Cars We Remember: Reader’s memories show love of cars and the collector hobby

Q: Hi, Greg, I’m writing from Kansas City, Missouri, and enjoy reading all the articles on collector cars. In one column, you mention a Yenko Camaro, a great collector car. I was looking for a car that would give me the “kick” my 1963 Corvette always did, and went to Bill Allen Chevrolet in Kansas City to see a yellow Yenko Camaro. There it stood with the hood up and four guys standing around while the guy behind the wheel was revving up the motor real high. [...]

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Silvio Calabi: Outrage over the VW diesel scandal

Rudolf Diesel, the German engineer who invented the engine named after him, disappeared on Sept. 29, 1913. Late that night he jumped from a steamship into the North Sea, and his body was found 10 days later. No one could or would say why he’d done it. He was traveling to London to meet with the Consolidated Diesel Manufacturing Co.Whatever was eating at Diesel, it wasn’t a problem with his invention. Although heavier and more expensive than steam or gasoline [...]

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‘He’d still be alive’: Star’s daughter sues Porsche

TWO years after Fast & Furious star Paul Walker died in a car crash, his 16-year-old daughter has blamed car defects that ‘trapped’ him fireball.

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How starting a business helped me swim the English Channel

Mark Sowerby knows something about risk, and the self-belief needed to crash through the fear of losing everything.

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Donating My Family’s Extra Stuff Is More Lucrative Than Selling It. Here’s Why

We Americans have a lot of stuff.

One survey determined the average U.S. home has 300,000 items. Another revealed one out of 10 Americans has off-site storage, even though the average home size has tripled in the past 50 years. Earning money by clearing out some of that stuff makes a lot of financial sense.

When it comes to selling your extra items, you have plenty of options: Craigslist, eBay, Facebook garage sale groups, yard or garage sales, or consignment sites or stores.

I’ve been using these various methods for the last five years. But I recently came to a realization: As a freelancer, it might make more financial sense for me to donate the items to charity instead of sell them.

Making Money Can Also Cost You

Rummage or garage sales are often touted as easy ways to make money, and I’ve held several over the years.

But I’ll be honest — once I figured out how much time I spent getting the items ready, setting up and then sitting there, not to mention cleaning up, I realized I could have spent those hours writing for clients. I’m sure I would have earned more than the $200 the rummage sale brought in. Or, even better, I could have relaxed and spent time with my family.

Another example is the consignment store where I take my items. It’s located 20 minutes away, and I can check online to see how much money I’ve made. My current account balance is $2.50; I guess all the clothes I took in at the start of summer aren’t selling. Driving to the other side of town and back right now isn’t worth the $2.50.

Then there’s my recent eBay selling experience. My son is a Boy Scout, and I had some odds and ends — think badges and neck ties — I thought I could sell for a little cash. I was wrong.

Ebay suggested I list the first item at 99 cents, which I did, and someone bought it. But by the time I included the cost of packaging, plus eBay’s seller fee, I realized I lost money on the deal.

However, this probably has to do with the items I was selling; I’ve sold jewelry on eBay in the past and made a good profit.

Finally, let’s face it: Selling items yourself can be a hassle.

With eBay, you have to mail items off to their destinations, and with Craigslist or Facebook groups, you have to arrange a pick-up time and place. Sometimes, the meeting point is close to your house. Other times, it’s not.

And then there are the inevitable no-shows, which put you right back at the beginning. Sometimes, tracking someone down to meet and exchange an item for $5 or $10 just isn’t worth it.

Why I Choose to Donate Instead

Even though my family is solidly middle class, and we have two children and make mortgage payments (the last two are great tax deductions), we pay thousands of dollars in taxes each year because of my freelance writing business.

That got me thinking: What if I increased my family’s charitable income? That would help us come tax time, right? We already donate to our church and a few charities, so this would add to the total.

By donating the items instead of selling them, we can claim them as a charitable deduction on our taxes.

Let’s look at the clothes I took to the consignment store as an example. If I deem their value to be $30, that’s $30 my husband and I could include in our charitable deduction column at the end of the year. As the deductions add up, our overall income decreases — which hopefully leads to lower tax payments.

Another Reason Why Donating Wins Out

Donating items to charity also has another benefit beyond lowering my tax payments and saving me time: It makes me feel good.

Our community has a great non-profit that gives clothes to needy families, free of charge. It’s nice to know someone benefits directly from our donation.

We donate non-clothing items to non-profits that sell them to support job training opportunities for the disabled or a local women’s shelter. The organizations even come to our home and pick up the donations — another timesaver. It’s a win-win: We get rid of our stuff, and we help someone else.

Your Turn: What do you think? Is donating items to charity and claiming the tax deduction better than trying to sell the items yourself?

MaryBeth Matzek is a freelance writer and busy mom of two tweens. Follow her on Twitter at @1bizzywriter.

The post Donating My Family’s Extra Stuff Is More Lucrative Than Selling It. Here’s Why appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Bleeding Blue States Dry

The so-called "progressives" love to talk about how their policies will create a worker's paradise, but then why is it that day after day, month after month, year after year, people are fleeing liberal blue states for conservative red states?

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10 Things You Need to Know About Medicare

How to get the most out of this health insurance program for retirees.

