1) Content is king, so are keywords. Find the keywords that people are searching on for your market and then create content around those words.
2) Don’t abuse keywords. Have you ever seen those sites that seem to use keywords over and over again (i.e. keyword stuffing)? That’s an abuse of keywords and while it might temporarily inflate your search engine ranking, it won’t last. Once Google figures out what you’re doing (and trust me they will) your site ranking will drop drastically. It’s not pretty.
3) Google runs the world. Well, not really but they certainly do run the Internet. If you’re going to optimize your site for ranking make sure that it shows up high on Google, in the end it’s the main search engine we default to and the one that matters to your consumer. Studies show that an average web site gets 61% of its traffic from search engines, 41% of that from Google alone.
4) This stuff takes time. Nothing happens overnight, especially online (unless you’re a dancing pancake video that gets sent out to a billion people in a 4 hour time span). Ranking and searchability takes times. if you have a book launching in the next 3-6 months start this work now. You’ll be glad you did.
5) Update your site. While updating your site in principle might seem like an easy thing, it can be one of the biggest obstacles for a site owner. Why? Because often our web site people are overseas and once that 12 year old from Lithuania goes back to school it’s anyone’s guess how to find him. So here’s a tip: get a blog, a blog (if updated frequently) will ping the search engines and let them know you have fresh content on your site. Oh and seriously, fire the 12 year old and hire someone locally. You’ll be glad you did.
Just curious. How important in this digital age to hire a LOCAL web designer?
I understand professional but does location matter?
Great tips! Thanks!
It all sounds like such a balancing act but thanks for laying it out so concisely…and I enjoyed the dash of wit!
Though I don’t have a 12-year old Lithuanian web person (I have a great local webmaster/tech wizardess), I know people who have had the equivalent and it has been a nightmare for them.
Yeah, having a non-responsive web designer really is a nightmare – it sounds like you have a good one! Glad you liked the blog!
Agreeing with you on these simple solutions. Frequent meaningful blogging over time pays off. I help a lot of authors and professionals promote their books by building them custom blog style sites and the payoff over time always go to those who blog smart.
Q 4 U, re, keyword stuffing? My web host allows me to set the keywords for each page on my site. Does this mean I need to use different words for each page, in spite of similar content? Or is it okay to use the same words if they’re relevant?
You’re right about it taking time. I went from ‘non-existant’ on the ‘net to being near the top of Google search results (for my name and Internet username) but it took three to four years and a whole lot of content.
I must get back to blogging. It kind of fell away this summer from all the other tasks.