LGT's Profit Sense

The more people come to your site, the more likely they are to become clients or customers. Continuing to drive people to your site is beneficial for your overall business. In this last installment of the search engine optimization (“SEO”) series, we’ll be covering a few more tips that will help bring traffic to your site again and again.

For the second year, the Leading Edge Alliance (“LEA”), has conducted a Manufacturing Outlook and Insights survey with participants across the country. This year there was a 75% increase in participation. Overall, the survey resulted in a positive outlook for individual businesses, the industry as a whole, and the economy. There were several factors that contributed to the positivity: some of the factors were intrinsic, while others were from outside sources, such as the growing U.S. economy. Let’s take a look inside some of the survey results and dig deeper into the future of the manufacturing industry.

Welcome to the next blog post in a series of best practices for search engine optimization (“SEO”) and your organization’s website. We’ll discuss user experience (“UX”): what it is, what it means, and what you can do to help potential clients gain a better understanding while visiting your website. We’ll also go over user interface design (“UI”) and how it relates to UX.

In a series of SEO, we’ll discuss different tasks you can do in order to help maximize traffic on your site.

Let’s start from the beginning. What is SEO? SEO stands for search engine optimization. What does that mean? Search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo all use algorithms that decide how to rank sites on their pages, and SEO is the process that helps your site rank closer to the top of the page.

Like many industries, the manufacturing industry has fallen to the provisions of the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) and the updated Department of Labor overtime regulations. Many companies are struggling to maintain their overhead, comply with regulations, and pay for the ever-increasing health care costs, all the while attracting and retaining skilled workers. If you have felt the heat, you are not alone. According to the 2016 Manufacturers’ Outlook Survey, a lot of companies are dealing with these same concerns.

The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) states, in short, that companies must have their annual benefit plan report (Form 5500) audited if you have 100 or more participants in your plan (Companies within the range of 80 to 120 employees have additional criteria to consider). It is the responsibility of the plan administrator to hire independent, qualified public accountants to perform the audit. Manufacturing companies may look to keep costs down by hiring a less experienced accountant. But you’ll want to pay now to save yourself later.

Imagine, someone in sales closing a massive deal. It’s a new customer with a huge, custom order. Great! The production team works under the tight deadline. The new client is pleased that everything is shipped on time and comes back looking spectacular. But wait, did you get paid?

With people retiring later and the next generation of employees graduating, it is currently possible to have five generations working together. What a thought! All generations have different ways of communicating. They hold different ideas about work and management. They are just different. All of these articles popping up on older generations and younger generations, and their negative ideas about the other, it’s going to lead to some tension. As a CEO or owner of the company, it’s your job to make sure that everyone is happy, or at least coexisting.

If you’ve been on the fence about social media, it’s high time you jump on the truck and deliver content. Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s evolving, and so should your manufacturing company. It doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be effective. Even if you do not sell directly to the public, it can work for you, as long as you know how to work the platform. 

Accounts receivable is often one of the most significant assets on a manufacturer’s balance sheet.  However, the faster you’re able to convert receivables to cash, the sooner you’re able to pay suppliers, employees, and lenders — and the less likely you’ll be to draw on your line of credit to make up for working capital shortfalls.