SEO for authors part two: content is king
'Content is King' is a bit of a cheesy marketing catchphrase, but when it comes to all-things internet, it's absolutely true. The content on your website is BY FAR the most important thing about it (even more than the design!), and has the most influence on your SEO.
Which is great news, because it's the easiest thing to fix! Let's take a minute to think from Google's point of view.
Google is a service, and its job is to ensure it 'serves' a list of the most useful websites when people search for a particular topic. So the thing Google cares the most about is how USEFUL the content on your website is.
But how does it know? Believe it or not, Google can actually 'read' the content of your website, and its spiders (that's the name of the bots it uses to 'crawl' the internet) are continually scanning all websites to try to work out what they're about, and how useful the content on them is.
It does this by looking, primarily, at keywords. Keywords are the search terms that people enter into its search box. For example: '18th century historical fiction'.
If you write 18th century historical fiction you want to make sure that this keyword appears on your site at least once (but preferably more). It's that simple.
Add content to your website that offers value and depth on this subject and Google will find you, and serve up your website to people searching for that topic.
As an author, the most obvious keyword for your website is your author name or brand, so it goes without saying that you must ensure your author name appears on your site multiple times.
You should also ensure that any keywords that are 'key' (excuse the pun) for your website appear as headings.
If you have a Squarespace website, this is really simple to do - just make sure you include these keywords in the 'H1' font on your site. This is because Google reads the words inside the 'H1' tag (code) first, and assumes that the page is about whatever those H1 words read.
So take some time with the headings on your website, and make sure you're using them effectively.
A very basic example would be to ensure that the titles of your books are headings on your site, so that Google knows your website is about your books!
But if all this sounds a bit terrifying - don't worry too much.
There are plenty of other, non-technical ways you can ensure the content on your website is optimised.
First of all, really think about the content.
Here are some basic best-practise rules:
1 Make sure each page has a significant number of words on it - at least 400 - and that the words are good-quality, informative and offer value to the visitor. This is BY FAR the most important aspect of SEO.
2 Make sure each page on your website serves a very clear purpose. Don't try to cram too much info on too many disparate topics on one page - separate content out so that each page has its own 'theme'.
3 Make good use of images on the pages. Break up copy with headings and quotes to ensure that it's easy to read and absorb. Remember that reading online is very different from reading offline - short and sweet sentences are the order of the day, as people tend to skim.
4 Make sure you link to other websites from your website. If you mention your publisher, then put a link to their website behind their name. I'll talk more about linking on another page, but again, the key is to think what value you are giving people - make it easy for visitors to your website to make use of your content.
Hope that was helpful and made sense. Next week: we’ll be talking about your images!