David Leonhardt: SEO Small Business Writer

Meet David Leonhardt, our most recent BizSugar “Contributor of the Week” on Facebook. It’s a little recognition we started a little over a month ago for regular BizSugar contributors who are also fans on our Facebook site.

If you already contribute regularly to BizSugar.com and would like to be eligible to be named BizSugar “Contributor of the Week” on Facebook, first “like” our Facebook page here then read more about the “Contributor of the Week” here.

Now back to Dave!

Starting with a day job as spokesman for Canadian Automobile Association Ontario while working from an 800 square foot apartment in Toronto, Dave lobbied for Ontario motorists while handling about 500 media interviews a year, but decided it was time for a change when his first daughter was born.

Moving to a more kid-friendly century-old 3,200 square foot house on three acres, Dave started his own business focusing on both his first love, writing, and what he considers his greatest strength, SEO.

As Dave explains, it took some time to settle on a winning combination for his new venture.

“I wrote my only published book, Climb Your Stairway to Heaven, before I went into business for myself, intending to become a motivational speaker. There is nothing that teaches a person about their true character like going into business,” said Dave.

“I discovered that, although I loved speaking, I hated selling myself and I really sucked at it. I also discovered I was very good at SEO (my site ranked #1 at Google for “happiness”),” he added. “Since nobody wanted to pay for me to speak, but they did want to pay for both my SEO and my writing… I guess the customer is always right. Incidentally, that’s why my websites are www.seo-writer.com and www.seo-writer.ca .”

He also maintains a site called www.zoomit.ca, a site for all things Canadian

But no matter where it had started, Dave also found his business heading into another unexpected
direction books.

“We have a team of gifted writers in Canada and the USA creating mostly business books, biographies and fiction for clients who have the ideas, but not the time or skill to write a killer manuscript,” Dave explained. “For an entrepreneur, a book with your face and name on the cover trumps a business card any day of the week.”

So, why does Dave use BizSugar for promoting his own business?

“It is hard for me to define a single reason I use BizSugar or a single way I use BizSugar,” said Dave. “I am a social sharing addict, but I also have my own blog posts, those of clients and those of friends that I like to spread around. So this really is something I do “for fun and profit.” I am a firm believer that if you create good content – engaging, informative, different, even wacky sometimes – people will read, people will share, and more people will take notice. I am also a firm believer that the search engines want to serve up to their customers what other people feel worthy of sharing themselves, so the more I can spread around good content, the more my clients will benefit. BizSugar has a dynamic community and reaches a small business audience incredibly well – I have forged some very useful mutual relationships through my involvement on BizSugar. For me, it is as important to be active on BizSugar as on much bigger sites like Digg or Reddit.”

So what advice can he share with fellow BizSugar users?

“I watch for good content on BizSugar and I watch for stuff that friends and others whom I respect submit. There are two kinds of submissions I refuse to vote for. 1. Anything that looks like it is not content (a pure sales page or a home page, for instance), although BizSugar is better than most social voting sites at filtering these out. 2. Anything submitted by a hit-and-run submitter, somebody who studiously avoids voting for others’ submissions (like mine, for example).”