SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog

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• Presenting the #MozCon 2011 Agenda
• 5 Warning Signs of a Bad SEO Client
• Make Facebook Comments Box Indexable by Search Engines

Presenting the #MozCon 2011 Agenda Posted: 15 Jun 2011 08:31 AM PDT Posted by jennita Over the past couple months, we've had lots of people asking about the full agenda for MozCon. Well my friends, I'm super excited to announce that the agenda is complete! As Rand mentioned in his initial post, we have a ridiculously amazing speaker lineup. Where else can you get the likes of Avinash Kaushik from Market Motive, Melanie Mitchell from Digitas, Alex Schultz from Facebook, Stefan Weitz from Bing and so many others in one place for three days of online marketing training. No, but seriously. For only $899 (PRO members), you get 3 days of training, networking, breakfast, lunch and get a first hand glimpse at something we're launching at Mozcon. Whee! Ok, so let's jump right into this agenda. Take a gander, then head on over to register! Oh, and if you're not PRO & want the PRO price, sign up here.   What To Expect Learn advanced strategies and techniques from the most respected authorities on SEO Preview new SEOmoz PRO features before anyone else and provide feedback to guide its future Network with SEO and online marketing professionals from all over the world and meet the MozStaff Full Agenda Day 1: July 27, 2011 8:00am - 9:00am Breakfast 9:00am - 9:05am Introduction to MozCon Speaker: Rand Fishkin Format: 5 minute informal presentation 9:05am - 9:30am Unveiling SEOmoz’s Latest Project Speaker: Rand Fishkin Description: This long-awaited project is going to make lives easier and better for SEOs everywhere. We can’t wait to share it with you the morning of launch day! Format: 25 minute formal presentation, No Q+A 9:30am - 10:00am Maximizing the Power of Retargeting Speaker: Joanna Lord Description: This new form of advertising has low adoption and high ROI - our favorite kind of opportunity. Joanna will show you not only how retargeting works, but how to maximize your return and get creative with available options. Format: 22 minute formal presentation, 8 minute Q+A 10:00am - 11:00am Turning Google Places Pain into Gain Speaker: David Mihm Description: Local, maps and places has always held great opportunity for those who know how to execute. In this presentation, one of the leading authorities on Google Places, David Mihm, will show how to take advantage of the strange twists, turns and awkward missteps in Google’s local offering to earn rankings and traffic from local queries. Format: 45 minute formal presentation, 15 minute Q+A 11:00am - 11:15am Morning Coffee Break 11:15am - 12:00pm Design that Drives Action Speaker: Bryan Zmijewski Description: Bryan’s experience with dozens of the world’s most transformative startups has given him unique insight into how users behave on the web and what drives lifecycles of customer success. In this talk, he’ll dive deep into the psychology of web users and show powerful examples to help illustrate how marketers can think beyond a single landing page and earn powerful bumps in sales through conversion actions. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 12:00pm - 12:35pm Insanely Creative Ways to Make Your Audience Spread the Word Speaker: Bob Rains Description: Few people on the planet have held such diverse and interesting positions as Bob Rains, and even fewer have had his success. Bob’s talk will share amazingly cool creative strategies and how to overcome internal + external roadblocks that would seek to impede a great marketer’s ideas. Format: 25 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 12:35pm - 1:30pm Lunch 1:30pm - 2:15pm Automating + Scaling Keyword Research Speaker: Richard Baxter Description: How to take keyword data and turn it into a scalable, high-converting information architecture has always been a massive challenge. No more. Richard’s talk centers on a repeatable framework and methodology for solving this vexing problem for sites of any size. Format:  35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 2:15pm - 2:45pm Forget the Ads: How to Brand “Organically” Speaker: Jamie Steven Description: As SEOs, we’ve often left branding strategy and tactics to others. With the convergence of search, social and usage data, it’s clear that a great SEO strategy needs a great brand. In this talk, Jamie will share practical, actionable tips for how technical marketers can use branding to win the search rankings, social sharing and all of organic web marketing. Format: 22 minute formal presentation, 8 minute Q+A 2:45pm - 3:00pm Afternoon Break 3:00pm - 3:45pm Content Strategy: What Works (and What Doesn’t) Speaker: Ian Lurie Description: Get an inside look at the content creation strategy used by Portent to make their clients mores successful on the web. Ian will share how his agency has produced works that have earned links, rankings, social sharing and conversions and how you can repeat this process yourself. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 3:45pm - 4:30pm International SEO: Analyzing What Makes a Site Rank in One Country vs. Another Speaker: Hannah Smith Description: In addition to providing actionable advice on how best to tackle International SEO; with the help of Distilled’s talented research team, Hannah sets out to prove which international ranking factors are really important; and therefore how to leverage the right signals to achieve multi-nation dominance (or the right single nation targeting). Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 4:30pm - 5:15pm Marketing Smarter, Not Harder: Real World Bootstrappers that Won and the Tactics that Got them There Speaker: Tony Wright Description: Whether you're marketing for a big brand or an upstart, you're often asked to produce results with limited funding and support.  Tony will walk through real world David and Goliath stories where under-resourced marketing efforts got outsized results. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 8:00pm - Midnight SEO Meetup! More details to come Day 2: July 28, 2011 8:00am - 9:00am Breakfast 9:00am - 9:45am How to Earn Outsized Returns in Paid Search Speaker: Bill Leake Description: The problem with PPC is always the price. Bids are too high, competition is too tough and it’s unfeasible to get a truly high ROI from buying paid search ads anymore, right? Wrong. Using creativity and uncommon tactics, Bill’s devised and will share awesome ways to get around the competition and do remarkable things, even in a budget-constrained environment. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 9:45am - 10:30am Schema-ing: How to Catch the Wave for the Next Generation Web Speaker: Stefan Weitz As the director of Bing, Stefan’s insanely qualified to truly predict the future of web search. In this presentation, he’ll be sharing the next generation of data + metrics the engines will care about and how we, as marketers, can prepare early and win big. Format: 30 minute formal presentation, 15 minute Q+A 10:30am - 10:45am Coffee Break 10:45am - 11:30am Long Tail SEO in a Post-Panda World Speaker: Matthew Brown Description: Now that Google’s punishing content farms and judging the usefulness, design, layout and happiness generated by our pages, long tail SEO is riskier than ever. Unless... you listen to Matt, who’ll share battle-hardened techniques for winning the tail. