Attract Traffic With
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You've published - or self published your book. You put up a website, and you're waiting for the traffic to come.
And waiting. And waiting. And starting to realize...
It's not coming.
The reason it's not coming is not because your book isn't that special, it's because your site isn't that special. The search engines judge sites, not books.
(Read more about why the search engines don't love you.)
Let's say you self published a Science Fiction novel. Well, there are probably hundreds of thousands of SciFi novels out there. Did you really think the search engines were going to place your site - and your book - on that all important first page of results?
If you type Science Fiction novels into your favorite search engine, it's the engine's job to find good information on the subject. It's NOT the engine's job to pick a Science Fiction novel for you. So if you want to attract attention for your Science Fiction novel...
You need to provide good information about Science Fiction NovelS.
Hence, a genre book list.
Try this
Type your book genre into a good search engine. For instance, enter
- various lists of YA Fiction
- information on YA Fiction in a broad sense, like what categorizes it
What your search engine probably isn't bringing back is the website of a lone YA author promoting a single book.
There are two great lessons here:
- Your book isn't being found because searchers aren't looking specifically for your book, and
- A good way to be found is to create a book list. A genre book list.
Conceiving your book list
The first thing to consider is your book. After all, you're trying to attract targeted traffic - readers who might be interested in your writing. So you need to create a genre book list that your book belongs on!
It should be a "Goldilocks" list: not too broad, not too narrow. Let's say you've written a fictionalization of the life of 19th Century American General Lovell Harrison Rousseau...
- Too Broad: Historical Fiction
- Too Narrow: Historical Fiction Set in Tennessee in 1864
If the list is too broad you're going to have too much competition, and the search engines still aren't going to rank you highly. Too narrow and you'll rank quite highly...for a search term no one ever uses!
Civil War Fiction...just right.
Of course, now you need to create that list. And because the search engines try to ferret out quality, you should do so with integrity.
What criteria will you use for inclusion on your genre book list? Good reviews? Books you've read in the genre? Books by women? Self published authors? Written by actual Civil War veterans?
That's up to you. Just make sure that your book still belongs on the list!
Here are some genre book lists I made for my other site. My criteria for each list was to make a list of lists! For instance, for bullying, I found seven authoritative book lists. What made mine different?
I found the books that were common to multiple lists, then recommended them. That kept my list from being like any other list. And, as I write this, my list comes up #3 on my favorite search engine for children's books about bullying. Not bad, huh?
Once you have your list...
It's time to create your page. It should have a Title (blue strip across your browser bar) and a Headline. Both should include the search phrase you want to be found for. (Ideally, this phrase should be part of your page's url too.)
The page should have some text, not just book titles. And again, it should have your search phrase sprinkled liberally throughout. (To get an idea, look at my bullying page.)
My bullying page was found by search engines 172 times last month (July, 2008). Also, multiple libraries (and other sites) have chosen to link to the page (because it's such a good resource), contributing to an additional 200 page views, approximately, per month.
Not letting your book get lost
Now, I'm aware that it's a bit counter-intuitive for you to attract attention to your book by drawing attention to other books, but that's how the search engines work and you and I aren't going to change that. Their customer is the searcher, NOT the searchee.
So it's up to you how to design the page to feature your book. Do you put your book at the top? Do you give it its own special frame? Is it the only one you list in bold?
If you're an Amazon Associate (or a bn.com affiliate), you may find it makes sense to provide links to all the books on the list so you can make money even on the books that aren't yours.
Alternatively, you could paste a search box on the page and have the only book that links directly to a purchase page be yours. All the others can be searched for and found.
The options are all yours. But the best way I know of to give a swift boost of search engine traffic to an author site is a genre book list. Think about it!
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