Interviewing Dora Jonsdottir

Welcome to a new Weekly Interviews edition where we interview brilliant women in our industry and share their stories with the world! Anyone is welcome to share their story by simply filling this form, we encourage women from all walks of life in our industry to do so.

Introducing Dora Jonsdottir! Dora is an Icelandic SEO Freelancer, residing in Copenhagen Denmark, and offering her services online under her own name. Dora loves to travel and has lived in places like Peru, the France Alps (where she picked up her Canadian husband), Australia, and most recently, Italy for the snowboarding season. When she is not SEO-ing she likes spending a day 'swooping' down a mountain, hanging outdoors with her dog and husband, and air frying everything, especially chocolate chip cookies.

We asked her everything from how she first got into SEO to what empowers her to be the brilliant woman she is 💪🏽

How did you get into SEO?

I started doing it myself.

To make a very long story short, after graduation I saw a random job ad hanging on a wall to which I replied and started doing SEO in exchange for paid SEO courses... and no money. A few months later, I got offered a paid job not doing SEO, and I chose a paycheck because a girl's gotta eat.

Fast forward, after losing a job I didn't like during COVID, rejecting an SEO job I wanted due to health issues, a good sum of medical bills, months of recovery, and realizing I wanted to spend my time working with something I actually liked and not just a paycheck I learnt SEO at full speed and started freelancing.

What is your favourite SEO task?

I absolutely love doing keyword research for content and writing. It’s a combination of structure and following SEO rules sprinkled in with creativity that makes it engaging and fun for readers.

What is your go-to tool or resource that you can't live without?

I’ve posted loads of questions, on the Women in Tech SEO FB group and that has taught me so much. I would recommend that community to anyone starting out and to those with more experience. It’s a gem of knowledge and information.

Besides that I do love some Google Analytics with my cup of coffee, to measure my genius master plans.

What is something you learned in SEO that made you have an 'AHA' moment?

If we are talking specifics, the biggest AHA moment I’ve had was when I realized the long-term benefits of SEO. If half of your traffic is coming from SEO and your marketing budget gets slashed, SEO won’t just turn off, meaning you can still keep half your traffic. It’s a smart investment for hard times.

What is your proudest industry achievement?

I believe my proudest industry moment is yet to come. I still have so much to learn and achieve. For the time being, I am proud of some of the content I’ve created for clients that has become their main source of organic traffic, and I think I am pretty awesome for just diving into SEO by myself and not giving up just because I couldn’t get a job right away.
Seriously, giving up would have been so easy!

What advice would you give women who are starting out in SEO?

I have a full article worth of practical advice! Most importantly, don’t give up, little at a time does it.

1. Build your own website and optimize it, it can be about anything that interests you.
2. Reach out to family members, friends and local businesses that have websites and apply what you know.
3. Measure everything before and after you’re done. It might make some good result-focused case studies.

Give a shout out to a woman in the industry who inspires you and tell us why

I’ve been following Olga Zarzeczna for a while now. I really like her website SEOsly and am so impressed by her content, resources, and just her knowledge in general.

Then I don’t think I can leave without mentioning Areej who put the WTS community together. It’s empowering to know that women are getting represented more, one industry at a time.

Finally, what empowers you to be the brilliant woman you are?

I am a sucker for motivational speeches, empowering quotes, and listening to accomplished people driving others to do what they love and not give up. An accomplishment to me is sticking with your true authentic self and going after what YOU truly want.

My personal favourites are these:

• “Most people don't fail they simply stop trying” - someone somewhere
• “Whatever that thing is that make people have to pretend rather than live what they are inside. I think that is a far deeper suffering than any sort of difficulty that might be felt when we make that leap” – Cheryl Strayed on how to become a writer
• “Perfectionism is a serial killer. […] I don’t want to go to my grave with 50 unfinished pages in the drawer. There’s enough of that in the world.“ - Elizabeth Gilberts on fear and failure

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Thanks Dora for a truly insightful interview. You can learn more about Dora through her website and LinkedIn.

To view more interviews with brilliant women, check out our Interviews page. If you've enjoyed reading this interview, then we'd love for YOU to share your story with the world! Simply fill this form here, we welcome brilliant SEOs from all walks of life! 🙌🏽