Goodwill Big Foot message and SEO content diversity

And our Employee of the Month, a Mr. John Yeti, is eager to serve you. To his family for dinner.

Love this image. I bought 3 really great books at Goodwill Industries of Central Illinois on Pioneer Parkway today.

But what is going on in this image posted on Facebook recently?

This is a corporate message using a cartoon of a fabled creature, Big Foot, to grab attention.

This is also a nuanced motivational poster. It's communicating:

"We Goodwill employees are tough. We have the endurance and stamina of a Big Foot or Sasquatch. We can trudge through blizzards and ice tsunamis to get to work. That's how customer-centric we are."

This is a good example also of an SEO factor called Content Diversity.

You gain SEO advantages, for driving more qualified customer traffic to your website, when you provide continuous content updates in varied formats and purposes.

Don't focus entirely on sales hype, grinding out relentless offers, discounts, event invitations, we-oriented fluff, or generic persuasive communications. Joke. Divulge eccentricities. Discuss interesting aspects of corporate history. 

Share your expertise. Speak to typical customer problems, questions, and interests.

Use creative ways to get a message, like "All Locations Are Open," to your target audience and fans.

If you're in the Peoria, IL area, I'm your local internet marketing adviser and SEO services resource. Can I help you today?

CONTACT

steven.streight@gmail.com

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Streight SEO at Public Relations Association event

I'm spreading my SEO expertise all across the Peoria, IL area, transferring my carefully researched, Google-compliant, ROI oriented information to you.

I will be speaking on SEO at a local business event.

Public Relations Association Round Table Meeting on January 21, 2015 11:30 AM to 1:00 PM, at

Barrack's Cater Inn
1124 W. Pioneer Parkway
Peoria, IL


Speakers will be:

Steven Streight, Streight SEO on "Driving Traffic to Websites with SEO"

Steve Tarter, Peoria Journal Star on "Your Job Matters"

Kim Stewart, Volt Staffing on "Career Planning - How Do I Get My Next Great Job?"

Jeff Griffin, President, Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce "Leading a New 103 Year Old Organization"

For more information, CONTACT me at:

steven.streight@gmail.com

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Get Back to the Meat of Your Product

STREIGHT SEO Marketing Tips for 2015

#1 = Get Back to the Meat of Your Product

You have to stay focused on the real heart of your product. The meat. The central core. What is this essential bottom line reality of your product? The problem it solves for the customer.

It's easy to get carried away with contests, discounts, deadlines, special offers, spectacular events, email blasts, Facebook boosts, TV commercials, radio spots, billboards, etc. -- and drift away from hammering away at the real triggers that compel people to buy your items.

Gimmicks, stunts, and splashy glitzy excitement is not the best way to market most things. You need hard-nosed business acumen and strategic marketing expertise.

You need to zero in on the benefits and unique features of your product -- in a way that is memorable, rational, and complete.

"You don't sell bacon. You sell the sizzle." is an old advertising slogan. When I worked on Madison Avenue years ago, a principle was drilled into my brain -- the USP. Unique Selling Proposition.

You find that one huge benefit of your product.

You find out how customers talk about that need they have, which is fulfilled by your product.

You use their language in all marketing, conversational and competent -- not generic, we-oriented, corporate fluff.

You position your product as the answer to a need.

You differentiate yourself from all competitors with a unique claim or be first to claim something that competitors also have in their product, but have not advertised it yet.

What is the meat of your product?

How are you wafting the delicious aroma of it to those who are starving for a solution to their problem?

Cut through the typical boring hype. Get to the heart of what your product does for customers.

Make sure you have your product story nailed down BEFORE you go off on fancy flights of marketing imagination.
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SEO and title tags for competitive business advantage

How I suddenly realized I had to fix my own blog's title tag. (A true and embarrassing story.)

As an SEO specialist, I'm always learning. I just recently started blogging heavily about SEO on my Pluperfecter blog. I want to prove the theory that this will help my Google search results page rankings over time.

My tighter focus on SEO topics for my blog started just a month or so ago, and already, when I search "seo peoria il", my blog is appearing at #21, the first item on page 3.

Here is what appears on the Google search results page (a recent post -- note that it is not just any SEO post, but is specifically my post on SEO for Peoria IL area businesses).


QUOTE

SEO for Peoria, IL Area Businesses - Pluperfecter
pluperfecter.blogspot.com/…/seo-for-peoria-il-area-business…
Dec 8, 2014 - When you need SEO services for your website, you know your goal is to drive more ... My clients are primarily local, in the Peoria, IL area.