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Stop Flushing Cash: 4 Ways to Save Up to $125 a Year With Your Toilet

We’ve talked before about how you pay twice for your water: when it comes into your house, and when it leaves, as sewage.

While many of us focus on the consumption side of things — which is important — the other end is also a great opportunity to save water. And when you save water, you save money.

Here’s a look at water-saving strategies for your toilet — and how much each one can help you save on your water and sewage bills.

1. Use Less Water in Your Toilet

Potential Savings: $45 a year

A family of four averages about five flushes a day per person — a low estimate, as we’ll assume the other one to three average daily flushes happen at a school or work toilet.

A simple, inexpensive and easy way to reduce the amount of water your toilet uses is to minimize the amount of water needed to fill its tank after each flush. Two ingenious products, less than $5 each, can help you do just that.

A fill cycle diverter works by diverting some of the water that would normally fill the bowl into the tank instead. This fills the bowl more quickly and saves up to a half-gallon of water per flush.

A displacement device takes up space in the tank, reducing the amount of water needed to fill it. My frugal father used to put a brick in the tank of each of the toilets in our house. I’ve also heard of people using plastic milk jugs filled with water.

If you’re looking for something a little more sophisticated, try the Tank Bank, a tool that clips onto the side of your tank and displaces approximately 0.8 gallons of water with each flush.

These tools pay for themselves in very little time. Used in combination, they save approximately 1.3 gallons per flush.

With these two tools, the average family of four would save 26 gallons of water a day, or 9,490 gallons a year. Estimating a sewer usage rate of $3.59 per hundred cubic feet (HCF; the equivalent of 748 gallons), that’s $45.55 a year in savings!

2. Flush Less Often

Potential savings: $82 a year

This method is not for everyone, but it is certainly a no-cost and easy option.

If you have your own bathroom or your family is on board, consider following the saying “If it’s yellow, let it mellow.” In other words, flush only after “depositing” solid wastes, and let liquid waste sit.

Make this strategy more appealing by keeping the toilet seat down or modifying your approach to flushing after every other liquid waste deposit. The level of commitment is up to you, and even the slightest adherence will reduce your water consumption and thus your water bill.

Just be conscious of how much toilet tissue is accumulating so you avoid clogs, and keep a plunger handy, just in case. And, if you’re afraid of what guests might think, only practice this technique when you’re not expecting company.   

Our hypothetical family of four, with five bathroom trips a day per person, could cut their usage from 20 flushes per day down to anywhere from four to 10 flushes per day. Let’s say they now flush an average of 6.5 times per day. Depending on their toilet’s efficiency (gallons per flush range from 1.5 to seven), their savings will vary.

If their toilet uses 3.5 gallons per flush, suddenly, instead of 7,300 flushes and 25,550 gallons used per year, they’re looking at 2,373 flushes and 8,305 gallons per year. Using San Diego’s sewer usage rate of $3.59 per HCF, using 17,245 fewer gallons of water every years means they save roughly $82.76.

3. Reuse Shower Water

Potential savings: $15 to $25 a year

What is the first thing you do when you take a shower? You turn on the water to let it heat up. While you’re stripping down to your birthday suit and flexing in the mirror, all that water is running wasted down the drain — and you’re paying for it.

Here’s the solution: Stick a bucket in the shower to collect this water.

Once your water is hot, remove the full bucket and put it aside. Then, the next time you need to flush your toilet, press the handle, remove the tank cover and pour your bucket of water into the tank.

Not only are not paying for the wasted shower water that would have gone right down the drain, you are now also not paying for the water to fill your toilet bowl. Huzzah!

If you happen to have a bucket in your basement or garage, your initial investment could be $0. Otherwise, don’t spend more than a couple of bucks at the hardware or dollar store.

One with a pour spout is ideal. If storage is at a premium, you may want to spring for a collapsible bucket.

Let’s say it takes one minute to warm up your shower. An average showerhead uses 3.5 gallons per minute, so you’ll be surprised to see how much water is in your bucket.

If you take seven showers a week, you’re looking at saving 1,274 gallons of shower water a year — plus reusing them and saving another 1,274 gallons in toilet flushes!

For savings, we’ll use San Diego as an example. The sewer rate is $3.59 per HCF. Water is a bit more complicated because the cost depends how much you use, but we’ll use an average of $5.82 per HCF.

Your savings would be $9.91 for water and $6.11 for waste water. That’s a total of $16.02, and if you shower more frequently or have an older showerhead, you could be looking at closer to $25 or even $30 in savings.

A word of caution: Buckets filled with water present a drowning hazard to children and infants, so keep the bathroom door closed or take other steps to ensure the safety of little ones inhabiting or visiting your house.

4. Upgrade Your Toilet

Potential savings: $14 to $125 a year

If you’re ready to make a bigger investment water efficiency, consider upgrading to a newer, better toilet. Here are a few options to choose from:

Dual-Flush Toilets

Dual-flush toilets have become more mainstream and affordable, so you might be ready to take the plunge and install one. For example, Home Depot’s options start at $94. Manufacturers say they’ll save you roughly $14 to $20 a year on your water bill.

Municipalities all over the country offer rebates if you upgrade from an older toilet to a more efficient model. Check with your city government to see if they partner with WaterWise programs, and if they aren’t, challenge them to start.

