How to encourage visits to your author website
So, finally, your author website is live! Hurrah and hurray. No matter how you achieved this – whether through doing it yourself or getting someone else to help you or even handing over the whole project completely – you should feel very proud.
But now what? How do you get people to actually visit your new website?
This is one of the questions I get asked the most by my clients. They’re usually really thrilled to have their new site up and running, and they want to know how to make the most of it, and encourage as many visits as possible. Understandably!
So, here are my top tips on making sure loads of people visit your website when it goes live.
Make the most of social media
It (hopefully) goes without saying that as soon as you launch your new site, you should shout about it across all your social media platforms. You should also put a link to it in all your social media bio sections (and if you want to be clever about it, create a special social media links page – here’s how to do this).
But you don’t have to post about it just once – social media moves quickly, and things are often missed, so don’t be scared to schedule posts about it across the coming month. And remember too, to share on social media whenever you update it!
Also, ask friends to share a link to your site on their social media as well! Especially if they are writers with a similar readership to you. You should also ask your agent and publisher to share it on their feeds too.
Make sure when people do click through that there’s a clear call-to-action to ensure that any visitors aren’t having a wasted trip. A good one is to encourage visitors to sign up to your mailing list, so you can capture their details for the future.
You could also encourage people to visit your site to read the blurb for your upcoming book, rather than sharing all the details about it on your social media feed.
“Top tip: When sharing a link, make sure you offer something of value to your readers – such as ‘go check out my website to read exclusive letters between my two MCs’ rather than just ‘go and look at my new website’. There’s got to be something of interest in it for them!”
Make the most of links
Links to your website from other websites will really help with your SEO and of course help people discover it.
I’ve covered linking to your site from all your social media pages above, but do make sure it's also linked to from your publisher's and agent's websites too, as well as your Amazon page and any other online profiles you might have such as Goodreads.
It’s also important to make sure whenever you do an interview or guest post online you ask for a link to your site to be included at the end of the article. This is particularly important when you or your work is featured on high-ranking websites such as newspapers.
When your site is linked to from a website such as BBC News or The Times, this makes Google think it must be important and of value, which helps your own SEO improve.
You can also put a link to it in the back pages of your books – this works especially well with the ebook version of your book, where people can easily click through to find out more about you and any other books you might have written.
Email everyone you know
If you already have a mailing list then this is great – make sure you schedule a mailshot to go out shouting about your new site (and, as above, ensuring you’re offering people a reason to visit it!).
But even if you don’t have a mailing list, you (hopefully!) have friends and family. So make sure you share this with as many people as possible, and ask them to share with others too.
Keep it regularly updated
The worst thing you can do is launch a website and then never touch it again. It’s really important for your SEO that your website is regularly updated, otherwise Google will see it as a ‘ghost site’ and stop displaying it as highly in the rankings.
So, make sure you log in at least once a month to either refresh the content or add new information, so that when Google next crawls it, it can see that the site is active.
Offer exclusive content
Your website is the perfect place to offer exclusive content to your readers. There are lots of different ways you can do this.
You could record an exclusive video and host it on your site, such as you reading an extract from your latest book or maybe answering any questions you get asked regularly.
You can also offer short stories, ‘interviews’ with your characters, behind-the-scenes stuff such as deleted chapters and teasers for your upcoming books...
How to upload a file to your Squarespace author website →
Get creative, and think about what your readers would enjoy. Host this content on your site and make sure you let everyone know it’s there!
Start a blog
Not for the faint-hearted as it’s a lot of work, but blogging regularly is by far the most effective way of encouraging people to visit and revisit your website.
Below you’ll find a link to my free training all about blogging for authors, but do bear in mind for blogging to truly pay off, it needs to be done regularly and consistently, and be treated as seriously as all your other writing projects.
Hide an ‘Easter egg’
To encourage people to visit your site and look through it thoroughly, you can hide what’s known as an ‘Easter egg’.
Sadly not the chocolate variety, this is the name given to a small hidden element on a website, designed to challenge visitors and encourage them to click through and find it.
They’re usually used by programmers to incorporate a game or joke (for example, if you’re using Chrome and you lose your internet connection, you’ll see a little dinosaur appears in your browser window – but what lots of people don’t know is that if you press your space bar the dinosaur starts to move and it becomes a game).
For author websites, you can be more low key! You could hide something relating to your characters, or more info about you. Perhaps some background info about a character could appear if you click on their name in the blurb, or a picture of your pet might pop up if you click on their name in your bio.
Then you could set your readers a challenge and tell them to go find this hidden link and come back to let you know when they do.
You can see some website Easter eggs here.
There are lots of possibilities and you can have lots of fun with this!
I hope this has given you a few ideas of how to keep your website ‘alive’ and breathing. It shouldn’t be a done-and-dusted thing, but rather something you feed regularly, to ensure you are making the most of it, and it continues to help support you in your writing career.
Looking for help with your author website?
Discover my three design packages here →
