| Guest Experts - Optimizing Your Website
Article: Website Optimization
Making the Most of Your Website:
Professional Websites are essential tools for successful writers and authors. Publishers who understand Website optimization will help authors succeed. Read this article for a top ten list of effective Website benefits, and ten best ways to maximize Website traffic. Also, an introduction to two new traffic enhancement tools: automated syndication with content injection, and RSS.
Top ten benefits of an effective Website:
10.Confirm credibility as a serious writer
9. Give readers direct access to you and your writing
8. Create a network of supporters and followers
7. Promote events and book signings
6. Develop distribution lists for marketing and newsletters
5. Test new ideas
4. Provide accurate. immediate resources to the media
3. Supplement query letters, submissions, and important communications
2. Present you to the world’s ONE BILLION internet users
1. Sell your books
Ten steps to optimize your Website:
Almost all of us think “Search Engine” when we think of optimizing our Website traffic. Yes, search engines are important, but so are general promotion strategies.
Ten steps to getting more visitors.
1. Your Book: Book promotion centers on word of mouth, and the web increases the importance of person-to-person recommendations. Always carry a copy of your book. Print your Website address on your cover. Word of mouth will drive the inquisitive to your web site.
2. Everyday Announcements: Your Business Card: Send people home with your Website address in their pocket. Your answering machine: Invite people to check your latest updates and tell them your web address. Your email: Use your automatic signature on your email. Send out every email and reply with your contact information, book description, and Website link. Your car bumper sticker: Bumper stickers prove we’re still a nation of readers. Get one made for your car and include your Website address.
3. Presentations and Book Signings: Include your Website whenever you give a presentation. Mention additional content that listeners can access when they get home and visit your Website.
4. Excellent Content: Content attracts both readers and search engines. Ensure that visitors to your site receive well-organized and valuable information.
Provide background material about your book, yourself, your subject area. Include attention getters; little-known facts, eye-catching statistics, quotes your readers can use. Use high-quality images to highlight your story. Search the web for resources that will improve your own Website.
5. Update material regularly: Keep adding new resources. Remove out-of-date information. One of the most effective updates is a newsletter. If possible, email this newsletter to your reader list every two to four weeks. Check site statistics after each newsletter--you should see a traffic peak after each mailing.
If you have a small three-to-five page Website, make sure every word receives the same careful attention your books get when you write them—these few web pages have a lot of promotion to achieve. If you have to pay webmaster fees every time you make an update, figure out what content matters most and invest your money there.
If you don’t yet have a Website, or if you’re changing service, choose a provider that allows you to create and update an unlimited number of pages. To maximize your Website’s usefulness, you must have control of your content.
6. Blogs: Don’t have a newsletter? Stuck with a static site? Or are webmaster fees so high that you don’t update your site? Search the web for blog providers, and create a newsletter this way. Have your webmaster add a link from your Website to the blog. Make sure to link from your blog back to your Website. Search engines may find your blog before they find your Website. Either way, you win.
Search engine tips. For online marketers of digital cameras, search engine ranking is the only game in town. Authors, on the other hand, have a unique product. Unlike the camera customer choosing from one of hundreds of vendors, your reader is looking for you. Your job is to help them find your Website. Here’s how to do it. (For more information, start searching at Google’s Webmaster Helps, http://www.google.com/webmasters/faq.html.)
7. Link with the like-minded: What associations are you part of? Will they provide a link to your Website. Links to you are a natural way to attract readership. Search engines look carefully at who links to your site. The more prominent the linking organization, the more value assigned by the search engines. Sorry SPAN, but a link from CNN to your author Website will be even more valuable to search engines than our favorite publishing association. Links from your Website to others may help readers, but they don’t increase your search engine ranking.
8. Keywords: Each search engine has specific rules for ranking Websites. Keywords are words that people will use when searching for your Website. You choose your keywords and place them in the header of each web page. This is called a meta-tag. Most search engines have decreased reliance on meta-tag keywords because of abuse by online marketers. Still, fill these out. Include your name, your book, and identifying words about your work. In the description tag, include a brief sentence about your Website. When a search engine lists you, they will include this description tag along with your Website address.
9. Content Optimization: With the decreasing importance of keywords, search engines are looking right where an author wants, at the content on web pages. Fill your first sentence, and your first paragraph with the keywords that people will use to search for you. If you have a good site statistics package with your Website, you can monitor what keywords people are using to find you, and you can adapt your text to include these words.
10. Online Store: Number of visitors is an important indication of site success, but the bottom line is sales and profit. Engineer your Website to drive readers to the sale. The minimum a Website needs is a link to your publisher or to a major online bookseller so readers can purchase your book. For independently published books, consider selling books directly online to maximize your profits. Research options, as prices and service vary widely.
The Latest and Greatest
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is growing increasingly popular. Search the web for both free and subscription services. If you are creating regular new content on your Website, put an RSS link to these pages and let media know that they can add you to their RSS reader. Whenever you post new material, media receive immediate notification. RSS saves media from searching your Website for information.
Content Injection (Web Site Syndication): Do you have a weekly print or Website column that other Websites want to post? Content Injection allows you to post articles on subscriber pages automatically. No more cutting and pasting or Webmaster dependence. To date, the only company I know of that has packaged XML technology this way is Cevado. (www.Cevado.com).
In conclusion, the great author is the one who tells a superb story and figures out how to spread the word. The great Website is the same, a combination of outstanding content and effective promotion—an indispensible tool for every serious author and the publishers who represent them.
This article was first printed by SPAN (Small Publishers Association of North America): December 2005
About the Author: Lars Clausen works with American Author to help authors get online, (www.AmericanAuthor.com) His book, One Wheel – Many Spokes, is a 2005 Benjamin Franklin Award recipient. He operates two websites for his books (www.onewheel.org, www.straightintogayamerica.com). He is the first person to unicycle through all 50 states.
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