Website Advice

With its near-monopoly power, the Google front page is the holy land for your website. Get your website there, and you’ll snag most of the people who are looking for what you have to offer.

So how can you position your website so it shows up there? By helping Google answer a question.

In my case, it was “where can I find book festivals in the mid-Atlantic area”?

As a result, when I typed into Google’s search box “mid-Atlantic book festivals,” I got this:

This is called an Answer Box. As the name implies, it provides the answer to a very specific question. You can’t apply for it. You can’t ask Google to turn your post into an answer box. They make the decision.

I didn’t intend to do that. Although I know about Search Engine Optimization and the importance of getting my pages high up on search results, I’m not an expert at it.

So achieving this result is kinda like going up against the Shaq in the finals and hitting nothing but air. It was beginner’s luck, and as the game wears on, the only ass that’s going to be handed about will be mine.

But this is also the case of making your own luck through preparation and opportunity, and that is a lesson I can share. Because I have been learning SEO techniques, and because with every post I try my best to use them, I got lucky with this particular page.

So let me break down the components of this win and see what we can learn from it.

1. I Learned About Keywords

Understanding keywords is vital to selling books (or anything) online. Amazon uses them to display your books to customers. Search engines use them to sort information and display them as results. The Facebook group 20Booksto50K asks members to list keywords at the top of their posts to make searching easier.

In short, a keyword describes the object, whether a post, a product, a photo, a meme; in short, anything you’re putting up online. It can be one word. It can be a phrase. In the case of the Amazon Kindle, when you’re setting up the publication of your ebook, where in the seven boxes Amazon provides to list your keywords, you can use phrases that don’t relate to each other, so long as they all relate to the book.

Example: For my collection of Mark Twain / Sherlock Holmes pastiches, I could use in a single keyword box “San Francisco London New York detective pastiche.” In other words, you can fill each keyword box with as many words as Amazon will let you cram in there. I think the limit is 50 characters. So they may call it a keyword, but a more accurate description would be keyphrase

In the case of my book festival post, my keyphrase was “mid-Atlantic book festivals.” And I used it in conjunction with #2.

2. I Use the Yoast SEO Plug-In

Since I have a WordPress blog, I used the Yoast SEO plug-in designed to enhance by site’s SEO powers. Yoast looks over my shoulder and advises me on how to write my post so that Google and other search engines are happy.

It uses a simple red-yellow-green traffic light to score my post for SEO juice. I type in my keyphrase, write the snippet that summarizes the contents of the post. Yoast counts how many times I use the keyphrase and gives me a green light when it’s satisfied.

For example, here’s the current status of this post, as of this sentence I’m writing:

Yoast SEO has more superpowers tucked away behind a paywall, and I plan on getting it when I have the funds. But this free basic version has already given me a leg up on the competition.

3. I Use the Keyphrase Judiciously

Thanks to Yoast, I have this down to an easy-to-remember procedure.

1. Come up with the keyphrase. It must be appropriate for the material and sound like what someone would type into a search engine.
2. Make sure it’s in the title, the url, and the first paragraph. Try not to make it sound like something a toddler would say.

That’s hard. The keyphrase for this post is “google front page.” Not “google’s front page.” Virtually no one would type that in. But they’d type in “google front page,” so I fiddled with the language until it sounds only a little awkward, not a whole lotta awkward.

(SEO rules also frown on “stop words,” which are words not related to the subject at hand, such as “the” and “and”. “Your website on Google’s front page” is an accurate keyphrase, but search engines seem to choke on the words “your” and “on” and the apostrophed Google.)

4. Use a Detailed Keyphrase with Little Competition

Here’s where I struck SEO gold. “Book festivals” is a much more competitive keyphrase than “mid-Atlantic book festivals.” The more detailed the keyphrase, the greater likelihood your post will rise to the top.

While I wish the page would rise for “book festivals,” there’s a lot of competition for that spot.

5. Organize the Material So Google Can Use It

This means I used a simple list, sorted by states. Each festival was identified by city, title, date, and a URL linking it to the organizer’s page. In a way, I made Google’s job easier by presenting it to them in a way they can quickly use.

Big-Picture Takeaway: If you want someone else’s help, do their job for them. If you’re sending out press releases, write them so that a reporter can cut and paste some of the information easily. If you’re advising someone how to do something — add page numbers in Word 2018 — write it in simple steps and walk them through the procedure.

Yes, it takes time and effort, but if you make doing their job easier, chances are they’ll accept the help and admire you for being so empathetic and helpful.

Isn’t This a Waste of Time?

As I’m writing this, when I’m not writing my latest book, I wonder “what’s the point?” And it may be that you are thinking that, too.

That’s all right. In fact, you may be right.

It all depends on your marketing strategy. If you have a website, you want people to find it. Chances are, that won’t require much in the way of SEO. If you have a unique name and unique book titles, Google should find you with no trouble.

But you should optimize your pages for SEO if you’re going to put up more. If you plan on blogging regularly, you want to align the subject of your posts with your books’ content. If you write in a particular genre, you can talk about your fellow authors and books that impress you. If your books are about a particular subject, posts about them will show off your knowledge and improve your credibility.

Since Career Indie Author is aimed at authors who want to build their business, writing about marketing and advertising will draw readers to the site.

Learning SEO is not that difficult. But you’ll find that the techniques that drive it will prove useful in other parts of your author business, whether your picking keywords for your ebooks, writing book descriptions and catalog copy, or streamlining your brand.

(If you want to learn more about Answer Boxes and how to optimize your post so that Google will pick you, reading this post from Search Engine Journal or this longer explanation from Moz.)