With rebates in cities like Seattle clocking in at $75, you can make your money back within the first year. After that, the savings continue to roll in year after year.

If you want to jump on the dual-flush train without investing in a whole new toilet, try a dual-flush conversion kit. Amazon’s options start around $15. Again, you’re looking to make your money back on the initial investment in only a year.

Toilet-Top Sink

Not ready to commit to a whole new toilet? Check out this ingenious device called SinkPositive. It’s perfect for guest bathrooms and powder rooms as it immediately adds a space-saving sink to any toilet.

When you flush the toilet, water first runs through a faucet to let you wash your hands, before it drains into the toilet tank. The water coming into the faucet is just as clean as water from any other sink, but it’s does double duty by then filling the toilet as well.

If you use one-half to one gallon of water per hand washing, per visit to the bathroom, you could save 3,650 to 7,300 gallons or $28.40 to $56.80 a year.

Composting or Waterless Toilets

While not for the faint of heart, these are definitely the most eco-friendly options and provide the lowest lifetime costs. For more information, I highly suggest checking out The Humanure Handbook. It’s a fascinating read.

This method might only work for the truly adventurous, but they’ll save roughly $125 a year.

Your Turn: Do you use any of these strategies to save money with your toilet?

Disclosure: We have a serious Taco Bell addiction around here. The affiliate links in this post help us order off the dollar menu. Thanks for your support!

Shanna Remke is a wife and mother whose years of raising a family on one income has helped her to hone her money-saving skills. She has a passion for stewarding money and the planet well and loves finding new and creative ways to pinch pennies while lessening her ecological footprint.

The post Stop Flushing Cash: 4 Ways to Save Up to $125 a Year With Your Toilet appeared first on The Penny Hoarder.

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Do Credit Card Customer Service Agents Know Their Stuff?

Just last month, Discover took the top spot in J.D. Power’s 2015 U.S. Credit Card Satisfaction Survey, an annual study measuring customer satisfaction based on consumer interactions, credit card terms, billing and payment, rewards, benefits and services, and problem resolution.

Based on this criteria, Discover earned a score of 828 out of a possible 1,000, and secured top billing for the second year in a row. With scores of 820 and 792 respectively, American Express and Chase came in at second and third place. According to the survey findings, rewards and benefits were the two biggest factors driving customers’ credit card selections this year.

The survey showed that rewards redemptions are up overall, with 67% of customers using at least one credit card benefit in the past year (compared to just 57% in 2014). And that appeared to play a part in how each credit card issuer was rated. As the J.D. Power data indicate, customers who earn and burn rewards are much happier with their experience than those who do not.

But what about the customer service part of the equation?

The fact is, credit card issuers are notorious for offering bad and often unpredictable customer service. Raise your hand if you have ever called American Express and been transferred to someone with an Americanized name like “Jason” or “Mary” who speaks spotty English at best, or been transferred from department to department for hours on end.

Even when you get someone you can understand, some agents don’t have the answers you need. When that happens, you could wind up on the receiving end of bad credit advice, or worse, no answers at all.

Customer Service Survey: How Five Credit Card Call Centers Answered Basic Questions About Credit

With that in mind, we cooked up a little experiment to test the credit knowledge and level of customer service among the top five card issuers. Not only did we want to see if the agents who answered knew their stuff, but we also wanted to gauge their overall politeness and willingness to help.

At the end of the day, each agent we spoke to was polite and courteous, although a few offered responses that were misleading – or even downright wrong.

Here’s how each card issuer – Chase, Citi, American Express, Discover, and Capital One – handled our calls and credit questions when I called up each one over Labor Day weekend:

Question #1: Can you tell me how my credit card interest is calculated?

The Truth: We’ve written about the way credit card interest is calculated before, and it is complex. Basically goes like this:

Although you probably think of credit card interest in terms of your APR, or your annual percentage rate, interest is actually calculated daily using the DPR, or daily periodic rate. You can find your card’s DPR by dividing your APR by 365 — the number of days in the year. Once you determine your card’s DPR, you can see much interest you accrue daily by applying that percentage to the average daily balance on your card.

Chase: A Chase customer service agent named Chris from Manchester, Ohio, nailed this one, while also being as friendly as all get-out:

“The formula for figuring out interest is taking the APR and dividing it by 365. Then multiply that by the number of days in the billing cycle, then you multiply that by the balance subject to interest,” said Chris. “Then divide that by 100. That leads to the monthly interest charge. Interest accrues daily. That is why you divide the APR by 365.”

Citi: A Citi agent named Jean from the Philippines did a decent job explaining that credit card interest accrues daily, although she was light on the details. Hey, at least she wasn’t wrong on this one!

“So um……when you revolve a balance from month to month and accrue interest charge, those interest charges will begin to accrue from the date the transaction is put on your balance,” she explained. “They will continue to accrue until payment in full is credited to your account. … credit card interest accrues on a daily basis.”

American Express: Things got a little crazy when I posed this question to Renee, an American Express agent who was also from the Philippines. While she was right about the fact that interest accrues daily, she was dead-wrong on how it accrues.

“We definitely calculate the interest charges on a daily basis,” explained Renee from American Express. “If you owe $10,000, and then on the due date you only pay $5,000, we’re going charge you an interest for $5,000 on the first day of that billing cycle.”

