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luni, 4 noiembrie 2013

Cutting our deficit in half

Monday, November 4, 2013

Cutting our deficit in half

Last week a new report had some big economic news you probably missed: Since 2009, we've cut our deficit in half -- and it's falling at its fastest rate since World War II.

Here's what a milestone like that looks like (in animated form):

In addition to improving our nation's long-term fiscal security by reducing the deficit, President Obama's working hard to help strengthen the middle class. And in the past three and a half years, businesses have created more than 7.6 million new jobs.

Take a look and pass it on:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/share/cutting-our-deficit-half

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President Obama Speaks Out in Support of ENDA

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President Obama Speaks Out in Support of ENDA

This week, the Senate is expected to take up a critically important piece of legislation: the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, or ENDA. This bill would make it explicitly illegal under federal law to fire someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity -- and it’s long overdue.

In an op-ed published in The Huffington Post, the President speaks directly to the American people to ensure everyone understands what’s at stake and why it’s so important that Congress move forward on this legislation:

"It's offensive. It's wrong. And it needs to stop, because in the United States of America, who you are and who you love should never be a fireable offense."

Click here to read President Obama's op-ed.

President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the LGBT Pride Month Reception in the East Room of the White House, June 15, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Be the Result that Google Wants to Rank

Posted: 03 Nov 2013 03:15 PM PST

Posted by Kristina Kledzik

As SEOs, we're the only type of online marketers who pay little to no attention to the people who actually visit our websites. PPC'ers watch visitors' responses to ads via click through rates, social media managers converse with users directly, writers write for readers, and designers design for visitors. But SEOs give advice based on Google.

Google, like the rest of online marketers, is primarily concerned with the opinions of visitors to Google.com. Its goals is to deliver the most satisfying webpages as results to searchers (and possibly charge for those results through ever-more-subtle paid ads). Thus, we SEOs eventually have our effect on actual visitors, as our techniques to attract search engines allow our sites to rank well and get visits from actual humans.

Why don't we just make changes for visitors so that Google will want to rank us well?

In the dawn of SEO, Google was stupid

When Google was first created, it couldn't see nearly as much as it can now, and focusing on user experience alone could leave your site virtually unreadable to Google. I only started in this industry in 2010, and even then, SEOs had to focus on specific keyword usage, tagging, link building, and anchor textâ€"all things that are virtually meaningless to visitors. But over the past few years, Google's near-daily algorithm updates have made its crawler interpret webpages more and more like a human would.

Still, we continue to panic about every change Google makes. What are their next steps? Are they going to do something that will crush your site?

Here's a hint: If we're optimizing our sites for visitors, there's little to no chance that a Google algorithm update will penalize us. That means that we're on Google's side: We're trying to make our site better for visitors, which makes Google look good when visitors click through to our sites. Help them help us.

The good news is, if you're a white hat SEO who keeps up on search engine trends, Google has probably led you into doing some good online marketing without even realizing it. To explain this a little more clearly, here's a comparison of some of the top white-hat SEO strategies from 2010, when I started, and how you should handle them in 2013:

On-page keyword usage â†' content strategy

2010: The best way to rank #1 for a keyword was to use it in the <title>, the <h1>, maybe an <h2>, and a few times in the text (but no keyword stuffing! Google had figured that out, at least.)

2013: Google understands synonyms now, so you can use a keyword once and show that it's highly relevant with other similar terms. Experts recommend using keyword groups (an idea that I had been hinting at for ages but didn't think of concretely until I read Cyrus's awesome post): Use a number of keywords that all mean approximately the same thing, so you can be relevant for all of them.

How to be even better with content strategy

Don't focus so much on keywords with the most local searches a month, on average (Google Keyword Planner is so vague). Instead, use phrases that your current and potential customers use.

There are hundreds of easy, reliable, cheap online survey tools, so take your pick. Reach out to your email list and ask them to complete a survey that asks:

How they describe your products/services
What emotions they attribute to your products/services
Why they want/need your products/services
The ideal brand personality that would sell your products/services

Allow survey takers to write in the responses free-form, so they won't be restricted to the words you think they'll use.

