Introducing Sexy, Smart & Search Engine Friendly By Lela Davidson

As professional creatives, we all know that search engine optimization is something that we all need to learn. But how do we translate it from something we should do to something we actually do?

This is where Lela Davidson comes to your mental and emotional rescue, bringing her hallmark sense of humor and intelligence to what can seem like a daunting task, but turns out to be not that intimidating, after all.

Let Lela’s new guidebook be your introduction to SEO if you are unfamiliar with the topic. If you are already familiar–indeed if you know too much and yet still do nothing to improve your SEO–you’ll find the task is easy and manageable after you read Lela’s e-book.

And if you finish the e-book, and you still feel like you could use some real-time support, you can call on Lela to personally walk you through a test-drive, so she can show you how search engine optimization can make your website sexier, smarter, and more search engine friendly.

Thanks for helping me welcome Lela Davidson, as she makes a daunting task not only manageable but also fun. And please help me introduce Sexy, Smart, & Search Engine Friendly: Get Found Online Without Losing Your Mind or Wasting Your Time.

Sexy and smart aside, what made you decide that it was important for your business to become search-engine friendly?

I wanted my website to become more search engine friendly so that I could reach more people. I wanted to create more points of connection for people who did not already know me and who would not likely be exposed to my work through social media.

Most folks strongly resist learning about search-engine optimization. How did you figure out how to make it so sexy?

Things are sexier when they are easy. What I really wanted to do was make this process easier for myself, and to make it a habit because I’ve never resisted learning about search engine optimization, but I have strongly resisted applying that knowledge in a consistent way.

Traveling as I sometimes do in the blogger circles, I know I’m not alone. A lot of us know too much. We know so much that the basic job of SEO starts to seem overwhelming and we decide not to do any of it. The fundamentals are not overwhelming and with a little guidance, they are easy habits to incorporate.

Can I optimize my site even if I am basically technically illiterate?

I’m not sure if you can optimize, but you can certainly better-ize. If you know how to update the content on your website, then yes, you have all the technical skills you need to improve search results. What I stress in Sexy, Smart, & Search Engine Friendly is that most of the work that goes into good SEO is offline. Most of the work lies in thinking about who your target audience is and what they are looking for when they hit the keyboard.

So many folks who work online spend a lot of time on social media, making new connections, and networking—are you saying that becoming search-engine friendly is just as important as being social?

Being social is increasingly a part of being search engine friendly so I would encourage readers to continue connecting with people they know in social media, of course. But you can reach a lot more people who are not in your online social circles through search. Search gives us all a way to reach those people we don’t already know. That’s a first step to making a sale.

These same folks, who spend a lot of time online, spend an awful lot of time on social media and yet they don’t see the results they’d hoped for in terms of exposure to their work. Can your e-book help?

Hope is not a strategy. The expectation that putting something out there in social media is going to cause everyone in your network to tell two friends, and then they tell two friends, and so on, is ridiculous. I talk in this guide about repetition. A lot of us (myself included) do not like to repeat ourselves. But repeat ourselves we must if we want to sell. And we must learn to do it in the right way. If someone is spending a lot of time on social media—in anything, really—and not getting the results they expect then they need to try something new and adjust their expectations.

I am sometimes disappointed with the page views I get in my blog. Often, my readers will love a post but it just doesn’t seem to get much wider play beyond my current readers. Does your e-book address this frustration?

Absolutely. There are so many reasons our loyal group of readers may or may not share something with their on social circles. The only control we have over that is to pay attention to what they do share and decide if we want to create more content like that. What we also have control over is making it easy on people who don’t already know us to find what we’ve posted, written, and listed for sale. This can be accomplished through search.

Can I become permanently search-engine friendly, and if so, what kinds of habits do I need to develop?

The world is changing fast, and so is search technology, but as I mentioned before, half of what you do in search is offline. When you get into the habit of thinking strategically about the audience you want to reach with search, everything you create online gets more focused. The value of the content you enrich with this new knowledge is yours and the more you practice the more natural the process becomes. Learning to see through the SEO lens forces you to think in niches and it’s usually easier for the small business to win a niche.

I understand you are offering search-engine friendly consults for individuals running their own businesses online? What does this service entail?

Yes, the consults are very simple and I’ll go so far as to say fun! I ask website owners to answer a few questions about their website’s performance, their goals, and any past efforts with search optimization. With that information I am able to research strategies I think are the best choices for them right now. We have a 30-minute phone conversation to go over my recommendations and answer any questions. So far, the consults have worked really well after someone has read the guide. This is a chance for them to get custom insights based on my years of experience. The consults are not a replacement for reading the guide, but once someone understands the basics, we can dig a little deeper into the specific strategies for their website at this time.

Okay, Lela, for the sake of argument, let’s say that I’m already sexy and smart. Can you give me four or five quick tips so I can also become search-engine friendly during my lunch hour?

First, obviously, read Sexy, Smart, & Search Engine Friendly: Get Found Online Without Losing Your Mind or Wasting Your Time. You can read through the whole thing in one lunch hour and then start practicing the strategies in ten-minute time chunks.

Create a Google+ profile and link your website to it. Post new content to Google+ even if that’s all you do on the social network.

Before creating a post, think about one ideal customer sitting at her computer with a need you can fill. Brainstorm the words she might type into the search bar and then use the Google Keyword Tool to select a few of those phrases to include in your post.

Think ten. Ten minutes is plenty of time to refresh old content. Take ten minutes in Google Analytics and make a list of the ten most popular pieces of content on your site—posts or pages. Spend ten minutes a day for ten days in a row beefing up the SEO quality of that content.

Thanks for coming by to learn more about Lela Davidson’s new e-book, Sexy, Smart, & Search Engine Friendly: Get Found Online Without Losing Your Mind or Wasting Your Time. You can learn more about Lela Davidson and her e-book as well as about her fun and funny humorous essays for moms at http://leladavidson.com/. Please join me in spreading the word about a great new e-book that every creative professional needs to read.