Unfortunately, Renee was insistent that interest accrues daily based on the annual percentage rate, which is absolutely wrong. I asked, “So, if my interest charge is 15%, it adds that daily? 15% per day?”

“That is correct, ma’am,” she said. (No, it’s not.)

Capital One: Meanwhile, a Capital One agent from Central America, “Frank,” offered an excellent response to this question with no hesitation at all:

“You start by taking the APR and dividing it by 365. Then multiply that by the number of days in the billing cycle, then you multiply that figure by your credit card balance,” he said. “Then divide that by 100. The figure you are left with is your monthly interest charge.”

Discover: Surprisingly, an agent from Discover named Kelly blew my question off and offered few details. When asked how credit card interest is calculated, she started off by explaining that the APR is the interest rate charged over the course of the year. When I asked for a further explanation, here’s what she offered:

“Interest is actually accrued daily, but only if you don’t pay your balance on the due date,” she said. “You are charged the APR for the entire year. I can’t tell you any further than that.”

Alrighty then.

Question #2: Will closing a credit card hurt my credit?

The Truth: This question was a little tricky since credit card customer service agents aren’t necessarily credit experts. Still, here’s the truth: closing a credit card can impact your credit score in a negative way, although any change to your score is usually only temporary.

While the Chase agent stated that he was “required to say it could impact my credit,” Jean from Citi noted that closing an account could hurt my credit since, “every time a credit card is closed it is reported to the credit bureau.”

Renee from American Express agreed: “If you cancel your account, it will affect your credit score,” she said. “You might want to contact the credit bureau.”

Overall, I’d say that’s pretty good advice. Both Capital One and Discover declined to comment on whether or not closing a credit card can hurt your credit. Hey, that’s better than a wrong answer, right?

Question #3: Can I pay my credit card with another credit card… like, forever?

The Truth: In a more fun world, credit card bills would never come due and we could just pay credit cards bills with other credit cards until the end of time.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world, and even if you play a shell game for a while, it will eventually catch up to you. Still, I wanted to see what customer service agents would say if I posed this question to them: “Can you just pay a credit card with another?” The answers I got were wide and varied.

Chase: Chris from Chase was adamant that this wasn’t possible. “No,” he said, although he did mention the possibility of balance transfers to buy some time.

You might be able to transfer debt around for a while, he said, “but you’ll eventually run out of offers.” He also reminded me that you cannot transfer a balance between Chase credit card accounts.

Citi: Jean from the Philippines may have misunderstood the question, but I’ll post her response anyway:

“Yes,” she said. “For example, if you have a balance transfer offer, you can transfer to your checking account and pay off your other credit card.”

Mmmm… okay.

American Express: The AmEx agent from the Philippines offered a similar response, which may be a reflection of the language barrier between us.

“No,” she said when asked if you could pay one credit card with another credit card. “But if that credit card links to a checking account or bank account,” she added, “then you can. We just have to get the routing number. We can definitely do that on the account.”

Capital One: Frank from Capital One, on the other hand, put the smack down on my idea of paying one credit card with another indefinitely. When asked, he gave a flat out “no,” but his tone was really saying, “Hell, no!”

“At Capital One, you can only pay your credit card with a checking or savings account,” he said, with no mention of balance transfers. It seemed like he was trying to avoid encouraging me.

Discover: And when I asked Kelly from Discover if I could pay one credit card off with another over and over, she wasn’t impressed, either.

“We wouldn’t recommend that,” she said.

Smart woman.

Question #4: How do you apply my payments?

The Truth: Thanks to the Credit CARD Act of 2009, any amount you pay over your minimum monthly credit card payment must be applied to your balance with the highest APR. But the CARD Act has no such requirement on how your minimum payment is applied, leaving each card issuer to implement their own policy and post it within their card’s terms and conditions.

Since many credit cards offer different APRs for things like balance transfers, cash advances, and regular spending, this change has been crucial. With the Credit CARD Act of 2009 in place, and card issuers forced to apply extra payments to the highest interest balances, paying down credit card debt is now a lot easier.

When asked how payments are applied in this respect, here’s how each of the five card issuers we contacted replied.

Chase: Chris was right on the money, even sharing the fact that Chase added this benefit to their business credit card account as well.

Chase’s Chris said, “The minimum payment goes to the balance with the lowest APR. Anything you pay over goes to the balance with the highest APR. That rule used to be in place just for personal accounts, but we now use that formula for our business accounts as well.”

Citi: Jean from Citi also did her best to explain how it works:

“The minimum payment due is allocated to lower APR before the higher rate balance. Any payment in excess goes towards the higher rate balance,” she said. “For example, if you paid $500 and had a minimum payment of $50, $450 goes towards higher rate balance.”

American Express: Unfortunately, all rhyme or reason went out the window when I posed this question to Renee from American Express. She started talking and I kept listening, trying to make sense of it all. Hint: It didn’t work. Here’s what she said:

“It really depends on your account. If you do have a typical card, it depends. If you have a card with a bill-over-time feature, some of your charges go on that feature. On that balance, we assess the finance charge,” she said.

Renee continued: “When we receive a payment, it will usually satisfy the current minimum payment due on your bill-over-time feature. After that, it will go towards the current due for your bill-in-full account. For example, the pay-over-time balance is $1,000 and the minimum due is $50. Okay? When we receive a payment for $700, there’s gonna be $650 left. It will satisfy the pay-in-full. It will go back again to the balance of your pay-over-time feature. It will deduct whatever the balance is. If you have past due, it will satisfy that.”

