mikemonahanbooks.com

by Mike Monahan
(NY)

Site: Mike Monahan Books

How much money and time have you put into the site? Its a free site

Mike's page on this site

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Mike, I'm gonna start with the obvious:

It's a Tripod site. Free, as you said. And for that reason the top of the page is all about Tripod, not you. It doesn't make the best first impression. (And the bottom of each page is about them too.)

Just so you know: there are free web hosts that don't saddle you with their advertising. (How do they make money? That's a good question. But there are plenty of them.)

A couple things I like:

I like all the text on your home page. Text is what search engines find.

I like that your barracuda picture has a file name of barracuda.jpg and a "Barracuda" tag. Too many people's pictures have nonsensical names, and so the various Image Search engines have no idea what they're "looking" at.

Now here's something else to know about the search engines: they assume that what's at the top of a page is more important than what's at the bottom. Your site doesn't reflect that priority.

The top of your home page doesn't need to say mikemonahanbooks.com. The first text, a link, shouldn't be headed out from your site, and the link text shouldn't be about "friends," it should be about diving (or something barracuda related). Why?

Because search engines ascribe more importance to the text within a link. If you're trying to attract readers about a killer fish, let's not have the link text be about "friends." Let's have it be related in some way to The Undersea World of Mike Monahan.

Make sense?

Notice too that most of your other pages have a heading line - provided by Tripod, I'm guessing - reading, "This is the page where I'll describe myself in more detail." That would definitely be worth getting rid of. And do you really want this paragraph of Tripod prompting atop your bio page?...

I might also include some information about my personal history: where I grew up, where I went to school, various places I've lived. If I have one, I'll include a picture of myself engaging in an activity I enjoy, such as a sport or hobby.

On a basic level, the most successful (read "trafficked") websites are those that provide comprehensive information on a commonly searched subject.

Now, your site is providing somewhat comprehensive information, but not on a commonly searched subject. (That subject being Mike Monahan.)

What if your site were to be about "Underwater Adventure"? Or "Barracuda" (the fish)?

Now you'd have a site that the search engines might take more of a liking too. Google reports that 6600 people per month search barracuda fish. 3600 search underwater adventure.

(1000 a month search Mike Monahan, but most of those appear to be other Mike Monahans, like the home inspector in Atlanta, and the union guy in Boston.)

I make these suggestions because I can tell your site is underperforming. I google books about barracuda and I can't even find you. I search novel about barracuda...

And you come in #34. Behind one of your P.R. releases, your AuthorsDen page, and any other number of pages citing your book.

Here's the thing: It's your book. You shouldn't be coming in behind your own publicity! The best place for info on Barracuda should be from the fish's mouth.

So what can you do?

More content about your novel, about those toothy fish, about scuba and such. You should probably read this article about adding a genre book list to your site.

Even if you stay with Tripod, seriously consider renaming the site (or adding another Tripod site) - barracuda.tripod.com. It appears to be available. Just having the title in your url will give you a boost with the search engines.

Relatedly, change your "Meta" title to Barracuda. This will be reflected not only in the blue bar atop your browser, but it'll now comprise your blue link text at the search engines. If I'm searching for barracuda books, I'm less likely to click on a link that says, mikemonahanbooks.com, than one that says, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about the Deadly Barracuda.

Put yourself in their place. How are they supposed to decide if this is a site about Scuba, Motorcycling, Kayaking or Policing? You need to make it clear what the site is really about (if indeed you want it to really be about your book).

Now, these are little things you can do to incrementally improve your rankings. If you have your eye on big traffic, you're going to need a big site, and that means big work.

It means attracting scuba traffic or cop novel traffic or undersea adventure traffic. By traffic I mean hordes of people coming for free information you're offering...and then who happen to find out that you're an NYPD cop with a novel.

The thing is, the search engines are pretty good at finding the best sites on a subject. There's no faking them out, like there used to be.

Comprehensive site on a commonly searched subject.

If you ever decide you'd like to take that project on, it's time to say goodbye to Tripod (and "Hello" to the outfit I use).

Mike, those are my thoughts. I hope you find something of use in them! Thanks for submitting your site for review.