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 11:30am - 12:00pm Paid+Organic: Better Together Speaker: Melanie Mitchell Description: When your brand and/or generic terms rank #1 in organic search, it’s wise to ignore paid search, right? Not necessarily... Melanie will walk you through the pros and cons using in-depth case studies of how to leverage the power of running both paid and organic search together to maximize performance... even if you rank in the top results of organic search. Format: 22 minute formal presentation, 8 minute Q+A 12:00pm - 1:00pm Lunch 1:00pm - 2:00pm How to Earn the Links the Lazy Link Builders Buy Speaker: Wil Reynolds Description: Sure, you could go buy those links and risk your site’s standing with Google (and your SEO reputation). Or, you could follow Wil’s always creative, engaging and passionate advice for how to earn links the white-hat, long-term way. Format: 45 minute formal presentation, 15 minute Q+A 2:00pm - 2:45pm Oyster Hotels: A Case Study in SEO Speaker: Eytan Seidman Description: In 2007, Eytan left his role as search engineer at Microsoft and moved to the startup world, where he took on the remarkably competitive hotels vertical. 4 years later, Oyster.com is one of the most successful travel startups on the web and Oyster’s rankings are consistently in the top 10. See what worked, what didn’t and which metrics mattered in this remarkable story. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 2:45pm - 3:15pm Leveraging Community for SEO + Social Boosts Speaker: Jen Lopez Description: Jen Lopez has proven herself to be among an elite group of web community managers. In the last 2 years, she moved from an SEO consulting role to scaling SEOmoz’s social, site and search profiles to astounding heights. Learn how she does her job, including the tools, processes and metrics that matter for success. Format: 22 minute formal presentation, 8 minute Q+A 3:15pm - 3:30pm Afternoon Break 3:30pm - 4:15pm Conversion Rate Optimisation: Developing A Process To Increase Market Share Speaker: Stephen Pavlovich Description: To be great at conversions requires hundreds of right moves and few of the wrong ones. It’s a complex, challenging art, but Stephen’s done it successfully for dozens of sites and, in this presentation, will walk through the process that’s brought his clients massive improvements in visitor:conversion ratio. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 4:15pm - 5:00pm Facebook’s Hidden Marketing Opportunities Speaker: Alex Schultz Description: As director on Facebook’s Growth team, Alex knows the Facebook platform like few others. In this talk, he’ll share the hidden corners of social tools, APIs and marketing opportunities and provide actionable tips that every site can use to reach more than 500 million web users. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 5:00pm - 5:30pm TBD 6:30pm - Midnight Party at the Garage! (see photos below from last year!)   Day 3: July 29, 2011 8:30am - 9:30am Breakfast 9:30am - 10:30am How Big Brands Can Compete in Tough SERPs without Risk Speaker: Adam Audette Description: The temptation is always there - just spend $50K/month and you, too, could have pages of middling quality and low interest levels ranking atop the results. The reality is that real risk and unsustainability accompanies link buying and other gray/black hat practices. In his presentation, Adam will show how big brands, including those that are his clients, achieve remarkable results while staying entirely within the search guidelines. He’ll provide specific, repeatable alternatives to cloaking, link manipulation and overly-aggressive SEO so you can provide a great experience for both users and engines. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 10:30am - 11:15am TBD Speaker: Martin MacDonald Description: TBD Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 11:15am - 12:00pm Going Viral on Facebook: How to Earn Gobs of Likes + Shares Speaker: Merry Morud Description: At Aimclear, folks know social media marketing like the back of their hand. Merry’s here to share that knowledge and show how to design a strategy and execute tactically to win the hearts and minds of those on Facebook. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 12:00pm - 1:00pm Lunch 1:00pm - 1:45pm How to Brainstorm + Design the Best, Most Viral Content You’ve Ever Made Speaker: Kate Morris Description: Once you’ve got the right idea and a plan to execute, building viral content is easy (OK, maybe not easy, but easier). Kate’s here to help with those first two steps - finding the right niches of content to fill and designing the blueprints for great content. With her actionable advice, you’ll be able to generate remarkable works that will carry your brand far and wide. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 1:45pm - 2:45pm Measure the Right Things and Achieve Magical, Analytics Awesomeness Speaker: Avinash Kaushik Description: As marketers, we often fall in love with the wrong metrics and optimize/report in ways that don’t move the business goals forward. In this talk, Avinash will show a simple, powerful process to focus on and measure the right metrics, then customize your tools to make magical awesomeness an everyday event. Format: 45 minute formal presentation, 15 minute Q+A 2:45pm - 3:00pm Afternoon Break 3:00pm - 3:45pm Social Design: How to Co-Mingle Social Features & Earn Traffic Speaker: Mat Clayton Description: Facebook, Twitter and other sites offer embeddable features that can have a remarkable impact on your site’s ability to gain both social traffic and sharing/liking metrics. Learn from Mat’s impressive repertoire of case studies on how to make the new, embeddable power of social media yours. Format: 35 minute formal presentation, 10 minute Q+A 3:45pm - 5:00pm Head to Head: Stealing from the Web’s Best Speakers: Rand Fishkin + Will Critchlow Description: For this, Will + Rand’s 6th head to head battle, they’ll be taking a line from Picasso: “Good artists borrow. Great artists steal.” Watch as they compete for the best presentation by showing off amazing marketing tactics of all kinds from dozens of the web’s most illustrious success stories. From remarkable uses of data to fiendishly clever social strategies to email, display, design + more, Will and Rand will pull out all the stops to win your vote (held directly following their talks) for best presentation. Format: 2 X 35 minute presentations, 5 mins vote tallying, No Q+A 5:00pm - 6:00pm “Give it Up” Speakers: All in Attendance Format: 2 minute tip from each speaker + 30 min Q+A 6:00pm - Whenever TBD What People Are Saying Check out what some of our attendees from last year said about the conference! The SEOmoz Training Seminar is an important event that cannot be missed. Every year I walk away with great resources and fantastic tools that I can implement immediately. Peter N. Vatistas Director of Internet Marketing Russ Lyon Sotheby's International Realty Hands down the best professional event I've ever attended! Tons of practical, relevant content with no fluff. A must-attend for any SEO. Jeff Perkins SEO Product Manager Eventful Before the SEOmoz PRO training I had some seriously technical questions and was satisfied to leave the conference with all of them answered. Not only were the presentations phenomenal but the networking opportunities were perhaps once in a lifetime. Adam Humphreys CEO Making 8 Inc. Engaging and interactive speakers, simple decks, and outstanding concepts. This content is mandatory for quality SEO but is profoundly relevant to the larger task of strategically positioning any company to the globally-connected community. Jeanie Walker Marketing Director Dinerware   Whew! Are you wowed yet? Because I sure am. This is one amazing agenda! If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments. We look forward to seeing you in Seattle!   Do you like this post? Yes No

