Book Marketing Blogging - 4 Elements to SEO Ready Content

By Karen Cioffi

There is much to know about properly formatted and SEO ready article content. While both elements are essential to effective content marketing, it’s the search engine optimization that will allow your articles to be picked up by the search engines and found by the online searchers.

It's important for writers and authors who use blogging to know how to use their content effectively. This will increase your visibility, expert status, readership, and ranking.

So, what are the elements needed to create SEO effective content?

1. Create ‘shareable’ and keyword optimized blog posts.

The ‘old’ SEO had you optimizing keywords that search engines would find, categorize, and index in order to place that content as results based on search queries.

Today, it’s all about providing quality content that readers will find valuable enough to share. You want readers to share that article or post with Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google Plus, and other social networks.

While you also need to provide keywords for the search engines to find, the key to article marketing now is to provide quality content, so it can go viral.

SEO is a kind of popularity contest. The more people like and share your content the greater value you (your site) has with Google and other search engines.

2. Include Your Bio

You’d think every writer would make sure they receive credit for their article content, but if you read some blogs, even those with multiple contributing authors, there are some with no byline. Even if it’s your own blog, at least end the post with your name.

For article directories, each service has its own resource box instructions. For guest blogging you don’t want your byline to be too long – make it short and effective. You can include your name with a couple of sentences letting the reader know why he should click on your link.

Your tag, bio, byline, is how you get credit for what you write.

3. Blog Post Marketing Tags

Including keywords or tags where allowed is essential to article marketing and its SEO effectiveness. Most hosting services and article directories provide specific areas at the bottom of the article for keywords or tags. Take advantage of this tool.

These tags should be relevant to the content and will allow the search engines to categorize and index your content. This in turn will allow your article to be found by people searching for your topic.

4. Link to More Content

This step is simple. In any article you publish on your own blog or submit for a guest post (if the host site allows it) link to other articles or a landing page on your site. You can do this within your content by hyperlinking a relevant word or phrase to a relevant article on your site.

You can also include a “Related Articles” section at the end of your article and list a couple of titles with hyperlinks to the actual articles on your site. Or, after a bit of information within the article add, “For more information on this check out” and add the link.

This allows you to get even more ‘juice’ out of your articles. You may not be able to do this with article directories, but for your blog posts, it will keep visitors on your own site longer and draw them further into your pages, and will bring visitors to your guest posts back to your site. Search engines like this marketing technique.

For those who aren’t sure how to hyperlink, you simply highlight the relevant word or phrase, click on the link option in your toolbar, put in the URL, and click okay. Simple.

There you have it, four blog post SEO ready tips to get your blog posts doing what they should be doing: getting read, getting shared, and bringing traffic to your site.

Karen Cioffi is a online marketing instructor for WOW! Women on Writing and Working Writers Club. Check out her classes on Blogging:

Become a Power-Blogger in Just 4 Weeks
Blogging Made Easy (a four-week class for beginners)

Book Marketing Using SEO Marketing

By Karen Cioffi

As an author and book marketer, you may be wondering what SEO is. Well, it’s simply an acronym that stands for ‘search engine optimization.’

According to TechTerm.com, “Just about every Webmaster wants his or her site to appear in the top listings of all the major search engines.” SEO is the means to accomplish this.

SEO marketing is the strategies or techniques used to create visibility and website ranking within the search engines, such as Google and Bing. And, even with Google’s latest update, the Penguin’s SHARING factor, these strategies are still effective, and needed.

Sidetracking just a moment, Google’s latest update takes the ‘social’ element of blog posting to the next level. Along with your SEO tweaks, your content must be SHAREABLE.

Content that others find valuable enough to share, whether informative or entertaining, is what will help get a higher ranking with the search engine.

Okay, back on track now.

Every online marketing strategy includes promotion, and SEO marketing is a promotional tool under the marketing umbrella. The marketing umbrella covers the creation or manufacturing of a product or service, research and development (R&D), distribution, and any other elements needed to get a product from creation to the consumer. Promotion creates visibility, which in turn leads website traffic and customers.