Once you have the right keywords, work them into the copy in a way that speaks to them. This will take a great content strategy, something that I can't describe to you briefly here. But these blog posts will get you on the right path:

How to Build a Content Marketing Strategy

Kill it in Content Creation by Knowing Your Customer Conversion Funnel

Avoiding Disaster: How to Prevent the 3 Most Common Content Marketing #Fails

On-page structure/tagging â†' design

2010: You had to mark up the important parts of a webpage with HTML tags: <h#>, <strong>, and <em>.

2013: Google can see where text will show up on a page, and how prominent it will be to visitors. You can't just tag text to make it relevant to search engines, it has to be integrated into the design.

Design isn't just a "nice to have." It's a necessary part of the online marketing world now, and it absolutely pays off. If you didn't come to MozCon 2012, Jenny Lam's presentation discusses how people are much more likely to trust attractive things. Google knows that design builds trust: Remember how Panda slapped websites covered in ads? As Google begins to understand how people interpret design better and better, having a good design will become a necessary part of both online marketing and SEO.

How to be even better with good design

PAY FOR GOOD DESIGN.

Many of you reading this blog are technical, possibly able to build a very solid HTML website. That does not make you a good web designer.

Go out there and find a good web designer. Your input will be to remind the designer you hired that good web design does include a lot of text, both for search engines and for visitors.

Resources:

9 Principles for Great Branding by Design

Designing for SEO

Link building â†' online public relations

2010: Google was already getting pretty good at devaluing links from crappy sites, but a good link network could still work, and it certainly hadn't started penalizing you yet!

2013: Many sites have gone down because of Penguin alone, and others are still reeling from it. We can't buy links anymore, yet almost all bloggers understand the value of a link and want to be paid for it.

At Distilled, we now do what we like to call "online PR," where we focus on building relationships with bloggers and sites. The important thing is to focus on building a partnership where they rely on us as much as we rely on them. With a one-sided relationship, site owners are bound to take your link down or forget about you eventually, but when they look to you as a source of knowledge, and valuable to their readers, they'll keep reaching out to you.

And that's very much likeâ€"gaspâ€"real PR!

How to get better with online PR

Don't look for a link with DA [blank]. Look for a site that is genuinely a good match for what you or your client has to offer. Pitch the link or mention to the other site the way you would explain it if you weren't you and just thought it was a good match. Be flexible, so you can build a long-term relationship and keep sharing things through that channel in the future.

Here are a few great resources to point you in the right direction for great outreach:

The Blogger Outreach Equation

8 Tips for Blogger Outreach

Why Link Building Strategies Fail

Anchor text manipulation â†' branding

2010: The strongest way to rank for a keyword was to get a link with that keyword in the anchor text. Ecommerce sites across the nation paid for links with their target keyword in it and slipped those links in unrelated articles.

2013: It occurred to Google that if you have a million links to your site for "slinkies" but no links to your site about your brand name, no one knew who you were. There's just too much information out there, and too many scams. People feel more comfortable with brands, and are more likely to click on links to recognizable brands.

At the same time, Google realized that link profiles full of unbranded links were probably paid for, and that contributed to penalties.

Now, it's better to focus on brand awareness than the specific anchor text to your page. The more people are talking about your brand, the more likely they'll be to search for you specifically, and then you won't even have to worry about competing for #1 position in SERPs, you'll just be there!

How to get better with more brand awareness and loyalty

I think we've always known the value of branding. After all, why do so many Americans pay $2.50 for $0.05 worth of water, carbonation, sugar, and a bit of caffeine?

It's just been easier to match your content with search terms than to get people to actually search for you. Building brand awareness and loyalty involves building relationships with people you don't know yet, which is absolutely terrifying. It means you can try your hardest but fail, and have no idea why.

But, let's look at this a different way. Competing in the world of online marketing without a brand means that you're relying 100% on Google to continue to send you visitors. This is a very one-sided relationship. If Google changes things, or if your competitors get slightly better and edge you out of the first page of results, your business will collapse completely, and Google won't even notice. No company should rely so heavily on another, especially not one that barely knows you exist. Building a brand is planning for the future, and protecting you against the whims of Google.

