Good
Keywords for Author SEO
Authors
need good keywords for blog posts, books, marketing, even writing
newsletters. SEO, which means Search Engine Optimization, is all
about writing and content searchable by search engines such as
Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. After all, if no one can find you, what
good will it do to write material anyway? To be found, authors need
good keywords and good SEO.
Included
in this post is a shot of the Yoast SEO Wordpress plugin used on my
personal site. I use this plugin on each post. This is one I used for
a post called How to Leave A Review (which I'll mention again below).
On
my personal site, in each post, I use the following:
A
focus keyword.
For
ex, a phrase that includes the genre, book or character name, or a
descriptive phrase. On one of my posts, titled "How to Leave a
Review" I used "leave a review" and repeated it in the
title, url, H2 heading, and the body. By the time I'd finished it was
there 13 times total. Anyone searching for info on how to leave one,
when to leave one, where to leave one, etc. would be likely to find
it.
Slug
This
is generally the same as above. The slug is what the words at the end
of the url are called. Mine was leave-a-review (after the
kayelleallen.com/ ) Making it the same as the focus word strengthens
the SEO.
Meta
Title / Meta Description
I
use Wordpress, and have a plugin called Yoast SEO that allows me to
choose the meta title and description. I don't have that on Blogger.
When you Google something, you know the words in bold that come up
and show you a title? That's the meta title. The words beneath it are
the meta description. If you can't specify, then Google (and other
search engines) pick up the post title and about 150 characters of
the first paragraph.
Title
and hashtags
I
try to match the focus keyword and then research the best hashtags on
https://ritetag.com/
H2
Header
Match
your focus keyword somewhere on the page in an H2 heading.
Video
Because
it owns YouTube, Google loves videos from there. Use the focus word
in the description and/or header of that.
Call
to action
Generally,
I plan my call to action first, and then write the post to showcase
that. I want people to leave a review of my book, so I pulled it in
as examples in the entire post about how to leave a review. Then I
asked if they had left one no matter who's or where, to share the
link. It got a ton of views, but no comments. Typically, I get far
more views than comments, so it wasn't a surprise.
Image
alt tags
On
my personal site, I highlight the title of the post and paste that
into the alt tag line of each image in the post.
Featured
Image
In
Blogger, you usually see the first image when you post a url on
Facebook or Twitter. With Wordpress, you can pick the exact image you
want, even if it isn't in your actual post. When the meta title and
description go up on Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc., that is
theimage that goes with it.
Other
minor things to watch:
Use
one category only. This is like the folder in the filing cabinet. It
can only go in one at a time. Exception: On RLFblog,
I use two categories when the author does an interview. One for the
type of interview, and one for the type of book. This lets readers
search for both.
Use
keywords that are genre specific, book specific, topic oriented.
Don't change wording and spelling on these. Keep them simple so
readers can easily click the tag and find everything in the topic.
For ex, don't use the word book plus the word books. One or the
other.
That's
pretty much what I do. It's working very well.
If
you use Wordpress, get the Yoast SEO for Wordpress plugin. It will
teach you these very things. If you do them, your article is going to
be much more findable by search engines. Use the checklist, and write
good content that contains information people want to find. It's that
simple.
About Kayelle Allen
Kayelle Allen is the founder of Marketing for Romance Writers. She writes Sci Fi with misbehaving robots, mythic heroes, role playing immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. She's a US Navy veteran and has been married so long she's tenured.
https://kayelleallen.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/kayelleallen
Facebook https://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author
Join the Romance Lives Forever Reader Group Download four free books and get news about books coming soon. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Twitter https://twitter.com/kayelleallen
Facebook https://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author
Join the Romance Lives Forever Reader Group Download four free books and get news about books coming soon. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Thanks Kayelle for letting me share this with my readers.
Tina
