An article in the Denver Business Journal recently mentioned that Mountain State CFOs are more likely to be hiring than others. The study referred to upcoming months in 2010 and mentioned that nationwide, hiring is expected to be down according to CFOs surveyed, but in mountain states, a four percent increase is expected.

Jobs in the survey that could see increased hires include:

• Health Care
• Education
• Accounting

Given that we're in the midst of tax season, accounting isn't all that surprising.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

Knowing the hiring trends for Denver area businesses can help you plan your marketing efforts for the upcoming quarters. If your business directly provides support to health care, education, or accounting providers in Denver metro, you may wish to ramp up your marketing efforts. It is quite possible these sectors will see job growth and will require the additional support that comes along with additional hires.

I recently came across an article in the Denver Post about a Ken Caryl company with aspirations of applying their unique law firm services to cities nationwide. The company is called Simplicity Law - you can click here to see the Denver small business law services that they provide.

The Simplicity Law Model

If you're a Denver small business, you know that legal costs to start and maintain a small business can mount quickly. Simplicity Law has a different approach to providing legal services - from their website, they mention that they'll get their work done for you in 24 hours or less. Their services also start at just $100. They don't have a huge overhead as many law firms do. They aren't saddled with a huge expensive lease in a luxury office high rise downtown. Most of their work is done over the phone or Internet.

For more details, be sure to check out their website.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

Being a successful small business owner in Denver requires making smart decisions when it comes to expenses - especially during the current tough economic times. If most Denver small business owners are like me, legal expenses are not something to get overly excited about. It is difficult to directly measure any sort of positive ROI with legal costs as you can with something more rewarding - like marketing. I haven't used Simplicity Law, but I'm all for at least exploring options to reduce legal costs. If Simplicity Law is able to provide the same quality service that you'd expect from a ritzy downtown law office, then they're definitely worth exploring.

Comscore recently released the February search engine ranking results. The news was good for Bing - as they gained .2 percent market share - from 11.3% to 11.5%. Google barely surged ahead by .1% to 65.5%. Yahoo continued to drop and is now at 16.8% of total search engine market share.

It really appears to me as if the search engine market share is starting to solidify and will probably hold at about these numbers for the next few months until a major development - hopefully something innovative - occurs. Google will likely control around 2/3 of the search engine marketshare for the forseeable future, while Microsoft and Yahoo will likely hover just below 30%.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

This news isn't the best for Denver small businesses looking to participate in online marketing. While Bing launched with quite a bit of fanfare, and the Microsoft Yahoo partnership in search offers a tiny bit of competition - Google is still in a dominant market position. While I fully realize that Google's pay-per-click system is based (mostly) on competition between advertisers, I can't help but think that more robust search competition would help to keep Google's pay-per-click prices down.

While my focus is primarily on local marketing for Denver businesses, I often times work for companies with wider-reaching audiences.

I recently completed a website for a company called Mozambique Voyages, LLC. Mozambique Voyages is an African company that specializes in providing specialty travel to Mozambique. Their knowledge in the region is unparalleled and this new website is a great resource for North American travelers looking for information on travel to Mozambique.

Mozambique Voyages Website

This new website is MozambiqueVoyages.com and it provides incredibly in depth and up to date information on travel to Mozambique. Mozambique is a unique destination in Africa - it offers some of the best beaches and diving in the world, yet it also has world class game reserves. Mozambique represents one of the premier vacation destinations for both relaxation and exploration.

The Details
In order for a website to proactively market for your business, you really need to make sure that you keep the content fresh and relevant. Most of the new websites that I produce are developed using a content management system called "Joomla". Content management systems (like Joomla) offer the opportunity for website owners to update their own websites - they don't have to rely on technical experts to make simple changes or post new information. This allows website owners to update their own website whenever they want to - and it ensures that the content is up to date.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

If your Denver small business has a website that is dated that no one ever visits, you may wish to change your strategy. Consider a redesign using a content management system. A website built through the use of a content management system will allow you to update your own website. You can keep your content up to date and as a result be a more relevant resource to your potential clients. Websites that are more current and more relevant tend to do much better in the search engine rankings.

What is Flash?

Flash is a software platform from Adobe that provides an opportunity for a website to have more interactive elements than are possible with just plain old HTML.

Examples of Flash

Flash has some valid, appropriate uses - but it is also utilized in ways that don't make much sense. These are some places where you have likely come across Flash applications on websites:

• Interactive clickable maps
• Streaming Internet videos
• Image Slideshows

The examples cited above are fairly valid uses for Flash. Where Flash really shouldn't be used are areas like the following:

• Splash Pages - A splash page is an introductory page for a website that contains little in the way of information. It may contain animation and a button that says "click here". Splash pages were popular about 8 years ago. If your website has a splash page, get rid of it. The goal of a website is to get the site visitor the information they need as quickly as possible. A splash page adds another, unnecessary step that gets between the website visitor and their goal. Not only will your Denver small business website be aggravating for visitors if it has a splash page, it will also look extremely outdated as the practice of using splash pages for websites is no longer popular.


• Website Development - Often times entire websites are developed using Flash. For most Denver small businesses in most industries, this is a big mistake. Search engines have a very difficult time indexing Flash based websites. Flash websites often stray very far from conventional norms. From a pure marketing standpoint, building your Denver small business website with Flash is a very bad idea.


• Website Navigation - It may seem like a minor point, but if your menus are made of Flash, there is a strong possibility that search engines are having a difficult time indexing your website. Search engines use the navigation menus to travel from page to page in a site, and if they can't read your menus, it may leave much of your website out of the index because it can't find the pages.

The Case Against Flash

Flash is also under fire throuhgout the tech industry - including from players like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. Not to mention security experts:

• Apple's CEO refers to Flash as a "resource hog" that is full of "security holes" - and the IPhone doesn't support Flash
• One of the world's foremost security experts advises against installing Flash to keep your website safe ("The main thing is not to install flash")
• Google and other companies are moving towards HTML 5 to stream video data instead of Flash

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

I have a lot of experience with Flash. I've used it quite a bit - mostly for video related applications - but also for slideshows and maps.

I believe that Flash still has a lot of useful applications on websites - but use it sparingly. If you're considering using Flash on your website, use it where it makes sense - especially where there are no other alternatives. That includes slideshows, videos, maps, and related uses.

If your Denver website has a Flash splash page or was developed entirely in Flash, you might want to make sure that your website pages are in the search engine indexes. You may also wish to consider moving away from Flash and building a new website. Search engines have difficulties indexing Flash, the IPhone doesn't support Flash, and companies (like Google) are looking for ways around Flash with new technologies.