5 Warning Signs of a Bad SEO Client Posted: 14 Jun 2011 05:51 PM PDT Posted by jsturgeon This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. I just walked away from a lot of money. After two months of research, proposals, and negotiations I turned down a deal that would have brought my freelance income to a new level. But I would have been miserable. My prospective client had no shortage of funds. There was nothing shady about their business. I just didn't want to deal with them. I used to say "yes" to everything. I took on any client that would sign on the dotted line. In my zealousness to build a business, I neglected to find the "right" clients and settled for anyone who would cut a check. This led to sleepless nights, wasted time, and poor results. In my opinion, a successful business deal isn't just getting paid. Success is when both parties (client and consultant) can agree on realistic goals; once those goals are met, both are satisfied with the results. You are the professional. You know what will work and what won't work. If you give the client whatever they ask for, it's not going to help their business in the end. Learn how to balance input from the client about their industry and business goals with a reasonable plan of action that you produce. Value your time...and the client's. In my recent experience, I made the mistake of conducting keyword research and competitive analysis for free. I did this as an act of good faith, since there was a lot of business on the table. But without any skin in the game, the prospective client was indecisive and nit-picky over just about everything. TAKEAWAY: If you are in negotiations and want to sweeten the deal, charge for your research upfront. If the client signs, then you can credit a percentage of that fee towards the first month of their bill. Treat it like a deposit. Essentially, my prospective client wanted me to act as an SEO machine, where he remained firmly at the controls. He wanted a puppet that he could manipulate based on tips he's read online (but never actually implemented). Not a road I wanted to take. In spite of this lost opportunity (or avoided disaster depending on how you see it), I have come away with a short list of red flags, which I'm hoping will protect you from getting involved with clients who will waste your time and energy. Seriously, sometimes the paycheck really isn't worth the blood, sweat and tears you will invest. 5 Warning Signs of a Bad SEO Client: They name-drop books, blogs, and other SEO-related materials in nearly every conversation. They insist on web design gimmicks that detract from the user experience. They demand results on an unrealistic time table. They protest your rates on the basis that there are, "tons of SEO software options available on ClickBank for $97". They ask for keyword research and then override your findings with their "sense" of what their firm should rank for. Looking forward to hearing your additions to this list! p.s. from Rand: This post got a lot of positive reactions, and has some great comments, too, so we're sending it to the main blog. I can empathize here myself, having run a barely-scraping-by consulting business for the first 6 years of my career (1999-2005). Do you like this post? Yes No