Instead, make your company into something you're excited about, so it can excite your customers too. Put as much money into building your brand as you do other online marketing activities; it'll pay off. Joanna Lord gave one of the best "how to" speeches on building brand loyalty at SearchLove this year: slideshare or video.

So, all this means SEO is dead, right?

NO.

For one thing, as smart as Google will get, it will always have its quirks, so technical SEO is here to stay.

For another, a big part of SEO is identifying and understanding your competitors for certain search terms, since that can be very different from your competitors in real life.

But, SEO alone can't make your business. Even if, for some reason, it does right now, it won't in the future. SEO is one aspect of good online marketing, but you have to be a great marketer overall to make it in the long run.

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!

Seth's Blog : Understanding critical path

Understanding critical path

The longest string of dependent, non-compressible tasks is the critical path.

Every complicated project is the same. Many people working on many elements, some of which are dependent on others. I want a garden, which means I need grading, a bulldozer, a permit, seeds, fertilizer, irrigation, weeding, planting, maintenance and time for everything to grow. Do those steps in the wrong order, nothing happens. Try to grow corn in a week by giving it a bonus or threatening to fire it, nothing happens...

Critical path analysis works backward, looking at the calendar and success and at each step from the end to the start, determining what you'll be waiting on.

For example, in your mind's eye, the garden has a nice sign in front. The nice sign takes about a week to get made by the sign guy, and it depends on nothing. You can order the sign any time until a week before you need it. On the other hand, you can't plant until you grade and you can't grade until you get the delivery of soil and you can't get the delivery until you've got a permit from the local town.

Which means that if you're the person in charge of both the sign and the permit, do the permit first.

That's obvious, right? And yet...

And yet most organizations focus on shiny objectives or contentious discussions or get sidetracked by emergencies instead of honoring the critical path.

Thirty years ago, I led a team of forty people building an incredibly complex series of products, all of which had to ship in time for the Christmas selling season. The stakes were pretty high: if we missed by even one day, the entire company was going to fold.

We did some critical path analysis and pretty quickly identified the groups of people that others would be waiting on as each stage of the project developed. It's a relay race, and right now, these four people are carrying the baton.

I went out and got some buttons--green and red. The deal was simple: If you were on the critical path, you wore a green button. Everyone else wore red. When a red button meets a green button, the simple question is asked, "how can I help?" The president will get coffee for the illustrator if it saves the illustrator three minutes. In other words, the red button people never (ever) get to pull rank or interrupt a green button person. Not if you care about critical path, not if you care about shipping.

Once you're aware of who's on the path, you understand the following: delaying the critical path by one hour at the beginning of the project is the very same thing as delaying the entire project by an hour at the very end.

Rush early, not late. It's cheaper that way, and better for your peace of mind, too.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 3 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

"France is Not a Cash Cow"; Riots Over Ecotax Continue; Is Anyone Happy?

Posted: 03 Nov 2013 07:34 PM PST

French farmers are still not happy even though French president Francois Hollande decided to roll back the "ecotax" on large trucks following riots last week. Riots continued on Saturday, after the announced rollback.

For the prelude to this story please see my Thursday, October 31, post, Hollande's Tax Everything Plan Blows Sky High With Riots by Farmers.

French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Tuesday indefinitely suspended the introduction of a green tax on trucks following riots at the weekend in the Brittany region.

The move comes three days after a protest by hundreds of food producers, artisans and distributors in the western Brittany region ended in the worst riots in the area in years.

Indefinite Not Good Enough

The "indefinite rollback" on the "ecotax" (an allegedly environmentally friendly commercial transport, tax on French and foreign vehicles weighing over 3.5 tonnes) was not acceptable to the farmers, artisans and distributors. They demanded a permanent rollback.

Riots resumed on Saturday prompting French riot police use tear gas on anti-tax protesters.