Moving on……

Capital One: Frank from Capital One kept it simple and sweet:  “Your payment goes toward the highest-interest balance on your account first,” he said.

Discover: And the friendly agent from Discover concurred: “Payments are applied like this,” she said. “The minimum account due goes toward the minimum balance due – and anything you pay over that goes towards the highest APR balance.”

Question #5: What do I do if I see a fraudulent charge on my account?

The Truth: The responses to the last and final question I asked aren’t anything to write home about. When asked what to do when you see a fraudulent charge on your account, all five agents agreed that you should call your card issuer to report it right away.

Chase, Citibank, American Express, Capital One, and Discover all offer zero fraud liability for purchases made with your card without your consent, and each agent was adamant about taking advantage.

So, at the end of the day, at least we can rest assured that we are protected if our cards are ever lost are stolen. In light of some of the other wacky responses to our questions, I appreciated the fact that each card issuer offered the same response to this question at the very least.

The Bottom Line

Credit card customer service can be hit or miss, and agents don’t always have all the answers. With that in mind, it’s more important than ever for you to educate yourself on how credit works – and how you can avoid common credit pitfalls such as paying too much interest, bungling a balance transfer, or misunderstanding your card’s terms and conditions.

If you want to learn more about how credit works without relying on a customer service agent who may or may not have all the answers, these resources can help:

• How Is Credit Card Interest Calculated?
• Five Things People with Good Credit Have in Common
• Five Ways to Improve Your Credit Score Without a Credit Card
• How Do Credit Cards Work?
• Will Getting Multiple Credit Cards Hurt My Credit Score?
• What is a Good Credit Score?

Which card issuer offers the best customer service in your experience? Have you ever received any especially bad (or especially good) customer service from a credit card company?

The post Do Credit Card Customer Service Agents Know Their Stuff? appeared first on The Simple Dollar.

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How to Interpret 7 Common Things Job Interviewers Say

What hiring managers mean (and don't mean) when they speak.

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Social SEO Simplified: How to Optimize for the “Other” Search Engines

Do you want to compete with the best SEOs in the world?

It might be fun, but chances are you’ll either get crushed or have very slow success.

But that’s exactly what you’re doing when you try to rank for keywords on Google.

Sure, you can go after long-tail keywords to avoid the sharks, but you’ll still have some decent competition.

But what if you could go back in time when SEO wasn’t so evolved? You would be able to rapidly rank for terms and grow your organic traffic.

And although I can’t help you with time travel, I can help you find similar scenarios in the present that could deliver far better results than your current SEO strategy.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about spending less time focusing on Google. Why? Because that’s where 99% of SEOs spend their time.

I’m talking about taking advantage of ranking for the “other” search engines—the ones on social media sites.

I’ve seen very few marketers and SEOs take full advantage of these opportunities, which means two things:

• Less competition – it’s much easier to beat out amateurs and hobbyists who are accidentally ranking for terms than it is professional SEOs
• Simpler rankings – since there aren’t a ton of people trying to manipulate search results, their algorithms don’t need to be as sophisticated as Google’s.

In this post, I’m going to show you how you can take advantage of these search engines. 

Why ignoring social media means missing a big opportunity

I know what you’re thinking…

Google is the only search engine big enough to be worth focusing on.

It’s true, Google is massive.

Google gets about 40,000 searches per second, which is around 3.5 billion searches per day.

Obviously, Google is the largest search engine.

The misconception, however, is that social search engines aren’t large themselves.

Take Twitter, for instance, which gets an impressive 2.1 billion queries per day. That’s not far behind Google.

Consider that Facebook reached 1 billion searches per day back in 2012, which has only grown since then.

And finally, YouTube—the largest video site—gets over 3 billion searches per month. It may not be as big as the others, but 3 billion searches is still a lot.

Other social sites also get millions of searches per day.

Although those are small fractions of what Google gets, all you need is a small percent of that traffic to build and sustain a very successful business.

One caveat: I’ll admit, social search traffic is different from Google search traffic. A large percentage of the searches performed are meeting the needs of people on a particular network—they are not traffic generators.

However, as I’ll show you later, there are still other types of searches on these networks that can be used to grow traffic to your site if you optimize for them.

There are some networks that are better for some types of businesses than others, but I’ll make those clear when the time comes.

1. Facebook has invested in search, so take advantage of it

Facebook is all about connection.

Users connect to friends, things they like, and communities on the biggest social media site by far.

It’s really hard to convert Facebook’s search traffic into traffic for your own business, but it can be done.

Facebook SEO for local business: Local businesses, particularly entertainment businesses, need to be on Facebook.

A significant portion of Facebook’s daily searches, billions of them, is used to find local businesses.

Users look for businesses for a few main reasons:

• to read reviews
• to get recent and upcoming deals, news, etc.
• to get more details (hours of operation, location, etc.)

Getting found in Facebook’s search results can get you immediate business. In addition, if you are active on the platform, you can often get the searcher to “like” your page.

This means that you have another follower that you can market your business to in the future.