END QUOTE

That's pretty darn good considering all the web design shops who claim to be doing SEO, and the ferocious competition in the SEO field. I'm waging competitive SEO war against other SEO warriors. This should get interesting quick.

My blog also appears as the next result, #22, the second item on page 3.

QUOTE

Pluperfecter: internet marketing, SEO, web usability, web ...
pluperfecter.blogspot.com/
3 days ago - Why You Must Go FAR Beyond Resumes and Cover Letters in Today's Job Market. Resumes, cover letters and interviews are often ...

END QUOTE

But then I noticed that my title tag "Pluperfecter: internet marketing, SEO, web usability, web..." [truncated by Google] did not have my name in it. Huge mistake that I'm sorry to admit I just now realized. I hastened to update my blog's title tag.

It will take a little while for Google to catch up to this change I made, but when it takes effect, people will see this title tag (shorter, to avoid truncating) on search results page:

Pluperfecter: Steven Streight on SEO and internet marketing - Peoria, IL

It's about time I took some of my own medicine that I dish out to clients.

:-)

Need SEO or internet marketing help?

CONTACT me today.

steven.streight@gmail.com

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Top 28 SEO Mistakes of 2014

Top 28 SEO mistakes that I saw in 2014, as I did SEO for banks, hospitals, insurance, law firms, accounting, agriculture, energy companies, manufacturers, associations, event planning, dentists, restaurants, chambers of commerce, and tourism:

(1) Bad or missing title and meta description tags.

(2) Slim content, with few keywords, and not answering typical customer questions.

(3) Poor use of H tags (for example, not using just one H1 tag, which states the theme of a webpage).

(4) Failure to use a dedicated phone number that is used only on the website, to track results.

(5) Not using an FAQ type format for content, as specified by Google Hummingbird recommendations.

(6) Failure to use effective, non-stock photos with keyword savvy captions, contextually relevant surrounding content, and img alt attributes.

(7) We-oriented generic corporate fluff that doesn't differentiate the business from competitors.

(8) No XML site map.

(9) No robots protocols.

(10) Antiquated attempts to use black hat gimmicks, that ultimately get a website banned from Google search results.

(11) Failure to integrate social media, blogging, PR, video, etc. with branding and SEO.

(12) Failure to implement Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools.

(13) Failure to implement Schema.org structured markup microdata.

(14) Poor use of internal and external linking on site.

(15) No associated feed.

(16) No favicon.

(17) Not enough interactive functionalities.

(18) Not optimized for mobile devices.

(19) Bad design, colors, layout, typefonts.

(20) White or light gray text on light colored backgrounds.

(21) Boring About page that doesn't give adequate history and purpose of company.

(22) Not having strong calls to action on every webpage.

(23) Bad Contact Us page, without web form or missing some contact information, and no strong call to action.

(24) No photos of CEO, staff, real customers.

(25) No slogan or tag line for logo on Home page.

(26) No strong benefit statement on Home page.

(27) Not using enough variety of substitute words and relevant keywords in customer language that users put into search engines.

(28) Not keeping up with ongoing algorithm changes and SEO requirements of Google.


Need help with Google-compliant SEO to achieve business goals?


CONTACT ME today:

Steven Streight

steven.streight@gmail.com

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Go Beyond Resumes to Get a Job in 2015

Why You Must Go FAR Beyond Resumes and Cover Letters in Today's Job Market

Resumes, cover letters and interviews are often unproductive.

A resume and cover letter is not going to get you noticed. An interview? You'll probably blow it like everybody else does -- if you use the 1950s techniques so popular still.

Sending out resumes and cover letters?

When thousands of people apply for the same job opening, your chances of getting it approach zero.

Almost to the point where that tactic of sending out resumes and hoping for an interview is comparable to the ancient "shoe leather" methodology.

The super old fashioned way was to pound the sidewalks, going up and down the streets, knocking on doors, asking to speak with the personnel manager, filling out applications, getting a polite "we'll keep it on file," then waiting for the phone to ring to set up an interview.

The new way is upside down, backwards, opposite.

You STOP chasing after job openings.

The job you get may not even have an "opening."

The clients you get may not have even thought they would be customers of what you're selling.

You STOP caring about job boards, job fairs, career coaching, employment-search training, tricky interview questions, resume format, and cover letters.

You leave all that behind and become heroic.

You position yourself as the hot item, not the job or the employer.

You become, and DISPLAY, something that employers and clients actively seek.

You stand alone as a super valuable item, so hot, that a company might invent a job position just to have you on their team, and not their competitor's.

How? By knowing what problems companies typically have in a field and becoming an expert at solving them.

