How to Get More Visitors to Your Website / Blog

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Visitors

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On Google alone over 110 billion average searches  are conducted per month. How will potential readers find your blog article, your website or even your books?  To increase traffic to your website, reader loyalty and publishing revenues, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is very important.
I ask clients always how they found us, and from their answers I can determine that the majority found us through “googling”.  With just a couple of small steps, blog and website owners can already do a lot to improve their search engine ranking – without having to pay a specialist – and Google is even helping you with their free webmaster tools.  

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First Task: Fix Errors
With Google Webmaster Tools you can identify broken links, 404 errors, re-directs, or site-map errors that could affect your search engine rankings.  Let someone go page for page through your website, read and critique it.  It can be an average person, no IT specialist necessary as you want to hear about a user’s experience.

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Update Your Copyright Year
Some website owners do not automatically update the copyright year – and it shows on every page of your website, search engines might interpret your entire website as out of date.

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Make Your Site Mobile-friendly.
We wrote a full article  “5 Tips How to Create Mobile-Friendly Blogs and Websites” about this important topic recently.  Search your own website with your mobile phone.  If your website is easy to mobile users, Google will indicate it as mobile-friendly.  According to Forbes, “87% of connected devices sales by 2017 will be tablets and smartphones.”  Whether it’s creating an alternate mobile version of a website or utilizing responsive web design, important is to provide a positive experience to users that are browsing via a mobile device.  Otherwise, you will lose customers to competitors who have adapted to this trend.

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Choose the Right Keywords
Use whole sentences instead of only words and include a location and your target readers.  For example:  Instead of “how to publish a book” you could write:  “how to publish a book and find UK readers who like non-fiction e-books from Amazon”.  Don’t stick only to titles and meta descriptions that match the exact keywords, use more engaging ones. Be ensured Google will find them!  Their algorithms have the ability to recognize different words or search terms with the same meaning.

You can also work with SimilarSiteSearch, a mixture of keyword based searches and directory listings. Type in a URL, topic keyword or modifiers such as “in the UK” or “for business”.  The results are filtered by country, language, or tagged topic.  Understanding their website’s SEO strength/weaknesses, quality of content etc.  Learn about keywords, back links, rankings, and even domain/page authority via alexa.com.

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Advance Search
Before writing a book, article or a blog post, search first its title or headline on Google’s search engine to learn about similar blog posts or content that were already indexed. Read them to assess their quality. Create a blog post that is superior to all the texts that are currently indexed by Google.  Research your competition, always check out other writers, publishers, and their website, not only before you write an article or while you market your book.  Google helps you a lot to do this.

For example, if you are planning to write an article titled “7 Marketing Tips for Non-Fiction Writers”, search it first on Google to check previously published articles with the same topic. If you find an article,  titled “15 Marketing Tips for Non-Fiction Writers”, then write “25 Top Effective Digital Marketing Tips for Non-Fiction Writers”.  You want to be on top and to deliver to readers and the search engines richer, fresher, and better content than everyone else.

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Use Attractive Images.
To increase your search engine visibility, improve your visibility in the search engine’s image results. Use relevant images with the right title tags, alt-texts, and meta descriptions on your pages or blog posts.  Attractive images on book covers or posts are more interesting to view, read, and share and increase credibility.

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Use Book Trailers / Video Marketing.
Increase your search engine ranking by improving your visibility on search engine video results pages. An effective tactic is to produce useful videos and upload them to YouTube (the 800 pound Gorilla and owned by Google) but as well on other video sharing sites.  Don’t forget to mention in the description your website. Create slide shows from your video and post it on your Slideshare.net and Scribd.com accounts.

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Write Guest Blogs
This way you cannot only increase the numbers of your followers, but also link back to your own website or blog and thus increase your visibility in search engine news results. Reach out to news publications and websites to write about your book. If you’re blogging about the latest news and trends in your publishing or writing, submit your blog to Google News and Yahoo News.

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Be on Google+ and Verify Your Social Media Accounts.
Get your social media accounts verified to increase customers’ trust and distinguish it from fake accounts. Furthermore, verify your website that is linked to your social media accounts, so that search engines will know that your website is the official site associated with those accounts.

Google+ is the only Social Media site where your posts, comments and likes are directly transferred to their search engines. That’s not the only reason Google+ is the number one networking site, writers and publishers should choose and participate in. Read in this article about another new, great benefit of using Google+ and how it can improve your online visibility and credibility and maybe let your posts go viral.

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Web Page Speed
The many benefits of improved page speed make it very easy to justify small changes. Take the time to analyze your page speed scores. The faster a web page loads, the more satisfied your visitors will be.  Show your webmaster the results of these (free) tests for your website and let him / her fix it.  Get a better Search Engine ranking and more traffic!  Check out a recent blog “5 Tips to Make Your Website Faster & Get More Visitors”.

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Get more tips on how to improve your Search Engine ranking in the next blog post!

Being on the first page on Search Engines not only helps users to associate your brand, but it creates trust, since sites on the first page are generally perceived to be more trustworthy. The more your pages and content rank in high positions in the search engines, the more chances you have for users to see your content and find your books.

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If you would like to get a mentor and support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

Please check out the latest title: “Book Marketing on a Shoestring” chock full of tips for authors – if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? There is also the “SHARE” button for easy sharing at Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, LinkedIn etc.

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