Tuesday, December 12, 2006

12/12/06 - CAM - SEO - SoP and a year-end opportunity!


VLUeM – 12/12/06 - VITAMIN LAWYER UPDATE e-MEMO

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Here’s what I cover in this memo:

1. Paying for Complementary, Alternative Medicine (CAM) Therapies.
2. More on SEO…
3. Emergency Management SoP

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1. Paying for CAM Therapies.

NCCAM - the federal agency that is supposed to represent the public’s interest in Advanced Healthcare (what the gov’t calls “Complementary and Alternative Medicine”) has a web site with some useful information for practitioners. For example,

“In tax year 2005, the IRS allowed taxpayers to deduct medical expenses for a limited number of CAM services and products, such as acupuncture and chiropractic care. These expenses were generally allowed for taxpayers and their spouses and dependents.”

To find out more about resources for funding such health care costs, see: http://nccam.nih.gov/health/financial/index.htm

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2. Search Engine Optimization.

EntireWeb.com is an excellent source of information about searching the web. That’s why I’ve forwarded a number of their articles to this elist. Last week's article has good some really good advise. What particularly struck me were:

“Let's clear the decks, your opening headline (which should be an H1paragraph, by the way) should say in no uncertain terms what it is you are offering vis-a-vis service or product. (Not to mention the benefit of owning the damn thing.) This is the line that both search engine and customer will see first. It is the line that convinces both to stick around. In addition, this headline should reflect and tie-in neatly with your HTML meta tags of Title, Description and Keywords. *** Make no mistake, your headline is crucial for winning good search engine listings and for making sales.”

“Google, Yahoo and MSN seemingly account for around 75% of the Internet's search traffic. And if you are nuts enough to want to add that lot up, you may find that it will run into many billions of searches per month. *** Anyhow, by extrapolation, it appears that the remaining, lesser known search engines must handle 25% of the traffic between them, which I can tell you with some accuracy amounts to about 950 million searches a month. *** “Wow!” you say. And quite right, too. What seems plain from all of this is that if you aren't deliberately targeting the smaller engines, you are neglecting, even rejecting some 25% of your potential customers.” - Entireweb Newsletter - December 5, 2006 - #289

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3. Emergency Management SoP. Update: www.VitaminIndustryCompliance.com

Following up on the Emergency Management note in the last issue of this eMemo, I’ve prepared a new page for my form Standard Operating Procedures Manual. That page codifies an Emergency Planning structure for your business. If you are a retainer client of mine, you will receive a copy of the new page by separate email. If you are a client who has ordered a SoP Operations Manual in the past and want a copy of the update page, just send me an email note and I’ll send you the page. If you do not have a SoP manual but want one, let me know and I’ll quote you a price to customize it for you.

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That’s all for now – I hope you find this information useful!

And -- happy holidays and a prosperous new year!

Ralph Fucetola JD
www.vitaminlawyer.com