Utilizing online promotion means you will be using the internet and search engines. SEO marketing is the process of getting the search engines to find and rank your website and your content. You obviously want a high ranking so when a searcher (potential customer) types in a search term (keyword), your site may be one of those on that first search engine results page (SERP), or at least within the first few pages.

Another explanation of SEO marketing:

It is basically the steps you take to have Google, Bing, and other search engines find, index, and put your website on one of their first SERPs whenever people use ‘your keyword’ to search for something.

In essence, SEO marketing is kind of a popularity contest.
When you use effective keywords within your website (title and meta tags) and in informative posting content, Google and the other search engines will find, index, and rank you. This allows you to be picked up and shown on the search engines’ results pages for specific search terms. When a ‘searcher’ finds your link on the SERP and clicks on it, you get a link to your site. The more inbound links to your site – relevant to your keywords or not - the more Google and other search engines ‘like you’ and consider you an authority.

Going a bit further, getting links from other sites with the same keywords in their links that you have in yours, is much better. This is considered as a higher ‘ranking vote’ by Google and establishes your site as having more authority. The more ‘link votes’ you get, the more Google will perceive your site as valuable and give you a higher authoritative ranking.

To be found and ranked by Google, you need to add effective and relevant keywords to your site and content. To do this, you’ll need to do a bit of research. You can type a keyword in the Google search box or the Amazon search box and see what keywords they bring up. This will give you an idea if your keyword is effective.

Using relevant and effective keywords is essential in SEO marketing.

What strategies do you use to find effective keywords as part of your book marketing efforts?

Image copyright 2013 Karen Cioffi

Need help with your author online platform? Need to boost visibility and traffic to your site? Check out WOW! Women on Writing’s 6 week e-class:Create and Build Your Author Online Platform

And, for more writing and marketing tips visit http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com

Five SEO Blog Tips to Help Increase Traffic to Your Site

If you’re new to the writing game, you may not be aware of some of the essential steps needed to actually get in the game - steps that will make your name and brand visible. And, visibility is a ‘biggie’ if you want to increase traffic to your site and move forward in your writing career.

One very interesting fact about having content online is you never know who will end up finding it. It could be an agent, a publisher, someone who wants to hire you for your writing style. You get the idea.

Why is it important to become familiar with SEO blog tips?

Simply put, the answer is to generate visibility.

Writing is no longer a solitary career. Now, if you want to create and build visibility, along with readers to your site (traffic), you need to build an online platform and promote it.

So, what are some tips to help you get started in the right direction?

Well, the very first and most obvious tip is to have a website or blogsite. Once you have one set up, it’s your job to post content to it on a regular basis, no less than once a week, two or three times a week is better though.

It’s that content that will establish you as an expert in your genre or area. This will help you down the road, after you’ve traditionally published or self-published one, five, ten, or more books and/or e-books, and you want to expand your writing career.

But, before we go over five of the basic SEO blog tips for new writers, let’s first go over what SEO actually stands for: Search Engine Optimization. This marketing strategy allows the search engines, such as Google, to find your site and content.

Being aware of SEO strategies is essential to having the search engines not only find your site, but to also index your content, and make it available to online searchers.

Five SEO Blog Tips:

1. Use a keyword in your article title. Try one of the free keyword search tools to find an effective keyword. I use http://googlekeywordtool.com/

A keyword, according to Compendium.com, is “any word or phrase a searcher might use to describe or identify a desired resource on the Internet.”

2. Use that keyword in your article’s subheadings, and be sure to bold or italicize your subheadings.

3. Use that keyword within the content – just don’t overdo it. You don’t want to stuff your article with as many ‘visibility generating’ keywords you can fit in, search engines frown upon this practice. Your article needs to be an informative, engaging, and understandable.

You primary focus should be to write for your reader. Today, for effective marketing your content needs to be shareable. This means your readers need to feel motivated to ‘share’ the post.

4. When searching for effective keywords, look for long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are words that will move you away from highly competitive keywords.

