Ideally, you’ve designed your author website to project your unique author brand. You’ve maximized your bio, included a list of books with blurbs and reviews, started a blog or newsletter, and provided the necessary contact information. Since your author website was launched, you’ve been driving as much Web traffic as possible to this hub of all your promotion and marketing activity. But with the Internet always evolving, Web Design Relief asks—are you sure you’re taking advantage of any new opportunities available?
Six Up-To-The-Minute Ways To Get More Visitors To Your Author Website
Use Hashtags To Boost Web Traffic
You’re probably already using social media to announce new releases, blog posts, sales, and personal appearances. Escalating the reach of those posts, however, can help expand your audience and increase the number of visitors to your home page.
Hashtags are a way to sort and see all posts on a single topic. For example, the announcement of a book giveaway can reach far beyond your own followers if you include hashtags (#freebook, #bookgiveaway, #freebiefriday, and #freereads) on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram posts.
Craft Blog Post Titles That Optimize For Keywords
Smart writers use blogs to provide fresh content on their website on a regular basis. But how much time do you spend on the title of your blog? Maximizing your blog title for keywords can make a big difference in how high the post ranks in the search engine results. The higher it ranks, the more people will see it and presumably click.
One effective way to check for relevant keywords is by using the Google Keyword Planner.
Cross Promote
Guest blogging and inviting other writers to blog on your site are great ways to promote cross-audience Web traffic and increase the hits on your website.
Another way to cross-pollinate is to do a multiauthor giveaway with one or several other authors in the same genre. You can promote the giveaway on your blog or newsletter, and the other authors will do the same, sending highly targeted visitors to your site.
Tweak SEO
Stuffing the content on your site with massive numbers of keywords is sure to make you sound like a robot. Fortunately, you’re a professional writer, so you know how to hook readers with scintillating text and hold them fast. Do that—except give your content an SEO keyword makeover by using better, laser-targeted keywords relevant to your book categories and themes.
Do a little housekeeping as well. Go through your author website to make sure all your links are live, your graphics have correctly coded alt-tags, and your title tags and metadata descriptions on each page are optimized for relevant keywords.
Speed Up Your Website
Are large video, music, or graphics files slowing down your website’s loading time? Do you have too many plugins? Selectively paring these items will allow search engines to crawl through the content on your site faster, creating more organic Web traffic. Wait times of as little as three seconds can make a reader flee, so speeding up your website can also help you keep casual fans engaged just a little longer.
Share Your URL
Are you broadcasting your author website everywhere you can? Consider these places you may have forgotten to put your Web address:
- In your email signature line
- In the front and back matter of every book
- On your business cards, bookmarks, postcards, etc.
- On swag: pens, notebooks, book bags, etc.
- In your Twitter, Goodreads, BookBub, Pinterest, and Instagram blurbs, and the “About” section of your Facebook Business page
Whatever techniques you decide to use to increase traffic to your website, make sure you monitor the effectiveness. Track your Google Analytics both before and after and keep an eye on traffic, unique visitors, page views, and pages per visit in order to determine which techniques are working best.
Question: Do you use or follow hashtags in social media? If so, what are your favorites?
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