Sweet Search Engine Optimization, dude!
SEO for authors: sounds about as thrilling as checking your manuscript for spelling errors, right?
I know. I know. You’re a brilliant writer. You have better things to do than tinker around with tags, keywords, and web links in order to boost your search ranking in Google. Your writing alone will take you to the top of the bestsellers lists!
Well that might’ve been true ten years ago, but these days the deeper your understanding of search engine optimization, the better your chances of winning over new readers online. The more readers you attract online, the more books you’ll sell; and then you’ll be thankful you learned some SEO basics AND corrected those spelling errors.
SEO basics for authors
Tech-savvy authors who understand SEO and who pay attention to analytics have a leg up on the rest of their literary peers. If you’ve been a Luddite thus far, it’s never too late to get caught up and become a real “modern” writer!
And for anyone out there who thinks they shouldn’t have to bother with all this geeky stuff– remember: geeks are taking over the world. It’s time to learn a few tricks or hire someone who’s got them down already (in which case it would still help to have a grasp of the basics, since you’ll be the one writing the checks).
Top 5 articles about SEO for authors
1. What is SEO and Why Should Writers Care?
2. Website Optimization: EVery Page is Your Homepage
4. Boost Your Search Rankings with “Like” Buttons
5. Search-Friendly Images, Google, and the Wonderful Wizard of Oz
6. What You Need to Know About SEO
OK. You’ve got some reading cut out for you. Hopefully these articles will help you ease on down the road towards SEO gold.
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[SEO image from Shutterstock.]
SEO for Writers – Why Search Engine Optimization matters for Writers and Authors
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It’s especially important for authors who are actually GOOD to learn SEO, because the sad reality is that a great author is going to lose to a lousy one who knows how to do SEO pretty much every time. People can’t buy books if they don’t know they exist, and if you’re not showing up in search results then you basically don’t exist at all.
Hi Mike – I don’t know much about SEO and I’m not much interested but I do know it’s important for an author so I tried to hire an SEO “expert”. It seems that each one that I spoke to did SEO for “very famous authors” who wrote “very famous books” whose names they refused to divulge or didn’t remember because there “were so many”.
How do I find someone who actually knows what they’re doing and has done this before?
SEO is definitely important for authors. More authors are becoming digitally savvy and there is so much more competition now that before. You don’t need to be a SEO genius but having a solid SEO foundation such as on page optimization and how to evaluate a backlink will pay off in the long run.