As an example, if you write business articles, a generic and highly competitive keyword might be ‘incentives.’ I did a Google keyword search and the keyword ‘incentives’ came in at: 1,500,000 global monthly searches, and 823,000 local monthly searches. Obviously, you wouldn’t want to use a keyword with that much competition.

That’s where the long-tail keyword comes in.

If you used the keyword ‘business incentive,’ you’d reduce your competition to 22,200 global monthly searches and 14,800 local monthly searches. That’s quite a difference, and it narrows your target. Remember, you want to hit as close to your target market bulls-eye as possible.

5. The final bit of advice is to let the social networking sites know you have new content. Post the content link to Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. You should also inform your groups. Get the word out. And, be sure to have a SHARE button so visitors can share the post also.

~~~~~
Boost your writing and marketing efforts with Karen Cioffi. Visit http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com and sign up for her FREE newsletter, The Writing World (top right sidebar).

SEO and Marketing: Basic Tips and Definitions

In its simplest form, promotion is a tool or strategy under the marketing umbrella. The marketing umbrella covers the creation or manufacturing of a product or service, R&D, distribution, and any other elements needed to get a product from creation to the consumer. Promotion creates visibility.

Utilizing online promotion means you will be using the internet, search engines, and SEO. SEO is the process of getting the search engines to find and rank your content. You obviously want a high ranking so when a searcher (potential customer) types in a search term (keyword) your site may be one of those on that first SERP.

Marketing and especially SEO can be confusing and seem like a daunting task to undertake, but once you understand the basics it becomes less intimidating.

SEO and Marketing Definitions

1. SEO – search engine optimization: “the process of creating and adjusting website content with the goal of improving search engine rankings.” (according to Compendium.com)

2. SERP – search engine results page – the page results from a search query.

3. Keyword – “any word or phrase a searcher might use to describe or identify a desired resource on the Internet.” When using keyword in your title, it’s important to use the keyword in the beginning of the title. Rather than use “How-to-Guide for SEO,” opt for “SEO: A How-to-Guide.” (according to Compendium.com)

4. Organic Traffic or Marketing – free strategies, such as Twitter, blogging, article marketing, etc.

5. Paid Traffic or Marketing – utilizing paid/sponsored ads, such as Google adwords, etc.

6. Ranking – your position (how high up) on the SERP: the higher the better. In other words, you want to be on the first SERP, or at least within the first few pages.

7. Anchor text – linking to other websites and/or pages directly from text within your content. This strategy should be used to bring the reader to your products, to other related articles you’ve written, to another site that has useful information pertinent to your post, and/or to link to a site you’re mentioning.

Providing readily accessible information and links through anchor text will give your readers more “bang-for-the-buck.” It will give the reader a broader reading experience, and she will definitely appreciate it – this builds a relationship . . . and trust.

Using anchor text links will also help search engines, such as Google and Bing, relate your content to other relevant content, and create a target for searchers to hit.

One last note about SEO, keep your keywords simple and concise. And, often it’s of greater benefit to use long-tail keywords. These keywords may not get as many search hits, but they do get a much more targeted audience; this leaves you with less competition.

An example of a keyword might be, “allergy relief.” Allergy relief is a very generic and heavily used keyword. In order to make it more specific and hone in on a narrower audience/searcher, you might use, “allergy air cleaners,” or maybe, “remedies for allergies,” or, “allergy sinus medications.” You want to narrow the playing field.

There are free tools to test out and analyze keywords; here are three of them you might try:

http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
http://www.wordstream.com/keywords/ 

~~~~~~
My middle grade fantasy book Walking Through Walls will be available for sale beginning the middle of this month. To read a number of reviews please visit:

http://walkingthroughwalls-kcioffi.blogspot.com/p/walking-through-walls-reviews.html

You can pre-order get your copy of Walking Through Walls today at:

http://4rvpublishingcatalog.yolasite.com/mg-ya-page-2.php

 

And, check out the amazing book trailer Aidana WillowRaven created for the book:
http://youtu.be/90aJO5qHHWc

Karen Cioffi is an author, ghostwriter, and freelance writer. For writing and marketing information visit http://karencioffiwritingandmarketing.com and sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World - you’ll get 2 free e-books on writing and marketing in the process, and two more free e-books just for stopping by.

