Don’t be Taken to the 'Website Design' Cleaners - 5 Tips to Creating an Author Website as the First Step in Your Online Marketing Strategy

By Karen Cioffi

There is an abundance of website design and hosting services on the internet. You can get services that handle both the design and the hosting, or services that provide one or the other. Whatever your needs, there is a service out there for you. But . . . consumer beware.

Some design/ hosting website services prey on unsuspecting and naïve authors or individuals and charge to not only create a site, but they keep control of managing the site. The customer is only allowed to add or edit content on the site.

This means the author can’t add links, change images, or tweak the site for SEO optimization, such as page title optimization.

I get upset when I hear of occurrences like this. There is no reason why a design and hosting service needs to control website functions and features to the point that an author or individual needs to pay the service to add or delete a simple link. And, some services charge a monthly fee. They’ll set up your website for free, but you have to pay monthly to keep it going.

Authors need to be aware. There is so much information online advising the basic dos and don’ts of creating a website, but you do need to do a bit of research to find it. There are plenty of legitimate and reasonable services out there also. If you’re confused or uncertain, ask around.

Here are 5 starting tips to create an author website:

1. Choose an effective domain name. Think about it carefully. You want a name that will be search engine effective (keyword optimized), reflect what the site is about, and is able to grow with you (unless you are creating the site for a specific book). You can also use the subheading to elaborate on the domain name.

2. Decide if you have the skills, or want to learn them, to create a website of your own. If you have the time and patience you can do it!

3. If you decide you need help with creating a website, look for someone who wants to establish himself as a website builder, or someone who does it in her spare time, or a writing/marketing service that does it as more of a courtesy to clients. 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 cost free.

4. If you feel you can create your own, you can choose a free hosting site, such as WordPress, Weebly, or Blogger. On the flip side, if the thought of having to create a website feels daunting, go for Blogger.com; it’s very user friendly and good for beginners. And with its updates, it has a number of features much like other websites.

5. Keep in mind that down the road you may want to have a website that can be effectively optimized and that’s more SEO versatile, so you may want to have a paid WordPress site from the beginning. The prices range from around $3 and up per month – depending on how long you sign up for and the service.

While these five tips are the starting point for your author website, they will hopefully help you from being taken to the website hosting/design cleaners.

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Want to know if your website is performing optimally? Karen Cioffi is an online platform and website optimization instructor and offers website audits. Visit http://www.karencioffi.com/website-services/ to learn more.

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.

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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