Filed under: Estates, Celebrity Shopping, Sports

For years it has seemed like golden boy quarterback Tom Brady couldn’t fail. Championships, check, endorsement deals, check, gorgeous girlfriend; check, great real estate deals, check and maybe recheck. Brady did well in Boston when it comes to real estate, converting a townhouse into condos he sold at a profit but he can’t seem to unload his ultra fancy New York pad in the Time Warner Center. It’s not for lack of trying. As the New York Post’s Gimme Shelter column reports it was listed for $16.5 million back in February 2007 with the Corcoran Group. Then, as my colleague Jared Paul Stern mentioned, it popped back on the market this July for $18.29 million listed with new broker, Prudential Douglas Elliman. Now at its current listing price of $17.75 million it still seems overpriced. Certainly other celebrities and non-celebrities have sold at a profit there. Ricky Martin purchased it in 2004 for $6.8 million and sold it in September 2006 for $9.75 million. Brady’s apartment was listed at $14.5 million when he purchased in 2006 which may have been closer to the market’s peak.

Brady’s apartment is a three-bedroom, three-bath home on one of the highest floors of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel and Condominium at Time Warner Center. It’s full of well designed furniture and has details such as black lacquered doors, ebony finished walnut wood floors, Venetian plastering and of course it boasts beautiful views of the city. Given the current real estate climate though, Brady might want to price it in the $15 million range and get out now while he still can.

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Well, it looks like the stock market rallied this day (up over 500 points as I write this) and gas prices are falling - a friend here in Iowa reported gas prices under $3.

But for Baby Boomers, and particularly those of us in business, times may continue to be “tight” and we remain worried. So what are you doing to cope? Have you changed anything?

My husband and I have made some changes and plan to make others:

• We cancelled a planned 10-day trip to do some family history research.
  

• We paid off our high-interest charge card and we are going to save it for emergencies.
• We are going to eat out less and stay at home for meals. That one isn’t too tough, because my husband is a great cook.
• We’re buying at lower-priced stores, like WalMart, and looking for no-interest deals on larger buys.
• Hardest for me, we have decided to cut back on the number of books we buy. Ouch! Fewer Amazon boxes coming in the mail.
• And we aren’t buying other “toys” like all my quilting fabric. I’ve enough to last me for many years, so I don’t need more for a long time.
• With my business, I am going through and eliminating unessential expenses as much as possible.

What are you doing for your home and business to ride out these difficult financial times? Have your spending and savings habits changed? What are you doing differently? Comment and let us know. We can learn from each other.

Tags: baby boomer businesses, credit crunch, financial panic

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Filed under: Google (GOOG), Small business

One of the most powerful ways to market your company is through search engine optimization (SEO). This refers to what happens when users enter certain queries into on the web search engines. The idea is to ensure that your website gets high placement in the results, ideally being on the first page of results.

So what are some strategies for effective SEO?

Well, let’s use an example. Suppose you operate a retail store based in Newport Beach, California, which sells chocolate. But when you search for “chocolate” on Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), you see that major companies rank high on that word. It will probably be impossible to get any traction on such a generic term.

“When selecting your main keywords,” said Don Deveau, the SEO Team Lead at Register.com, “It’s usually superior to start with more specific ones. You’ll have much less competition.”

As a result, you might want to look for keywords like “handmade chocolate.” Or, you might be more specific by listing your store’s location (”Newport Beach chocolate”).

It actually takes quite a bit of brainstorming to come up with keywords. And yes, there are some on the web tools to help things out, including Wordtracker, which helps identify optimal keywords.

Next, you want to place the keywords into your website content. For example, it’s a good idea to have each page focus on one or two keywords. Thus, if you have a page on handmade chocolate, then you should mention this a number of times in the descriptions. This helps search engines find and rank the pages.

Then, place these keywords into the page’s meta-tag as well as the title. It’s usually a waste of space if you mention your company name in the meta-tags; instead, focus on the keywords.

Another key is to get links back to your site. “You want highly ranked sites that point to yours,” said Steve Rodman, who is the director of community support at PacketTrap Networks. “It also helps if the sites are relevant to your industry.”

Using our example, it would be great to get a link from a site like Hershey (NYSE: HSY).

Something else to consider: a blog. Again, make sure you sprinkle your posts with relevant keywords. All in all, search engines tend to like blogs, perhaps because there’s often original content which is updated frequently.

No doubt, SEO can be a lot of work. But the good news is that there are high-quality companies which provide premium services. Register.com, for example, has a variety of plans for small businesses that range from $50 to $300 per month.

There are also some good books on the topic, including Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar On the internet Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He’s also the founder of BizEquity, a valuation website

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