Make Facebook Comments Box Indexable by Search Engines Posted: 14 Jun 2011 03:28 PM PDT Posted by Roy Peleg This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc. Dear SEO friends, Recently I considered implementing the Facebook Comments Box in several sites. I tried to consider the pros and cons. The obvious pros were (there are more): By default comments will be posted to the user's wall (though they can disable this), which can potentially create a lot of organic traffic and buzz. Fight spam as the user need a Facebook account to post a comment, which help fight agains most eviil spam bots out there (not to mention Facebook is at your side to stop the spammers as you can report the account and assist having it blocked). Facebook implemented a ranking algorithm that promotes comments which are more valuable The two obvious cons were (there are more): Users need a Facebook account to post a comment Posts are not crawlable as they are loaded in an iFrame The first one is an issue no doubt (for some more than others), but the second one is the critical one as far as I'm concerned. I almost gave up of the whole idea but after long researching I found a very valuable comment by a guy who identified himself as an engineer on the Facebook Platform team when asked about the crawlability of the comments. The guy said that there is a way to export the comments for any given URL with the help of a simple script (can be done in multiple programming languages). I don't know why didn't this make waves in the SEO world as I know that it's a common belief that Facebook comments aren't indexable and that they are closed behind the "Facebook walled Garden". Here is a link to the script the guy offered (in PHP): http://www.rayhe.net/fb/comments.phps Here is the resulting output of the script: http://www.rayhe.net/fb/comments.php I was amazed by the simplicity of the code and that no authentication is needed. If you'll examine the code you'll also see that the comments can be styled easily to fit any site's layout. So basically you can now use Facebook Comments Box on your site and serve GoogleBot (or any other crawler/browser agent) with the comments to have them crawled & indexed. Obviously this won't be considered as cloaking as you're serving Google exactly what the users see (just like creating an HTML version for a Flash website). One important point, I noticed that not all the comments are exported. Seems that for URLs with many comments (100s or 1,000s) only part of the comments are exported using the supplied code. It may be a bug or something by design, anyway, this requires more research. Don't know about you, but this made me smile. I hope you'll find this useful as well, at least I think that now using Facebook comments is much more appealing.   Cheers, Roy P.S, This of course opens the door for a lot of black hat SEO tricks, I'll let your imagination go wild :-) Note from Jen: We got a lot of comments last week on our post about Facebook Marketing Tactics You Might Not Know About asking about Facebook comments. Hopefully this helps answer some of those questions. :) Do you like this post? Yes No

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President Obama in Puerto Rico: More Than Just History

