This month-long series of blog posts will explain author websites and offer tips and writing strategies for an effective author website. It alternates between a day of technical information and a day of writing content. By the end of the month, you should have a basic author website up and functioning. The Table of Contents lists the topics, but individual posts will not go live until the date listed. The Author Website Resource Page offers links to tools, services, software and more.
If You Build It, They Will NOT Come Unless. . .
. . . unless they can find you in a search engine. The number of people who find your site because they know you will be few. Those who intuitively type in darcypattison.com must have some knowledge of who I am. You need links from other sites and you need search engine traffic.
Search Engine Optimization or SEO. There’s no way in a simple blog that I can explain everything about how to get search engines to send people your way. There are books and professionals who can barely explain it. So let me do a quick explanation and then give you one big hint.
First, SEO is all about making it easy for search engines to index your site and figure out what you are talking about. If someone types into a search engine “best practices author website,” I want this series to come up. How does a search engine decide what to show for this question? The situation is hard, because search engines are constantly updating the algorithms or mathematical formulas used to decide this question; the answer is a moving target. (These updates from Google get colorful names such as the Panda update. For the most recent, as of the date of this writing, look for information on the Hummingbird update.) Still, there are a couple constants, keywords and titles.
Keywords just means what are you talking about, but it’s in terms of what people actually search for, not what you think it should be. For years, keyword research has been crucial because of the difference in searching for “childrens’s books” or “kid’s books.” With the increased sophistication of search engines, though, the two would now return the same blog posts. But it still makes a difference is you search for “best practices” or “great examples” of author websites. Now, search engines try to answer the underlying question and intent of the question. Do you want a list of tutorials on building a website, or do you want examples of great websites?
Once you decide on the topic of a post, make sure to use the words somewhere in the post. Two years ago, experts might have suggested you seed the post with the keywords, but now, most agree that a couple times is enough, as long as you are answering a key question. This means: before you write a post, think about what questions your reader might have on the topic and try to answer those questions.
In today’s crowded Internet, how will you make your website stand out to search engines?
As writers, this is a snap. You must write good titles that explain what is in the post. Nothing cutesy, but direct, succinct and catchy.
Let’s say you want to know what to include on your ABOUT page.Which of these post titles would you click on?
The last, of course, is the title of the post I wrote on ABOUT pages. In writing titles, think about a long list of titles and what will make yours stand out.
Specific. Be specific. I reference two authors named Kate and that intrigues.
Numbers. Titles with numbers often get better results.
Adjectives. “creative, intriguing” will pull in more readers.
How To. Promising to explain something is important to readers, especially is you pull off the explanation well.
You know that comment you always get from editors on the rejection letters? “. . this manuscript just didn’t stand out in today’s crowded market. . .” Think of search engines as that crowded marketplace and your title as a log line or the briefest elevator pitch (you only get 100 characters or so). Make the title snappy.
And–after you’ve got everything set up and you want a couple more tasks to do, study SEO. The year I did that, I doubled my website’s traffic. It’s that important. But you’ve got time to get everything set up right before you have to stress out over this. Just know that SEO is in your future.
Thank you to all who have voted for the title of the Christmas Story Anthology. There were many great suggestions. I think that I may make this an annual event and so I will keep the other great suggestions for following years. I’m just sad that we couldn’t use them all. Without further ado, the name of the Anthology is going to be:
Sing We Now of Christmas: An Advent Anthology
The anthology is already off to the editor, so the cover is going to be next. I have a cover artist already, and now that I have the title, I will just need some suggestions for the cover. I have some ideas, but I’d also like to hear from you. I’m going to be gone all week to my brother’s wedding, so when I come back next week, I’ll go ahead and send an email to the cover artist.
Enjoy your summer everyone!
As a writer I find titles difficult. Sometimes they just appear like a lighthouse beam shredding through the dark but more often I am left struggling, worrying over ideas, pinching bits off, adding and subtracting until I'm convinced that what I am left with is as illuminating as a spent match.
On February 19 I wrote about the weird and wonderful book titles that are short listed each year for the Diagram Prize but I've been thinking about the great titles: the ones that stay with you and say something when you first pick them up and say something different when the story is over...
