SEO for Book Authors Made Simple

There are few letters that can strike as much fear in the hearts of internet marketers than the three little letters that stand for Search Engine Optimization - SEO. For some, SEO conjures images of nerdy wizards practicing some dark art in the corners of the web that will never be known or understood by the common man. 

But optimizing your blog, site, or video for search isn't really that difficult when you understand a few basics. Let's start with the process of search. 

How Does Search Work?

When someone is looking for something, they enter a word, a phrase or a question into a search box. If your material has information that matches what that visitor is looking for, you will appear in the Search Results.

Depending on how you have used the elements that the search algorithm is looking for when it answers the question "Does this page have information that the visitor is searching for?", your page will come up in the search results.

We often think of Google when we think of search. But Google is not the only search engine. There are actually two types of search engines at work on the internet -  internal and external. Google, Bing and other search engines like them send out bots to "index" your pages. They are trying to answer one question - "What is this page about?". When they have crawled through your pages and found the answer, they add your pages to an index of other pages that are similar. 

What this means to you is if the visitor to one of these search engines enters a search message like "What is the best way to fertilize carrots?", and your page is all about growing and raising carrots, your page will be shown in the search results. The more your page mentions fertilizer and carrots. the higher your page will appear in those search results. 

Other Search Engines

Google and the other major search engines are not the only search engines we need to optimize for. When you put your book or artwork or any product into a site such as Amazon, Etsy, RedBubble, Gumroad, or even here on Steemit, we run into the process of "internal search". 

If the visitor hits Google and enters "Adult coloring book with cats", they will probably be sent to Amazon and other sales sites that have many different adult coloring books with cats. Amazon will probably come up first in those results on Google because it has so many pages of those books. This is called an "external search"

Once the visitor has arrived on Amazon, the "internal search" takes over. While your page may be well optimized for Google, every site that uses an internal search engine has different search optimization criteria. So while you may be found by Google, which will send the visitor directly to your product page, you may not be found within Amazon itself when a visitor is searching within the Amazon site.

How to Optimize

Internal sites such as Amazon and Etsy often have search criteria that we have no control over. Sales volume, number of 4 and 5 star reviews, ranking on Best Seller lists, are some of the things that enter into the search algorithms of these sites.

Fortunately for us, there are a few areas of our page that are used by just about every search engine, whether it's dealing with internal or external traffic.

Before attempting any optimization, think long and hard about what a visitor looking for the type of book you are selling will enter into that search box. Make a list of those search terms and check them on the site you are working with by entering them into the search box yourself and seeing what pages come up.

If possible, take a look at the search tags your highly ranked competitors have used, and look carefully at their titles and descriptions.

Once you have a list of at least 5 words and phrases (10 is better), you can begin to optimize your page by following the checklist below.

1. The title - this is THE single most important element of search. Try to get your best keyterm (or two) in your title. If you are optimizing for Amazon, be aware that your title will also help determine which category you will be placed in.

2. Your description - do NOT do a two line description - ever! Descriptions are vital to good search optimization. Internal search engines often give extra weight to the first words in the description - usually about 200 characters. Make those words count! Make sure they are keyterm rich.

"An adult coloring book full of playful cats, whimsical cats, even angry cats" is much better in your description than "A 50 page coloring book of cats"

3. Tags - are often the least important optimization element. Why? Because they are misused. If your page is about adult coloring books with cats, your description and title will have those words in it. Using a tag that is a highly searched term but has nothing at all to do with your page is something unscrupulous authors will often do. Use your most important keyterm first, and if allowed, use a phrase rather than one word in a tag.

Here on Steemit, use a hyphen in your tag if you want to use more than one word - "coloring-book" - as only one word is allowed in tags. Steemit will see the words with a hyphen as one word. DO NOT DO THIS FOR OTHER SEARCH ENGINES. Other search engines see a word phrase as separate words without the hyphen.

On Amazon, don't waste a tag on a category name. You will get search weight for the category automatically.

Write your descriptions for PEOPLE, not bots. Don't try to stuff key terms into sentences where they don't belong. Your sentences need to make sense to a human reader and need to flow naturally. Besides, bots don't have pockets or wallets so they can't buy your products.

There are MANY rules for optimization for each search engine, and those rules change - frequently. But if you take the three simple steps outlined above, your site will be ranked higher than most of your competitors and will stay that way through the algorithm changes without having to spend time on optimization after your initial page setup.

In future articles, we'll dig a little deeper into how Amazon, Etsy, YouTube, Steemit and Google look at key terms, but for now, write a good title, a keyword rich description that is appealing to people, and choose your tags wisely for everything you post on the web and you'll be on your way to better search rankings.