the comments below of the Google Analytics. It exploded. I got really excited. So, I tried a second experiment. (Correction, the experiment took place over a 6 week period, not 12 like I stated in the video.) The second experiment I tried with existing successful pages, pages that were already getting a fairly high volume of traffic, that were getting a consistent level of traffic every week. On that experiment, over about the same 12-week period, traffic rose 8%. Cool, but overall site traffic rose 9%. So it was actually 1% below the site average. For a third experiment, I tried again on a completely different site, a personal site. I changed a few pages, title tags. Traffic actually went down over a 12-week period 11%. On that site overall site traffic went down 15%. So, in one of these experiments, the long title tag seemed to work really well. In the other two, it just seemed to be a wash. Why did this happen, but not here? I am going to get to that in a minute. Title Tags less than 70 Characters Now, what are the arguments for short title tags? The best practices that you always hear about, keep it less than 70 characters. There are reasons why this is best practices and why we recommend it time and time again. The first reason is that Google will only display the first 70 characters, in general, in their SERPs. After that, they're truncated. Users aren't going to see them. So, if you are writing title tags longer than 70 characters, you're basically writing it for the search engines, and time and time again we've found that if you're doing something specifically for search engines and not for users, there is probably not a lot of search engine value in it. There might be some, but probably not much. The second reason is our Correlated Ranking Factors, a survey that we perform every couple of years. Our highest on page correlation value for keyword specific usage was if it is found, if the keyword is found in the first word of the title tag, that was a 0.09 positive correlation. It is not a huge correlation, but it was our largest on page keyword factor. Year after year after year when we perform these correlation studies, we see a direct correlation between the position of the keyword in the title tag and how important it is in the query. So, the closer the keyword is to the beginning of the title tag, the more likely it is to be important in the query. You're going to see this time and time again. It's very consistent. Hundreds of webmasters know this from personal experience. You want your keywords at the beginning of the title tag to rank for those keywords. The further out you do it, at 220 characters, those keywords aren't going to count for very much. Now the third reason is kind of new in today's world, and that is the rise of social media. Twitter limits characters to 140 characters. So, if you have a 220 character title tag and you're trying to share it on Twitter through automatic tweets or Facebook or whatever, they look spammy, they're not shareable, people don't want to share them. Shorter title tags, snappy, work really well. For all these reasons, and for most of the time we found that longer title tags don't help you, we say that less than 70 is best practices. Now, people get confused by when we say best practices what that means. Does it mean an absolute rule? No. It just means best practices works most of the time. It's going to be your best bet. All other things being equal, it's going to be what you want to implement, what you want to teach people to do, and generally how you want to practice. So, what happened here? Why did this experiment rise 136%? Well, if you remember, these were low volume pages, pages that weren't getting a lot of traffic anyway. The reason it rose, we suspect, is because those title tags were poorly optimized in the first place. They didn't match the content. When we added a few keywords to the end, Google interpreted that as, hey, these match a little bit better to the content, and that's why it rose. It was a fluke. If we would have wrote the title tags better in the first place, we could have seen this traffic all along. So, with this in mind, I have some suggestions for your future title tag use, and best practices is going to continue to be less than 70 characters. Best Practices are Guidelines, Not Rules The first rule is always experiment. Like I said, if we would have tried something else, if we would have written different title tags in the first place, it could have helped us. What did it cost us to change those title tags? Zero. If your pages aren't performing well, you can always try something different and you should try something different. I still see sites all the time, large eCommerce sites, that on thousands of pages they have their brand name, the first 20 characters of the title tag in places where they shouldn't necessarily do that. SEOmoz did that for a number of years up until a few months ago. So, always experiment, not too much, but always try different things to see what title tags are going to work best for you. Second is write for users. Here at SEOmoz our title tag is the same as the title of our post on our blog because we think it is important to meet users' expectations. When they see a title tag in the SERP and they click through to your page, you want them to feel like they've arrived where they thought they were going to arrive. So, it doesn't always have to match the title of your post, but something similar, something to make them comfortable, and something to talk to the users. Third, remember to keep your important keywords first. Putting your important keywords out here isn't going to help you much unless your titles are so poorly optimized in the first place that you really should rewrite them. So, put your important keywords, they don't always have to be in the very first position, but as close to that first position as you can. Lastly, what happens if your title tag is over 70 characters, such as the title tag of today's Whiteboard Friday post at 77? Don't sweat it. In our web app, in our Pro Web App, if you go over 77 characters, we issue a warning. It is not an error. It's a warning. We just want you to know that maybe if your title tag is over that limit that it might not be the best written title tag. You might want to have a look at it, but here at SEOmoz we have thousands of title tags that go over the 70 keyword limit, and for the most part, we're going to be fine. Best practices means that it's best most of the time, but you can go outside of best practices if it's warranted. Remember, experiment, try different things out, find out what works best for you. That's it for today. Appreciate your comments below. Thanks everybody. Video transcription by Speechpad.com Do you like this post? Yes No

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West Wing Week: Behind the Scenes Video

Your Daily Snapshot for Friday, Sept. 30, 2011   West Wing Week: Behind the Scenes Video Welcome to the West Wing Week, your guide to everything that's happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. This week, the President announced reforms to No Child Left Behind, traveled to California to hold a town hall on job growth at LinkedIn, spoke on what the American Jobs Act could mean for America's schools and gave his third annual Back To School address. Watch the video. In Case You Missed It Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog. What You Missed: President Obama's Open for Questions Roundtable President Obama discussed a range of issues from immigration and education to Social Security and the American Jobs Act during a round table with representatives from three of the largest Hispanic online outlets. Tackling Waste in Contracting Agencies will save taxpayer dollars by leveraging their purchasing power. Kansas City Mayor: Jobs Are at the Forefront of People’s Minds The American Jobs Act will help the people of his Missouri city find work and put more money in their pockets. Today's Schedule All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). 10:00 AM: The President and the Vice President receive the Presidential Daily Briefing 11:00 AM: The President delivers remarks at the "Change of Office" Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ceremony at Fort Myer. The Vice President also attends 12:30 PM: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney 1:40 PM: The President will be interviewed live by Michael Smerconish 8:05 PM: The President delivers remarks at a campaign event   Indicates events that will be live streamed on WhiteHouse.gov/Live Get Updates Sign up for the Daily Snapshot Stay Connected     Facebook Twitter YouTube Flickr iTunes        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 e0nstar1.blog@gmail.com | 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