| Promoting Your Website - Making search engines happy.
In this session, we’ll cover three ways to increase your rankings in the search engines:
1. Content On Your Website
2. Hyperlinks from Other Webistes
3. Traffic to your website.
Most authors have a huge search engine advantage. Readers are looking directly for YOU. If a reader searches for you or your book title, they’ll probably find your site quickly.
Where search engines become important is when you have a product or service that competes against a list of others; for example, massage therapies, home improvement, lawn care, etc. In these cases, you’ll benefit by attending to content, links, and traffic.
1. Content On Your Website
Carefully evaluate which keywords you believe searchers will use to find your website. Use each of these keywords on your website, especially on your home page, and preferably on as many pages as possible. Search Engine criteria are carefully guarded secrets, but everyone acknowledges that content is king. This is good news for authors. Our websites are all about content - the subject of our books and the expertise we bring to writing.
You should also view the Site Preferences Video to add keywords to your metatages (the part of your web page that search engines can see but which is hidden to viewers.) Search engines pay less attention to these hidden words because they’ve been abused by too many webmasters. Still, it’s worth completing your metatag keywords.
2. Hyperlinks from Other Websites
Search engines consider that if other websites are linking to you, then you must have an important website. Links to your website are judged by how relevant they are to your own website, authors should be linked to authors; outdoor websites should be linked to outdoor sites, etc. Links to your website are also judged by how big the website is that has posted a link back to your site. A link from CNN will be valued more highly than a from a friend’s local blog. Creating a good link network is a long-term and ongoing process that will give increasing rewards over time.
3. Traffic to your website.
Search engines also value the input of Internet users. The more people who visit your site, the higher your ranking will be on search engine listing. And the higher your search engine listing, the more traffic you’ll generate. This is a positive feedback.
Search engines rankings are best viewed as a long-term project. While some sites may rocket to the top of the listings, it’s far more likely that websites will see gradual ranking improvements based on consistent efforts to refine keywords, build incoming links, and generate visitor traffic.
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