French riot police fired tear gas at thousands of demonstrators in north-west France on Saturday, after some protesters hurled stones and iron bars at them in a rally against a controversial green tax and layoffs.

Protest organisers said 30,000 people, including hauliers, fishermen and food industry workers, had gathered in the town of Quimper in Brittany to demonstrate against an environmental tax on trucks and layoffs, even though the government had earlier in the week suspended the application of the so-called ecotax.

Authorities estimate that 15,000 people joined in the protest.

Some of the protestors pelted police with stones, iron bars and even pots of chrysanthemum, while others burned palettes. Police responded with water cannons and tear gas.

The prefect of the department of Finistere, Jean-Luc Videlaine, blamed the violence on a "marginal group" of right-wing extremists, who he said were believed to be among the protesters.

On Saturday, protestors marched under banners such as "Right to work", "Bretons yes, sheep no" and "France is not a cash cow".

Many also wore red caps, a symbol of the anti-tax campaign in Brittany in the 17th century.

Officials said the suspension of the tax, which would raise about one billion euros per year, would last at least several months.

Environmentalists slammed the Socialist government for postponing the tax, with Green MEP Jose Bove calling the move "pathetic" and an "incredible retreat".

No One Is Happy

What the hell was Hollande thinking when his officials announce the suspension for "at least several months"?

Was everyone but the environmentalists supposed to be happy?

"France is Not a Cash Cow"

Whoever coined the phrase "France is Not a Cash Cow" sure has that correct.

Then again, no country is a cash cow. They all tax their citizens to death then redistribute the proceeds with graft, cronyism, fraud, and plain government inefficiencies wasting most of the money.

France is so adept at wasting taxpayers' money that even the socialists are rioting.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Seth's Blog : Unlimited mileage

Unlimited mileage

When you rent a car with unlimited mileage and a full tank of gas, how far are you willing to go? You're only limited by desire and time.

The web feels that way to me. You can share as many secrets, ask as many questions, write as many blog posts as you can dream up. You can invest the time and energy to connect with as many people as you have something to offer... The opportunities for generous sharing and connection are unlimited by anyone (except us).

• Email to a friend •

sâmbătă, 2 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Guilty Until Proven Innocent; Grabbing Hand of the Law

Posted: 02 Nov 2013 08:56 PM PDT

In criminal court, you are innocent until proven guilty.

It's a different matter altogether in civil forfeiture, where prosecutors can and do seize the assets of anyone on phony charges. Given there is no recourse or fine, the best the innocent victims can do is get their property back, most likely with a huge delay, if at all.

Consider the plight of Terry Dehko and his daughter Sandy Thomas. They run a small grocery store in Fraser, Michigan. Because their insurance only covers a cash limit of $10,000, they frequently make smaller deposits. One day last January, the government seized $35,000 of their assets, not in the store, but in the store account.

Officials said Dehkos had violated federal money-laundering rules, which forbid people to "structure" their bank deposits so as to avoid the $10,000 threshold that triggers banks to report a transaction to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

There was no evidence of guilt. Dehko was not charged with any crimes, and the IRS supported Dehko's claim. Nonetheless, Dehko is offered 20% of the amount taken from him.

Grabbing Hand of the Law

The Economist explains the plight of Dehko in its report The Grabbing Hand of the Law

In criminal cases, the government can confiscate assets only after a conviction. Under "civil forfeiture", however, it can grab first and ask questions later. Property can be seized merely on the suspicion that it has been involved in a crime. Citizens have no right to a swift hearing. For a small business, that can be fatal.

In many civil-forfeiture cases the agencies that seize the assets keep most of the proceeds, and can use them to pad their budgets or buy faster patrol cars. It is hard to know how common this is, but the Institute for Justice (a libertarian law firm that is representing the Dehkos) notes that the federal government shared $450m of seized assets with state and local authorities in 2012.

The grabbers do not always prevail. A motel owner in Massachusetts recently won back his motel after prosecutors tried to seize it because one guest in 13,000 had been arrested for drug offences. In October in California, prosecutors who were trying to seize a building because two of the tenants were marijuana dispensaries (which are legal under Californian law), gave up and let the landlord keep it.