Your Daily Snapshot for Wednesday, June 15, 2011   President Obama in Puerto Rico: More Than Just History Learn more about the trip and see more photos.   President Barack Obama, with Governor Luis Fortuno, First Lady Luce Vela de Fortuno and Rep. Pedro Pierluisi, listen to traditional, instrumental song played by children, on the Interior Patio at La Fortaleza, the official residence of the Governor of Puerto Rico, in San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 14, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) In Case You Missed It Here are some of the top stories from the White House blog. President Obama Visits Puerto Rico President Obama travels to San Juan, Puerto Rico and discusses the steps Puerto Rico is taking to win the future. View photos from the trip and watch video of the President's remarks. Can Energy Efficiency Help You Get a Job? Developing the market for building energy upgrades will attract the investment and create the jobs that will put America’s building industry to work making American businesses more efficient and competitive. Building a Culture of Efficiency Across the Federal Government The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) makes an unprecedented commitment to efficiency and fiscal discipline in order to best support frontline operations. Today's Schedule All times are Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). 9:00 AM: The Vice President will hold the next meeting of the bipartisan, bicameral group of Members of Congres to continue to work on legislative framework for comprehensive deficit reduction 9:45 AM: The President receives the Presidential Daily Briefing 11:15 AM: The Vice President meets with Senator Lindsey Graham 12:45 PM: Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney 2:00 PM: The President and Vice President receive an economic briefing 4:30 PM: The President and the Vice President meet with Secretary Gates 5:35 PM:The President hosts military fathers and their children for a screening of Cars 2 from Disney/Pixar 6:00 PM: The President meets with senior advisors 7:00 PM: The President and First Lady host Congressional Picnic at the White House; the Vice President also attends  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

What Makes a Good Corporate Blog Graywolf's SEO Blog

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What Makes a Good Corporate Blog Posted: 14 Jun 2011 10:16 AM PDT When I talk with new, existing or potential clients about blogging or content marketing strategies, many of them are confused about how to run a good corporate blog. How do they write about things that customers and potential customers will find interesting or link worthy without being too salesy or too pushy. In this post, I’ll take a look at what I consider to be some bad examples and, more importantly, some good examples. they educate me or make me want to experience something without hard selling me the way a timeshare salesman does … It’s no secret that I play in the travel space myself and for a few clients, and I read quite a few travel blogs. In my example, one of the worst travel blogs comes from Orbitz. They have post after post filled with nothing but self referential sales posts. Do people want travel deals where they save money? Absolutely. But let’s be honest: the Orbitz posts are hardly deals. IMHO they are a textbook 101 case of brands abusing authority status and wrapping links around unexceptional, thin content. What’s an example of a good travel blog? British Airways. What makes it good? Posts like this about historic bars in Amsterdam. They do an excellent job of highlighting the reasons why I would want to travel to Amsterdam and what will be interesting and exciting to see when I’m there. Simply put, they educate me or make me want to experience something without hard selling me the way a timeshare salesman does. It may be easy to romanticize travel to places like Paris, but what if you sell an informational product? Some of my favorite informational blog include 37 signals, GTD Times blog, Evernote, and Trendwatching. In the case of the first three, they mix in posts about life/work organization, optimization, and productivity with some very light selling. Another important aspect of these blogs is the real life examples, case studies, or uses. There’s an old saying, “let one thousand flowers bloom”: in this case, it means that when you let your customers use your products in ways you didn’t expect or intend, sometimes you get amazing results. For example, I doubt Evernote thought a street food cart vendor would use their product when they built it, but the cart vendor did, and Evernote featured it on their blog. Click here to view the embedded video. What if you sell a product, a completely boring, unsexy product like flour? Look at what the folks at King Arthur Flour do on their blog. It would be easy to write simple product descriptions and maybe offer a coupon or sale for the product. Instead, they take an educational approach. One of the core concepts of the blog is recipes and showing people how to cook better. Flour is primarily a baking product; however, look around the blog and you can see that they talk about all sorts of recipes, even ones that don’t include flour … like ice cream. So what are the takeaways from this post on What Makes a Good Corporate Blog: Use your company blog as a way to reach your customer, not just sell to them. Use your blog to teach your customers about what they gain by using your product or service. Show them how your product or service can make their lives better or easier. Tell a story, don’t just pitch your product. Don’t be afraid to showcase unusual or unexpected uses. Educate and inform first, sell as a secondary function. photo credit: Country Boy Shane Related posts: How WordPress Makes Comments SEO Unfriendly I love wordpress I really do it makes it really... Contextual Advertising That makes me Laugh Sometimes the ads in GMail crack me up... Corporate Black Hat SEO Terminology So now that more and more companies are getting involved... How to Add a Carousel to Your Thesis Blog If you’ve spent any time visiting blogs lately chances are... Double Edged Sword of Blog Success Since the beginning of the year my subscription rate on... Advertisers: Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed! Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services Link Building- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for $295 Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks Links From PR9 Sites - - Get In Top 3 Google ASAP TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price. This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review. What Makes a Good Corporate Blog

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Seth's Blog : Giving umbrage

Giving umbrage

Funny how umbrage is always taken, but rarely given.