Gaining experience at solving them, even if that means doing it for free for a local charity or by charging low introductory prices at first, to get some real clients who pay you for what you do.

Basically, you get the employers to hunt you down. You lure them to yourself. You create a word of mouth vortex that swallows up all the conversation in your field, with your message being the loudest and most respected.

The emphasis is on your exceptional expertise and your ever-increasing knowledge and upgrading of skills.

You are not just good. You are great and getting better every single day. You rock. You are a blessed Over-Achiever on Steroids. You smash through mediocrity and losery slackers.

You know exactly how to solve a problem and you teach others about it in your blog articles, Facebook posts, LinkedIn updates, and YouTube videos.

You authentically present yourself as the solution, the smartest one, the most creative resource in your local area.

You have multi-media productions, from blogs to videos, showcasing your talents, skills, expertise, problem-solving style.

You quit "going to interviews" for jobs. The interviewers come to you.

The media wants to spotlight what you do. Magazines want you to write articles for them. You find forums in which you can be a big shot, know-it-all and have fun sharing your brilliant ideas and asking your probing questions.

You become the employer or client's Top of Mind Choice when it comes to what you do.

Your focus is no longer on "how great is my need for a job" or "why won't anyone hire me?" -- it switches to "how great is their need for my expertise?" "where should I be showcasing my expertise?" and "who should I be approaching about the problems I can solve?"

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Can social media marketing be ineffective for some companies?

Is Facebook platform a loser for some businesses? I extremely doubt it, but a friend and colleague of mine, Geoff Livingston says it is for his business.

Instead of saying "you should do this" (as one would say in consulting a client), we tend to say to our fellow internet marketers "have you tried this? it worked for me."

He also discusses his opposition to what is a pillar of my own marketing: the humanized, personalized presence of the CEO blogger or "personal branding" as he calls it.

He says he made some mistakes, blending personal and business posts.

I bet I've made even more mistakes than he did, but who's bragging?

I abandoned my entire branding, Vaspers the Grate, that I spent 5 years building -- and redefined my brand as Pluperfecter. I have abandoned a bunch of my older blogs and wikis and social platforms, having signed up for over 100 different accounts. Remember Pownce, FreeBase, CampFire, Jaiku, Yippykaya, Unthink, So.cl, Spock, Gleamd, Ning, 8apps, Diaspora?

http://geofflivingston.com/2014/11/17/if-i-had-to-start-social-over-again/

QUOTE

Today, because I have shifted much of my content production to photography, I spend more time on Flickr and 500 Pixels than I do Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram or Google+. When I do participate on those sites, more of ten than not it’s either for business or to post a picture.

I look at the interactions with my customer base, and believe in some instances that I am wasting my time. So given my customers, passions and the interaction, where would I start?

In the mid 2000s, everyone associated their personalities with their blogs. It was the age of personal brands, and like many others — in spite of my protests about personal branding as a movement — I weaved my personal social media activity and blogging for business together.

As a result, it was harder to scale prior companies, and my own personal adventures and missteps impacted business. Tenacity5 is different (I hope). I have a role as president, and while I am the front man, but it isn’t a personality vehicle. It is a business....

I’ve blogged before about how Facebook is almost a zero-sum game for pure marketing posts. Analytics continues to reaffirm that when posts are marketing centric they fail. When they are personal, they tend to do well. Though I caught a lot of grief back then for not marketing on Facebook, I am no longer the only one experiencing this.

END QUOTE

I market my SEO expertise on Facebook. I don't reach out to businesses, but to individuals who may own a business or know someone who does.

So I don't really do B2B. I do it indirectly I guess you could say.

Sharing your expertise is the key, whether it's on FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, G+, whatever. Since I do SEO for local businesses in my area, it makes sense to promote my expertise (not so much my company) on FB where I am friends with so many local people.

It's been working well for me, but each case, like I say, is different and has unique dynamics and analytics.

Re: blogging, Geoff states:

QUOTE

Today, I wouldn’t waste my time blogging as a primary business activity. In fact, for the most part I have slowed down significantly. I still post once a week here, mostly because I believe that a blog still has a role in my online life, even if it is for the fewer. But the topics are stream of conscious now. There is no editorial mission outside of what I think, and no real business goal outside of supporting personal projects.

END QUOTE

I would disagree, only to say that I keep up my Pluperfecter blog daily (try to), because of the incredible SEO power it gives my Streight SEO brand. By feeding SEO topic information to the Google Hummingbird search engine, I keep rising higher and higher in SERPs.

And I can point potential clients to my blog as a showcase of my practical and hard nosed business and IT acumen.

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