Let’s look at an example…

Pretend that our user either lives in Chicago or is visiting the city. They are looking for a nearby pizza place, so they search for “pizza Chicago”:

Facebook’s algorithm understands that our searcher isn’t looking for people, photos, or groups, so all the top results are “pages” or “places.”

Note that if someone just types in “pizza,” Facebook will return results in the city they live in.

There are a few things to note in these results:

• Reviews are not king - The top result has the worst rating of the top 5 results at 3.8 out of 5. While high ratings are probably better for conversions once someone is on your business’ page, they are not mandatory for high rankings.

• Likes are also not king - Similarly, the second result has an amazing 340,000 likes, but it ranks below the page that has 3,700 likes. If likes were a huge part of the algorithm, this wouldn’t have happened.
• Facebook understands location - Facebook knows that “Chicago” in the search refers to a location, not a name. Even though the second result doesn’t have “Chicago” in the title, it ranks because its locations are in Chicago.

Reviews, likes, and having the exact search phrase in your title are all likely ranking factors, and they do count. However, it’s likely that they only count for a bit, and the benefit of having more quickly yields diminishing results.

Make sure to get a few hundred reviews and a few thousand likes, and you’ll likely come close to maxing out the effect they will have on your rankings.

The main factor, for local businesses, is location.

Unfortunately, this isn’t very easy to change. If you do have a business with a flexible address or are considering a location change, change your address on Facebook and see how that changes the way your business shows up in the results.

Search for “(your business type) + city”, and study the results.

An alternative strategy is to add a longer-tailed keyword to your business.

For example, instead of calling your page “Chicago Pizza,” you could call it “Chicago Pizza – Deep Dish Pizza and more.”

Looking at the search results for “Chicago deep dish pizza,” you can see that they are less competitive (pages have fewer reviews and likes):

Despite being a much easier keyword to target, it still likely gets a good search volume.

A quick check in the Keyword Planner reveals that it gets about a third of the volume of “Chicago Pizza”:

If you’re just starting out on Facebook, it will take time to get hundreds of reviews and likes. However, you can target a simpler keyword in your title and on your page (mention a few times) and still get some organic Facebook traffic to your page.

For non-local businesses, there are groups: Beyond people and local businesses, there is one other main thing that Facebook users search for—interests.

The first thing a new user does is search their favorite topic. Most of those searches will bring up a combination of groups and topic pages.

If you can rank highly for a relevant search in your niche, you can then funnel that traffic back to your website.

Here’s the plan:

Create a group or page in your niche around a popular interest, and rank for the main search term. Then, include a link in the page/group description back to your website, and periodically include links in your posts.

It might sound a bit complicated, but it’s very simple. Let’s walk through it.

If a Facebook user is interested in marketing, they might search for “content marketing” in the search bar.

All of the top results in this case are groups. For other searches, the results may contain pages in addition to the groups:

Groups are pages, where any group member can create a post. The creator of the group serves both as a regular member and as a moderator (can choose who gets to join the group and can remove posts).

While the number of members for each group may not seem very impressive, you can regularly drive thousands of visits a month to your site with just a few hundred active members.

These groups have two main components.

First, there is a group description on the right sidebar, where you could potentially put a link back to your site (if done tastefully).

This is the main place, other than your title, where you can include keywords. Note that “content marketing” appears three times in the above description.

The other main part of groups are posts, which can be made by any member.

Although it would make sense for groups with more engagement to rank higher in the search results, this doesn’t seem to be the case (perhaps in the future). Plenty of groups full of spam rank highly for broad terms.

You have two main options to take advantage of search traffic that leads to groups:

1. Create your own for a niche community, and build it up
2. Join groups already ranking high for your main keywords, be active, and then drop links back to your website occasionally

If you do make your own page, how do you get it to rank high?

The group search engine is very primitive and seems to focus mainly on:

• keyword in title
• keyword in page description
• number of members

The search results are terrible, i.e., irrelevant, for broad keywords such as “marketing,” so try to get more specific. Put your keyword in your group’s or page’s title as well as a few times in your page description.

It will take some work initially to grow your membership. However, once you get a few hundred members who regularly participate in the group, it will take less active work on your part to maintain the growth.

2. The 2 tactics behind Twitter search success

I’ll admit, it took me some time to understand Twitter. You might still be struggling with the platform, but once you do understand it, you’ll see that it can help almost any business.

The Twitter search engine is often used to look for other people to connect with, but not as often as Facebook’s.

The Twitter search engine is mainly used for two things, and you can use both of them to get more followers and, subsequently, more traffic to your website.

Tweeting about trending topics: Twitter is built so that great Tweets can quickly spread, while all the rest fade away.

This is why Twitter is one of the best ways to find what topics are trending in the online world.

Users of Twitter are naturally curious about what is trending, so they either click the trending hashtag or search for it.

When signed into Twitter, you can see a sidebar section just for trending hashtags:

The bar will show you trending tweets in your country. If you want to see trends in another country, use a tool such as this.

Just click the name of the country you’re interested in on the right sidebar, and it will load the current top 10 trending tweets:

Tons of people search for those trending hashtags.

When someone searches for a trending topic, they see results like these:

They will see the tweets that mention the trend—in this case, “Jorge Posada”—either in the text itself or in a hashtag.

The cool thing is that someone who searches that topic will see all the tweets about it, even by those who don’t have many followers.