Book Promotion: Create a Website or Blog

I know I mentioned my article for today would be Book Promotion: Visibility and Platform Basics, but I forgot it's 6 pages long and 2300 words - I'll be turning it into an ebook.  

Instead, I took the first section of that article and tweaked it just a bit for:

Book Promotion: Create a Website or Blog

The first rung on your marketing ladder is to create a quality product, in the case of an author, that would be a book. You need to create an engaging story, be part of a critique group, make sure the manuscript gets edited, and have a knock-out cover.

Creating the book might be considered Research and Development under the Marketing umbrella, and the foundation of a marketing strategy.

The second step or rung on the marketing ladder is the actual book promotion: creating a platform and brand for you and your book. This is accomplished through visibility. A platform is a means to let readers know what your area of expertise is.

You may be shaking your head and thinking you don’t have an area of expertise, well the very first step to establish yourself as an expert is to create a website or blog.

Here are four steps that will help you create an effective website or blog:

1. Your Domain Name

Choose your domain name carefully and think ahead. Marketing experts always advise using ‘your name’ for your domain name. You can always create sites that are specific to each of your books or a particular niche, but your name should be your main or central site.

On the other hand, if you write in a specific genre, you should include that in your domain name. If you’re a children’s writer, maybe: Children’s Books by Your Name, or Picture Books by Your Name. The more specific you make your domain name the more likely those searching for that genre will find you.

Simply put: If you sell shoes and your domain name is John Smith how will those searching for shoes ever find you?

And, be sure to use appropriate keywords in the subtitle of your site.

2. Choose a Website or Blog

There’s no way around this one – you must create a web presence. The first tool in your visibility toolbox is a website, and it should be created before your book is published. You can choose a website or a blog and you can get either type for free from sites such as Wordpress.com or Blogger.com.

If you find the thought of having to create a website daunting, go for Blogger.com; it is very user friendly and good for beginners. And with its updates, it has a number of features much like a website.

One of the drawbacks to Blogger though is you cannot upload ebooks or pdfs to link to in order to offer them for free or sell, so if this is something you’ll be doing, you will have to find a hosting site like WordPress.

3. Simple is a Better Strategy

Marketing expert Mike Volpe of Hubspot.com points out that it’s more important to spend time, and money if necessary, on content rather than a flashy website design; simple works. In fact, simpler usually leads to a higher conversion rate. The conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who buy your book, product, or service.

Volpe also stresses that you should have control over your site. This means you should be able to manage it. You don’t want to run to a web designer for every little change you want to make to your site, or to do something as simple as adding content.

To reinforce this ‘simple is better strategy,’ Google says that milliseconds count in regard to your page load time. If your page is slow to load, you’ll get a poorer score with Google.

Tip: Should you decide you do need help to create a site, don’t hire an expensive web designer. Look for someone who wants to establish themselves as a website creator, or someone who does it in his spare time, you will pay much less. And, try to make arrangements that will include the designer teach you how to manage your own site. This will make updates, changes, and posting much easier, and less expensive.

4. Make Your Site Optimized for the Search Engines

If you choose a WordPress site, go through the dashboard and sections carefully, and fill in how you want your site to work. There are also a number of plugins for WordPress that will help your site get noticed and indexed by the search engines. If you’re not sure how to do this, it would probably be worth the investment to hire someone to do basic search engine optimization (SEO) for your site.

It's not uncommon for writers to need help with websites and SEO, it's impossible to be proficient at everything. Thankfully, there are those who know the ins and outs of optimizing websites, if needed take advantage of them.

~~~~~~~~~~
Karen Cioffi is an author, ghostwriter, and freelance writer. For writing and marketing information visit (http://karencioffi.com) and sign up for her free newsletter, A Writer’s World. You’ll get 2 free e-books on writing and marketing in the process, and two more free e-books just for stopping by.
Check out the Walking Through Walls site:
http://walkingthroughwalls-kcioffi.blogspot.com