Hey Gang. So, things seem to be going from a mere economic slowdown to a real shut off. According to Deloitte holiday spending is expected to rise less than 3%. Now 3% may seem to be a fine increase in holiday spending, but it will be the lowest sales growth since 1991 (a recessionary year, if you remember) but the current annualized rate of inflation is above 5.3%. If that kind of inflationary rate continues, based on costs and dollars spent could mean a net contraction in retail spending. For anyone who does business online, this is a chilling prospect.

 So, as the economy softens, every site needs to pay attention to their search engine optimization in order to grow sales. Let's face it, there may be fewer dollars flying around the internet, so making your site the very best it can be is critical. Here is a quick search engine optimization checklist to insure that while the economy may be bad, your search engine optimization is awesome.

The 5 Step Guide to SEO Improvement: 

1.  Page Titles: Make sure that your page titles are chock full of spot-on keywords that are both salient to your business, and high volume search terms.
2. Metadata: While it is true that metadata is a smaller part of SEO than it used to be, metadata is a perfect place to echo the keywords that you use in your page titles. SpinShark search engine optimization always focuses on keyword resonance, insuring that your keywords are repeated appropriately throught your page. This repetition allows for great search relevance and really maximizes your search engine optimization efforts.
3. On Page Content: This is the trickiest part of SEO or SEM. Your on page content needs to be full (but not too full) of those terrific keywords that you have in your titles and metadata. Those keywords are great food for search engines. But, who is the most important audience for your on page content? Why, your customer! The best way to grow sales is to write content that is keyword rich, but makes a compelling case why the customer needs to engage with your products or service. Your on page content is food for spiders, but also food for your business. Make it count, and you will grow your sales.
4. URLS: Try to make your URLS keyword rich. A URL like www.yoursite.com/cat=1234&prodid=5678 dpesn't provide any SEO help. Search engine friendly URLS are configured more like www.yoursite.com/cat=keyword&prodid=keyword. Those kinds of changes may be problematic for some of you, but keyword rich URLS provide more resonance that increases your search engine optimization.
5. Tags: H1, H2 and H3 tags are your friends. Insure that they are full of the same keywords that are in your URLS, Titles, Metadata and on page content.These are perfect spots for keyword resonance.