If you want to get in front of an audience right away, this is an opportunity.

To take advantage of trending topics, you need to tweet about things that include one of those trends. However, you need to relate them to your business/niche.

Obviously, you can’t do this for all hashtags. But the idea is that if a lot of people see your tweet, at least a few of them will also be interested in your niche and could then follow you.

Assuming you have a social media strategy, you will be able to get your Twitter followers to go to your site later.

Twitter is run by hashtags: The other thing that people use Twitter to search for are hashtags.

Again, someone searching for a hashtag will see all recent tweets with that hashtag, no matter who made them. The only SEO that you have to do is strategically include hashtags in your tweets.

Your goal should be to include 1-3 hashtags for each tweet you make. They also need to be popular enough that people actually search for them, which means that you should keep them broad.

To find hashtags that are good for your business, use a free tool like Hashtagify.me. Search for your general niche:

The tool will show you other popular relevant hashtags:

Write down any that apply to your regular tweets, and include them when you get a chance.

There’s one more way to take advantage of hashtag searches.

When you search for a hashtag, the first results are often photos:

People obviously click on these; otherwise, Twitter wouldn’t prioritize them in the search results.

These can drive direct traffic to your site, and all you need to do is include relevant hashtags along with a title and link:

See that time stamp above? Even though this picture tweet was made 24 hours ago, it’s still showing up at the top of the results. That’s simply because the vast majority of tweets are text-based, not picture-based.

To take advantage of Twitter search traffic, tweet regularly: What you’ll quickly notice is that most tweets are short-lived unless they get re-tweeted a bunch of times.

I scrolled down about 30 tweets in the marketing hashtag results and got to posts that were only 9 hours old.

Very few people will search a hashtag and go past the first few results.

This means that it’s important to stay on top.

Other than trying to get re-tweets, the way you do this is by posting often.

You should tweet at least 3 times per day and test tweeting even more frequently. You can use social media tools to schedule all your tweets at once to save time.

3. LinkedIn is for thought leaders and finding clients

If you are a freelancer or B2B service provider, you have a lot of opportunity to market yourself on LinkedIn.

In addition to using the search engine to find people to connect with, people also use it to find potential people and companies to hire.

Some good LinkedIn optimization can lead to high paying clients down the road, which is why it’s so valuable.

Here’s an example. Let’s say a small business owner is looking for SEO help. He goes on LinkedIn and searches for “SEO consultant”:

Right away, you can notice that keywords are huge on LinkedIn. However, there isn’t too much of an advantage to have the exact phrase “SEO Consultant.”

It probably is still better, but as long as you have the words “SEO” and “Consultant” somewhere in your profile, you could still show up in the search results.

LinkedIn bolds all the keywords searched in the results.

In addition, if you click any of the results, LinkedIn highlights all the keywords on the person’s profile page:

Start by optimizing your profile: In order to show up in any search results, you need to have the right keywords in the right place.

LinkedIn shows your listing in the results if you have your keywords in three places:

• Your personal job description
• Your current job title
• Your past job titles

Obviously, having a keyword in your past job titles may make a prospect think that you’re not doing that kind of work anymore, so we’ll ignore that.

First, let’s pick some good keywords to target. It will depend on your niche, but try to include commonly searched for words such as:

• Freelance and freelancer
• Consultant
• Specialist
• Coach
• Strategist

To edit your professional description, view your profile while you are logged in, and click the pencil icon beside it:

This is the most important area of your profile. It shows up right under your name in search results.

You may not be able to do much with your current section, which lists your company name.

However, if you can find a way to incorporate a keyword into your current company, it can help you rank.

Get more profile views by connecting: You may have noticed one other thing about those search results, which is that they show how closely connected you are with someone:

It makes sense from LinkedIn’s point of view. If someone is looking to hire someone, they probably want to hire someone they know or who is trusted by someone in their network.

If you’re connected with someone, you’re their “1st” connection and will rank higher as long as you also have the keyword.

To take advantage of this:

• Connect to everyone you know
• Accept all requests, even if you don’t know them (you’ll show up higher for other people in their networks)
• Look for opportunities to connect with people with a lot of followers (like bloggers that you’ve emailed or connected with through comments)

Or…connect to the right people: You can also take a much more tactical approach by targeting people with certain job descriptions.

For example, if you were a freelance SEO or writer, you’d typically be hired by marketing directors. Luckily, you can type in “marketing director” in the search bar, and then explore the top suggested results.

Then, you have a few options:

• Just send a connection request
• Send them an Inmail message

If you have a related job (like a freelancer to a marketer), most people will just accept the request. However, you do run the risk of being marked as a spammer if you do it too much, so be careful.

“Inmail” is LinkedIn’s internal messaging system. You can pay to send anyone a message even if you’re not connected with them.

You could ask them to connect, explaining that you’re trying to grow your network. This will eliminate the risk of being flagged. If they say no, leave them alone.

4. Not surprisingly, Google+ has a search function that beats the rest

Google+ is not as big as Facebook, but it’s probably the better social network from a user experience point of view.

One of its better aspects is its search engine—for discovering new content. This should probably be expected, considering it is Google after all. However, it’s nowhere near as complex as the real Google algorithm, so don’t be scared about doing some SEO.