"I can't believe the item they sent me was navy blue! I ordered light blue! I will never, ever buy from them again and I will tell all my friends."

Like little kids begging mom for a treat after a skinned knee, the newly empowered consumer feels compelled to share every slight, no matter how small or how imagined.

The thing is, consumers are complaining to the wrong companies about the wrong things.

Organizations that shut out consumers, politicians that don't listen, companies that are willfully isolated--these folks aren't the ones that get yelled at. So we yell at the few companies that are actually trying and actually listening, rewarding their goodwill with a good public flogging.

It's the long-term ripoffs, the business models built on misleading people and the subtle but serious health and financial threats we ought to be whining about instead.

But, apparently,  it's more fun to concentrate on the trivial and give it a good loud vent.

 

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Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

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• Wave of Violent Protests, Rioting, Bombings Hits China; Expect More Riots When China's Credit Bubble Pops, Exposing Mountains of Fraud
• Small Business Optimism Dips Third Month; Business Owners Cite Lack of Customers, Inflation as Problems; Keynesian Claptrap from Summers
• ECB Governor Christian Noyer Warns "Default Would Mean Financing the Entire Greek Economy"; 10-Year Yields at Record High; Emergency Session Underway
• Inflation Accelerates in China: CPI +5.5%, Food +11.7%, PPI +6.8%, Fixed Asset Investment +25.4%; Peak Oil Will Slow China

Wave of Violent Protests, Rioting, Bombings Hits China; Expect More Riots When China's Credit Bubble Pops, Exposing Mountains of Fraud Posted: 14 Jun 2011 09:15 PM PDT Protests are not uncommon in China. However, most protests have been in rural areas where farmers have had their land stolen by bureaucrats and property developers. The last few weeks have been different. Several large urban areas have seen protests against corruption. Please consider Wave of Unrest Rocks China A wave of violent unrest in urban areas of China over the past three weeks is testing the Communist Party's efforts to maintain control over an increasingly complex and fractious society, forcing it to repeatedly deploy its massive security forces to contain public anger over economic and political grievances. In the latest disturbance, armed police were struggling to restore order in a manufacturing town in southern China Monday after deploying tear gas and armored vehicles against hundreds of migrant workers who overturned police cars, smashed windows and torched government buildings there the night before. The protests, which began Friday night in Zengcheng, in the southern province of Guangdong, followed serious rioting in another city in central China last week, plus bomb attacks on government facilities in two other cities in the past three weeks, and ethnic unrest in the northern region of Inner Mongolia last month. Antigovernment protests have become increasingly common in China in recent years, according to the government's own figures, but they have been mainly confined to rural areas, often where farmers have been thrown off their land by property developers and local officials. The latest unrest, by contrast, involves violent protests from individuals and large crowds in China's cities, where public anger is growing over issues including corruption and police abuses. Protests in China have been occurring at an increasing rate. This is in spite of the fact the Chinese economy has been growing at 10% a year for a decade. What happens when China's growth slows to 4%? Chinese Stock Market Fraud While pondering implications of slowing growth in China, please consider The big fraud in Chinese stocks by Jim Jubak. For years, investors in Chinese companies have used the reputations of outside auditors, institutional investors and global investment banks as a proxy for reliable financial reporting. Maybe the disclosed data wasn't always easily understood, transparent or accurate but if a Big Four international accounting firm like Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu signed off on the audit, a big institutional investor like JPMorgan Chase (JPM, news) owned a couple of million shares and an investment bank like Goldman Sachs Group (GS, news) had underwritten the company's initial public offering, the financials had to be OK, right? Apparently not. That's what's so depressing, disturbing and disorienting about the fraud recently uncovered at Longtop Financial Technologies (LFT). The company's books were audited by Deloitte, and Longtop still managed to lie about the $332 million in cash it claimed on its balance sheet. This was no penny stock that duped only unsophisticated individual investors. JPMorgan Chase owned almost 2 million shares that were worth $62 million as of March 31. FMR, which owns the Fidelity mutual fund family, had $261 million invested. Maverick Capital, a hedge fund with $20 billion under management, owned $177 million of Longtop Financial Technologies shares. The lead underwriters on Longtop's 2007 IPO had been Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank. In 2009, Morgan Stanley was the lead manager of a sale of more shares. Since March, more than two dozen companies based in China have disclosed auditor resignations or accounting problems, according to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC has launched a task force charged with examining accounting at overseas companies listed in the United States. In other words, Longtop Financial Technologies isn't a bad apple in a barrel of otherwise sound fruit. Instead, it's symptomatic of a big problem that has tainted an entire sector. And because China is too big an economy and too promising a stock market to simply ignore, investors need to figure out how to deal with the problem. Longtop Financial Daily Chart Longtop stopped trading May 18. Jubak describes the fraud in great detail in the rest of his post. Expect Mountains of Fraud Fraud and credit bubbles go hand-in-hand. When things are booming, everyone is willing to look away. That's what happened with the US housing bubble as well. Greenspan then Bernanke were both in denial, as was the NAR, real estate flippers, and everyone who stood to profit from the bubble on the long side. China is currently in the midst of an enormous property bubble and credit bubble, yet some serious cases of fraud have already popped up. As soon as the Chinese credit bubble implodes, and it will, look for mountains of fraud in the Chinese stock market and the Chinese property market to come to light. Also expect the Chinese Copper Ponzi Financing Trade Gone Wild will implode. As long as the stock market, the job market, and housing prices hold up, China may be able to contain social unrest. " When China's credit bubble implodes, things will likely be anything but "contained". 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.