But this is scant comfort for the Dehkos, who are struggling to hold on to the store they have run since 1978. "It's kind of scary that they can do this to you," says Ms Thomas. "In America, you're supposed to be innocent until proven guilty."

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

10 Corporations Control Nearly Everything You Buy, 6 Media Corporations Control Nearly Everything You Read or Watch

Posted: 02 Nov 2013 10:34 AM PDT

PolicyMic has a very interesting chart that shows how 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy.

click on chart for huge image

The chart was posted on Reddit as illusion of choice. I could not locate the original source.

PolicyMic explains ...

Ten mega corporations control the output of almost everything you buy; from household products to batteries.

These corporations create the chain of supplies that flow from one another. Each chain begins at one of the 10 super companies.

Here's just one example: Yum Brands owns KFC and Taco Bell. The company was a spin-off of Pepsi. All Yum Brands restaurants sell only Pepsi products because of a lifetime deal with the soda-maker.

$84 billion company Proctor & Gamble owns companies that produce everything from detergent to toothpaste. Unilever produces everything from Dove soap to Klondike bars.

It's not just the products you buy and consume, either. In recent decades, the very news and information that you get has bundled together: 90% of the media is now controlled by just six companies, down from 50 in 1983, according to a Frugal Dad infographic from last year.

It gets even more macro, too: 37 banks have merged to become just four — JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and CitiGroup in a little over two decades, according to this Federal Reserve map.

The nation's 10 largest financial institutions hold 54% of our total financial assets; in 1990, they held 20%. As MotherJones reports, the number of banks has dropped from more than 12,500 to about 8,000.

Media Consolidation

Everything You Think, Read, or Say

I always try to find a link to the original source, but none of the links to a Frugal Dad article work.

Regardless anything you read, watch, or buy is in the hands of fewer and fewer companies. The same applies to banks.

This is another reason we need an independent news network. One is actually in the works, started by Jeremy Scahill, National Security Correspondent for The Nation magazine, and Glenn Greenwald who broke the NSA spy story.

For details, please see War Against Journalists; "We Hit the Jackpot"

Question of the Day

How long will it be, before everything to think read or say is in the pill you took today?

Link if video does not play: Zager And Evans

Addendum:

A couple of readers said the percentages mentioned above are way overstated. Indeed they are, especially if one takes the words "everything you buy" literally, then produces a grand total by dollar amount.

I took it form the start the infographic did not include cars, boats, houses, jewelry, etc, but rather common junk and foodstuff. I should have made a comment to that effect but didn't.

The same applies to the stats on media giants.

The important point is the idea behind the graphics, even if the percentage estimates stated are on the wild side.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

luni, 4 noiembrie 2013

Cutting our deficit in half

President Obama Speaks Out in Support of ENDA

Be the Result that Google Wants to Rank

Be the Result that Google Wants to Rank

In the dawn of SEO, Google was stupid

On-page keyword usage â†' content strategy

How to be even better with content strategy

On-page structure/tagging â†' design

How to be even better with good design

Link building â†' online public relations

How to get better with online PR

Anchor text manipulation â†' branding

How to get better with more brand awareness and loyalty

So, all this means SEO is dead, right?

Seth's Blog : Understanding critical path

Understanding critical path

More Recent Articles

duminică, 3 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Seth's Blog : Unlimited mileage

Unlimited mileage

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 2 noiembrie 2013

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

luni, 4 noiembrie 2013

In the dawn of SEO, Google was stupid

On-page keyword usage â†' content strategy

How to be even better with content strategy

On-page structure/tagging â†' design

How to be even better with good design

Link building â†' online public relations

How to get better with online PR

Anchor text manipulation â†' branding

How to get better with more brand awareness and loyalty

So, all this means SEO is dead, right?

More Recent Articles

duminică, 3 noiembrie 2013

More Recent Articles

sâmbătă, 2 noiembrie 2013

Pagini

Persoane interesate

Arhivă blog

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