Users can search for their favorite topics, e.g., “content marketing”:

They get a nice collection of people, pages, and mainly recent posts. Since the posts make up such a large portion of the page, focus your efforts there.

Keywords are still important: First and foremost, you need to mention the keywords in your post if you want to be shown to searchers.

Start each post you create on Google+ with a description, where you can type whatever you want.

Then, you can attach pictures or links, and the title and the description will also be shown.

You should include important keywords in both the description and any content you link to (choose the titles of your content carefully beforehand):

One mention is good, but two or three is even better.

Always include tags: You can add hashtags to your post descriptions, just like on Twitter. Similarly, if you include the individual keywords searched as separate hashtags, they will be highlighted for the searcher:

Add hashtags to your description to help your rankings and to stand out more to searchers on the network.

Google+ also makes it really easy to find hashtags.

Search for your main niche, and then click on any of the hashtags that show up. Google will load the search results for that hashtag.

In addition, in the top left, there will be a box with a ton of popular relevant hashtags. Use these whenever you can in your descriptions.

Plus ones and shares matter: As you might have guessed, time is an important ranking factor.

On any social network, users want to see content that is new, so new posts are prioritized.

But unlike Twitter, which displays information mostly in chronological order, Google+ relies on much more than time to determine which posts to show to searchers.

We’ve already looked at keywords and hashtags, but the popularity of the posts also matters.

Here’s an example:

These two posts were by different people, who shared the same piece of content.

Although one was almost a day older, it still showed up side by side with the other one. The main reason for that is because the older one had a lot more engagement. The left one had zero engagement, but the right one had 38 plus ones and 6 shares at the time.

You can see the number of plus ones, comments, and shares at the bottom of each post.

This last ranking factor you can’t do too much about.

At first, when you have only a few connections on the network, you won’t get much engagement.

But if you plan to incorporate Google+ into your social media marketing strategy, you will get more engagement over time as you grow your network, so be patient.

5. For video content, YouTube is #1

One of the biggest sentiments I hear when it comes to social media is that “social media isn’t right for my business.”

Many platforms might not be, but YouTube is a platform where even “boring” niches come to life.

You can find multiple videos with hundreds of thousands of views about drywall—as boring a topic as it gets.

Ranking well on YouTube will not only get your video a lot of views from internal searches but it will also help you show up on Google. YouTube videos rank incredibly well on Google.

Considering how much videos stand out in Google’s search results, they also get good click-through rates, even when ranking in spots #4-6.

Keyword research has two functions: When picking keywords to target with your videos, you want to target those keywords that not only get searched on YouTube but that also get shown in Google’s video results.

There are 5 main types of keywords that typically have video results in Google:

• How-to keywords (“How to shave a cat”)
• Reviews (“Bluehost review”)
• Tutorials (“Setting up WordPress”)
• Anything fitness or sports related (“Cardio kickboxing”)
• Funny videos (“Cute animals”)

Include words related to those searches (e.g., “how to”, “review”, “tutorial”) wherever possible in your video title, which is the most important ranking factor.

Become an authority: In Google searches, content of the sites with a high domain authority ranks easier. Google knows that searchers trust the people behind the site, so it ranks their content better.

The same goes for YouTube videos. As you make more and more high quality videos and get subscribers, views, etc., your videos will start to rank easier and faster because YouTube will know that you make videos people generally like.

Take full advantage of your description: YouTube doesn’t know what’s in your video, and it’s not changing anytime soon. That is why basic keyword optimization is so important here.

You have two main places where you can include keywords:

• The video title
• The video description

You can also include keywords in the video file name, but it doesn’t make sense for that to be a significant ranking factor.

Here are some things to keep in mind for your description:

• Include links to your site (convert viewers into email subscribers)
• Include main keyword and secondary keyword(s) in the first 1-3 sentences
• Don’t stuff your keyword, but aim for 3-4 mentions in a 200-word description

User experience is crucial for ranking: Another way that YouTube can tell if people like a video is whether or not people interact with it.

Years ago, YouTube ranked videos purely on views, but those are easily faked with a bot or a gig on Fiverr.

Now, YouTube can tell which views are fake, partly by how much of the video was watched.

It’s unnatural for most viewers to watch a small fraction of the video. Or it could also mean that the video sucks.

YouTube provides a statistics panel that shows how many people make it to different parts of your video:

If your average view duration is 50% or more, that’s pretty good, but it doesn’t hurt to aim for a higher percentage.

You can also see other engagement statistics:

How do you take advantage of this?

Well, make great videos in the first place—that’s the most important factor. But you can also improve your videos by listening to the comments people leave.

If a comment says that your intro is too long or your video has volume problems, it’s likely that many other viewers thought the same and abandoned the video early.

Don’t forget your tags: While you are uploading a video, you can also add tags to it. These don’t play a very big part in ranking but are still worth quickly adding:

Conclusion

I hope you recognize the potential of ranking highly on social media networks.

It’s much easier than ranking for searches on Google and can still produce worthwhile results.

Your business probably isn’t suited to all of the networks I went over in this article, but it’s probably suited to at least one.

Your first step, if you haven’t already done it, is to create a social media marketing plan, which will tell you which networks to target.

If you also optimize your posts and profiles according to this post, you will get better results and get them faster.

If you’ve had some good results from performing SEO on a social network, please share your story in a comment below.

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