Small Business Optimism Dips Third Month; Business Owners Cite Lack of Customers, Inflation as Problems; Keynesian Claptrap from Summers Posted: 14 Jun 2011 10:40 AM PDT In spite of all the yapping about banks not lending to small businesses, only 8% of businesses report getting loans is a problem. In contrast 25% say getting customers is the number one problem. An increasing number of owners cite rising inflation as a problem. Please consider Small Business Optimism Dips Lower in May The Index of Small Business Optimism fell 0.3 points in May to 90.9. This month marks the third monthly decline in a row. The proximate cause is the fact that 1 in 4 owners still report weak sales as their top business problem. Consumer spending is weak, especially for "services," a sector dominated by small businesses. the index makes clear that optimism is moving in the wrong direction: a recession-level reading for an economy fighting its way through a recovery. Also, inflation is a growing concern now with 1 in 10 citing this as their most serious business problem meaning cost side pressures coming in the "back door," not rising food prices at home. "Corporate profits may be at a record high, but businesses on Main Street are still scraping by," said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg. "Washington is throwing misdirected policies at the problem, offering tax breaks for hiring and equipment investment, but acting surprised when they don't bear any fruit. The failure to understand why small-business owners are not hiring or investing has resulted in a set of policies that have not been very effective, and Main Street is suffering. The icing on the cake: the growing debt, large deficits, threats of higher taxes, regulations being spewed out by state and local administrations, and the uncertainty of the new health care law—is it any wonder that optimism is down?" Highlights From NFIB Report Over the next three months, 13% plan to increase employment (down 3 points from April, down 5 points from March), and 8% plan to reduce their workforce (up 2 points), yielding a seasonally adjusted net negative 1% of owners planning to create new jobs. Only 5% of the owners view the current period as a good time to expand Fifty percent of firms reported making capital expenditures over the past six months, and the percent of owners planning capital outlays in the next 3 to 6 months fell 1 point to 20%, a recession level reading. Sales are down; the net percent of all owners (seasonally adjusted) reporting higher nominal sales over the past three months lost 4 percentage points, falling to a net negative 9%, with more firms with sales trending down than up. 92 percent reported that all their credit needs were met or that they were not interested in borrowing. Eight percent reported that not all of their credit needs were satisfied, and 49 percent said they did not want a loan. Three percent reported financing as their #1 business problem The "feedstock" for inflation continued to grow, with the number of owners actually raising average selling prices reaching a net 15 percent, seasonally adjusted. Thirty-one (31) percent reported raising average selling prices, double the percent cutting prices which suggests that average price levels will be rising, and that is "inflation." The Federal Reserve protests the notion that QE2 liquidity is driving commodity prices as liquidity scours the world to find a higher return than that offered by banks, but there is a strong correlation between Federal Reserve purchases and commodity prices. Misguided Policies Why would you want to expand or hire new employees if your problem is lack of customers? The answer is you wouldn't and neither will small businesses. Yet Obama attacked the problem in January of 2010 with a $33 billion tax credit proposal. The administration is floating the idea of tax credits once again on the assumption that Republicans may go for tax cuts. However, tax credits to spur hiring were bad policy in 2010 and they are still bad policy today. Keynesian Claptrap from Obama's Former Top-Economic Advisor More government spending and stimulus cannot possibly fix a problem that includes too much government spending and misguided stimulus efforts. Yet that is what Lawrence Summers suggests in How to avoid our own lost decade This is no time for fatalism or for traditional political agendas. The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending, it is only resolved by increases in confidence, borrowing and lending, and spending. Unless and until this is done other policies, no matter how apparently appealing or effective in normal times, will be futile at best. You have to be a Keynesian nutcase to believe more spending is the solution to problems caused by too much spending. Such policies have never cured one problem in history, yet proponents of such policies never learn. 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.

