I apologize this post is a little delayed today, my Dad got into town last night for a visit, so we've all been hanging out drinking coffee and having fun with the kids. It's been a bit of a gong show around here to say the least, in a good way of course! ♥
I love Friday's and how our Friday Finds have morphed into not only great give aways for our fans, but that at the same time we are able to support and promote talented artisans, fellow WAHM's, authors who pen great books and more!
Speaking of fabulous and successful WAHM's with that entrepreneurial and generous spirit - we are so excited to announce our winner from our contest last week courtesy of Bummers! Congrats go out to Julie M, we know she'll love her new set of the KangaSac Litterless Lunch System!
If this is your first time here well let me fill you in on Julie's great prize and what exactly she won from Bummers...
The Kanga Sac Litterless Lunch System contains one each of the following:
1 Kanga Sac Reusable Snack Bag (size 4" x 7")
The best part about the Kanga Sacs, in addition to being totally easy to fold up and store away, and eco-friendly to boot, is that you can pop them in the washing machine and dryer. Yes, that's right, if your little one puts their half eaten yogurt back in the bag without the lid for example (like my kids always do!) and it sits in there for the rest of the day, all is not lost because these can be washed! I LOVE that!
For those of you who are after a set of these handy machine washable and totally affordable re-usable lunch bags Bummers is also an online store in addition to a local cloth diaper service and they offer fantastic rates for shipping. I know this first hand as I just placed an order with them this week! So make sure you head over to Bummers and snap these Kanga Sacs up. We know you'll be glad to you did!
What is this weeks give away you ask?
Well read on to find out because we are very excited to be able to share with our fans a fabulous book by the multi talented self published author, Chad Lafarge!
I don't know about you, but I am a wanna be techie. Having blogged and been online for years I've always been fascinated on how the whole concept of search engine optimization works. Whether you have a personal blog so you can share your journey through the adoption process, a place to share your favourite recipes or a web site set up to sell and share your creative endeavours, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a must for you when it comes to generating more relevant traffic and readers to your site.
Why is SEO so important?
Well, I'll paint you a little picture to hopefully give you a better visual... :o)
We are in the midst of a federal election campaign here in Canada. So let's say you have a blog dedicated to talking politics and sharing information on the current campaign and upcoming election, which for us is May 2, 2011. Search engine optimization is the process that sends the readers looking for election information and tid bits on the various political parties to your site and the people say, looking for cheap airfare and holiday information for the month of May 2011 to the travel sites. Make sense? Awesome!
No matter what your purpose on line is, SEO is important to your site whether you realize it or not.
Unless your blog is set to private, chances are you would be thrilled to have more traffic coming to your site to 'meet' up with others who share your views, who are interested in what you have to say, and well, in the most simplest of terms, enjoy your blog. I mean think about it, where is the first place you go online when you are looking for something....anything? Even if it is just a recipe? You go to a search engine, most likely Google, Bing or Yahoo. If you have a blog dedicated to your favourite recipes and kitchen tips, SEO is what makes your website stand out from the rest and show up in the search results.
I've realized that SEO doesn't have to be boring! Who knew?! :D
I don't know about you, but the thing I have found over the years when browsing and looking for information on blogging, website design and (anything else that falls into that "techie category") is that soooooo many sites and books claiming to be the 'go to experts', are well, quite frankly overwhelming, hard to read and often ridiculously long. They could very well be the 'go to experts' on blogging and SEO, but for this busy homeschooling mama with ADHD and 3 crazy kidlets roaming around to keep me on my toes, a huge book or busy site with a lot of fluffy information completely turns me off.
Like many of you, I don't have the time to flip through 300 pages of a book or dig around a massively cluttered up website to find the information that I need. And then of course the kicker is, because I was (still am) learning about all this, I don't know what it is I need to know! In the past I would never finish a book or go back to a website because I hated that overwhelming, information overloaded feeling so many of them left me with - I couldn't figure out what was relevant and what was fluff and it annoyed me.
Does Heaven have Angels for techie wanna be's like me? Yes, I think they do!
A few weeks ago however, it's like a cluster of Techie Angels heard my pleas for information that I could actually absorb and put to good use. Just like that, I found "What You Need NOW for Search Engine Optimization - None of the fluff, none of the bull: only the details that matter to get the job done." by Chad Lafarge.
Lafarge had me at the Introduction:
"This handbook describes the tasks related to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for a new or existing website. The need addressed by this book is: You have an SEO project, have zero experience and don't have time to read 200 pages of fluff mixed with fact. You may have time for closer to 30 pages of fact and some useful tables. I've made an effort to be as thorough as possible and to provide a solid foundation on which you can build your own SEO successes without burdening you with stacks of padding."
From the personal blogs to the talented WAHM's who want to make a difference in this world with their creations and thus have the need for a retail website, this book is everything and more when it comes to search engine and web site optimization. Don't let the fact that it is less than 40 pages fool you, Lafarge titled his book perfectly because this book is exactly what you need NOW when it comes to your blog/web site and making SEO work in your favour.
Lafarge walks his readers through the whole process by ensuring that his advice is straight to the point. He has brilliantly written it so that it is easy to understand and follow (even for this relatively scatterbrained ADHD mom), and also most importantly, he's designed the book so that it is easy to learn from - the tables and worksheets are some of the best parts of the book in my opinion. The fact that he has a knack for actually making it all interesting is a bonus too (which if you have read any books on technological information and internet algorithms, you'll know that this is no small feat in and of itself because most of them are 300 some odd pages of dry boring information).
We love supporting other writers, especially self published ones so we were very excited that we would be able to let you know about Chad LaFarge's book this week!
I know we have a lot of fellow bloggers and website owners as fans here at SignificantlySimple.com who would absolutely benefit from this book and the golden nuggets of information inside it. Even if you don't have a website now, but plan to in the future, even if it is just a blog to document an upcoming trip, or life event, this book can benefit everyone.
Not only do we highly recommend "What You Need NOW for Search Engine Optimization", but we are also giving a copy away next week to one lucky winner!
Contest entry is easy peasy. Simply reply in the comments here or on our Facebook page with the phrase:
"I wanna know SEO!"
If you are a fellow website owner, then we have a great bonus for you!
If you blog about or mention Chad LaFarge's book, "What You Need NOW for Search Engine Optimization" and the contest we have going on this week, we will give you:
- 4 extra entries to win,
- a link back next week in our next Friday Finds Post and
- 30 days of free advertising on our site (under "Visit Our Sponsors on the right or left column)
Have a fabulous weekend everyone! ♥
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