About Leslie Carruthers

Leslie Carruthers is President of The Search Guru, a search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing agency serving medium and large businesses who think big.

Writing mentors: read examples of positive mentoring relationships

2018-06-14T21:07:33+00:00March 12th, 2014|

Celebrating writing mentors Recently, the head of the Cleveland Job Bank, Kelly Blazek, made the news – at first locally and then nationally and then internationally – for writing harsh responses to younger job seekers. The story has even apparently qualified as Hollywood gossip; been dubbed “BlazekGate”; risen to the level of a top trending

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Break through writer’s block with these helpful writing techniques.

2018-06-14T21:07:33+00:00March 7th, 2014|

The dreaded writer’s block – and ways to smash through the barriers If you ask 100 people how to define writer’s block and/or what causes the blockage, you’ll get at least 101 answers, ranging from those who don’t believe in the phenomenon to those who have elaborate theories on the subject. When making the case

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Editing and proofreading expert K.D. Sullivan shares tips & experiences

2018-06-14T21:07:33+00:00February 21st, 2014|

The Search Guru chats with K.D. Sullivan, CEO of Untreed Reads Publishing For four years, I edited a full-color print magazine, one that was costly to produce. The tone of the publication was friendly, cheerful, upbeat and neighborly, while the audience consisted largely of conservative women in their 50s. In one issue, we were including

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Finding expert sources can feel challenging, but it doesn’t have to be hard

2018-06-14T21:07:33+00:00February 7th, 2014|

Catch 22: expert sources or engagement first? At first glance, the formula for creating great content (that can be promoted on social media channels) might look simple and straightforward: Google likes and rewards websites with quality content Therefore, I will write quality content for my blog One of the best ways to create quality content

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Discover the power of storytelling in your blog, marketing copy and more.

2018-06-14T21:07:33+00:00January 31st, 2014|

The power of storytelling in your online copy When I was young, I wasn’t allowed to play in our front yard. I couldn’t choose when I could – or couldn’t – flush the toilet. I wasn’t allowed to turn up the music and just dance, either. Now before you think that I had a deprived

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A defense of jargon in quality content: did we just say that?

2018-06-14T21:07:33+00:00January 24th, 2014|

Defending jargon as part of quality content (sort of) In 1981, my sister and I went to the movie theater to see Stripes, a film starring Bill Murray and co-starring Harold Ramis. Murray plays a character whose life was going nowhere: he’d just lost his job, his car was being repossessed and his girlfriend was

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3 Mobile Ecommerce Optimization Tests You Need to Be Running

2018-06-14T21:07:33+00:00January 21st, 2014|

Content strategy: does outrageous behavior reap rewards online? For content creators and marketers – to paraphrase Charles Dickens’ book, Tale of Two Cities, now in the public domain – it is the best of times, it is the worst of times, it is the age of wisdom, it is the age of foolishness. It’s the

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Obtain keyword performance data in the (not provided) era. Here’s how.

2018-06-14T21:07:33+00:00November 21st, 2013|

How to obtain keyword performance data in the era of (not provided) Much of the talk in the search engine world recently has centered on Google’s move to secure search, and its effects on the SEO community. While this change doesn’t really affect what we do, which is delivering great content to site visitors, keyword

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