ECB Governor Christian Noyer Warns "Default Would Mean Financing the Entire Greek Economy"; 10-Year Yields at Record High; Emergency Session Underway Posted: 14 Jun 2011 09:24 AM PDT ECB Governors are pouring on the sap once again today. Mario Draghi, likely the next ECB president opposes steps that aren't "purely voluntary." The irony being there is no such thing at this point of a "pure voluntary" restructuring. Meanwhile Christian Noyer, warns that a default would mean "financing the entire Greek economy." Emergency Session Underway as Yields Hit New Record High Please consider Euro Finance Chiefs Race to Avert Default Yields on 10-year Greek bonds climbed to 17.46 percent today, a record in the 17-nation euro-area's history, before an emergency session of finance ministers in Brussels. Luxembourg's Jean-Claude Juncker, who leads the group of euro-area finance ministers, said before the meeting that "all options" will be considered regarding Greece. Austrian Finance Minister Maria Fekter told reporters that members of the group still differ on a bailout model. ECB Governing Council member Mario Draghi reiterated that the central bank opposes any steps that aren't "purely voluntary." The "cost of a default would exceed the benefits" and a "default would not address the root causes of the crisis," Draghi told lawmakers in Brussels at his confirmation hearing for the ECB presidency. Christian Noyer, another ECB Governing Council member, said any attempt by euro-area governments to adjust Greek debt that resulted in a default would mean financing the nation's entire economy. "Our position is extremely simple: if there is a solution that avoids a risk of default, it seems suitable," Noyer told journalists in Paris today. "If you can't find it, it's better to avoid touching the debt. If despite everything you try to reduce the debt and you provoke a risk of default, you'll have to finance the entire Greek economy." No other sovereign nation is graded as low as CCC by S&P, a spokesman said by e-mail. Moody Investors Service cut its rating on Greece to Caa1 on June 1, leaving only Ecuador as a worse sovereign risk. Greek 10-Year Government Bond Yield The market as well as the S&P have priced in a default. The only people not to recognize a default is coming are the ECB, the IMF, and Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister who is running to head up the IMF. In spite of what the ECB and IMF says, the world will not end when Greece defaults. 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.

Inflation Accelerates in China: CPI +5.5%, Food +11.7%, PPI +6.8%, Fixed Asset Investment +25.4%; Peak Oil Will Slow China Posted: 14 Jun 2011 12:13 AM PDT I keep repeating that those looking for "inflation" where by prices or by credit expansion, need to look at China, not the US. Please consider China's Inflation Accelerates to 5.5% China's inflation accelerated to the fastest pace in almost three years in May and industrial production rose more than estimates, sustaining pressure for a further interest-rate increase. The 5.5 percent annual gain in consumer prices matched the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of economists. Production rose 13.3 percent, exceeding a median 13.1 percent forecast. Fixed-asset investment quickened, according to statistics bureau data released in Beijing today. Food prices rose 11.7 percent from a year earlier as pork and vegetable costs surged. Inflation has exceeded the Chinese government's 4 percent target each month this year as companies including McDonald's Corp. boost prices. Still, the pace remains the slowest of the so-called BRIC nations, with the latest data showing annual rates of 6.6 percent for Brazil, 9.6 percent for Russia and 8.7 percent for India. China's producer prices rose a more-than-estimated 6.8 percent in May and non-food inflation accelerated to 2.9 percent, the fastest pace in at least six years, today's data showed. The increase in industrial output compared with April's 13.4 percent expansion from a year earlier. Retail sales, which are boosted by inflation, rose 16.9 percent after a 17.1 percent gain in April. Fixed-asset investment excluding rural households expanded 25.8 percent in the first five months of the year, up from 25.4 percent in January-through-April. Peak Oil Will Slow China Fixed investment in China is soaring even though infrastructure projects make little to no economic sense. The result is exactly what one would expect: inflation. However, what cannot go on won't. Please consider the energy bulletin article China's Energy Future by Robert Rapier. China uses about two barrels a year of oil per person. In the United States we use 23 barrels of oil per person per year. If China's usage grew to the U.S. equivalent, it would be 85 million barrels a day, which is about the total consumption of oil for the world. There will be a major disaster long before China consumes anywhere close to that amount. Yet China bulls insist China will keep growing at the same rate. Peak oil says it's not remotely possible. 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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