They are important to get right because it sets a temperture for what follows...
Here's a couple that spring to mind:
Books A HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE
(although I did once read a review complaining that it was overwritten and it should be really 50 years of...)
Short story I HAVE NO MOUTH BUT I MUST SCREAM one of the best short stories I've read and I am not a big sci fi fan. Written in the 60s by Harlan Ellison, the title and the story have stayed with me since I first read it.
Any personal favourites? Any tips for creating that all important first line of a story (which is what a title is, after all...)
is hard. Even with 40 suggestions - thank you everyone for joining in the competition - had many more good ideas to consider than I expected.
Do I go for the funny or the accurate?
The intelligent or lyrical...?
Hmmm. Will announce the winner on Monday. Not to prolong it unnecessarily but...
a) because tomorrow will be taken up with Sunday lunch which for once will be roughly at lunch time and preparing for A SPORTING CHANCE tomorrow night (not only reading, but also compering....wish me luck)
b) will run a few of the contenders by the family at said lunch. Completely unbiased as they've never read blog and unlikely to do so in the future. Come to think of it, only one of them has read my novel and the one that did said, and I quote, that it was 'surprisingly good'. (Excellent example of why adverbs should be avoided.)
I need help.
I've written elsewhere that titles are tricky things, hard to get right. The best ones seem to come in a lightening moment of inspiration. I've chickened out with this blog - first calling it the deeply unimaginative Twenty Ten and then deciding that I did probably quite like writing it and was in for the long haul. Fearing that the title would make even less sense in Twenty Eleven, Twenty Twelve etc etc I plumped on Bridget Whelan....I said I needed help.
Ok, so here's the competition.
Think of a title that suits the content and that would encourage writers and would-be writers and casual surfers - someone like you perhaps - to visit on the off chance.
Prize - there has to be a prize. Drum beat. Fanfare. A copy of A GOOD CONFESSION sent to your address (as long as it is somewhere in the British Isles).
Deadline - there has to be one of those as well. September 1st 2010.
That's a whole month to come up with a few words.
You can post your suggestion here as a comment or if you would rather not expose it to public scrutiny straightaway email me at softrain AT ntlworld.com. Put the word title in the subject line.
Think of it as an act of charity....
Just to recap - it's open to anyone with a bright idea but I can only send the fantastic prize to an address in England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
THANKS!
THIS FALL . . . EVERYTHING CHANGES.
MORE THAN 5 MILLION COPIES OF
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID: THE UGLY TRUTH,
BOOK 5 IN THE BLOCKBUSTER SERIES BY JEFF KINNEY,
TO BE PRINTED AND DISTRIBUTED BY AMULET BOOKS.
NATIONAL LAYDOWN IS TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2010
FIRST-EVER BOX SET OFFERS NEW CONTENT FOR FANS
New York, NY, July 29, 2010—Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams, reveals today in a major press announcement the title, first-printing quantity, and cover of the fifth Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. The Ugly Truth will have the largest first printing to date of any title in the series, with more than 5 million copies, making it one of the largest publishing releases of 2010 when it goes on sale Tuesday, November 9. The cover is purple, following the red, blue, green, and yellow of the first four #1 bestselling books, which are available together for the first time this September in the Diary of a Wimpy Kid Box of Books, which features an original Rowley Jefferson cartoon. The Ugly Truth follows the sales and publicity momentum of the #1 bestseller The Wimpy Kid Movie Diary, a nonfiction book by Jeff Kinney published to coincide with the March 2010 release of the feature movie version of the first Wimpy Kid book. The Ugly Truth is a pivotal installment in the s
Titles are hard. A few, rare times they drop from the sky before the writing begins, but usually they are the result of a mind changing, cringe making, brain storming process that ends in choosing the one you dislike least...
I wonder what discussions Mandelson had with his publishers before coming up with the title for his autobiography The Third Man. It is taken, of course, from Graham Greene's story and today Boyd Tonkin writing in The Independent said that he wasn't sure why the politician...
"chooses on the cover of his testimony to recall a film and novella dominated by a shadowy crook who makes little children die in agony thanks to his trade in toxic remedies."
Here's my pick of political autobiography titles (and inclusion has absolutely nothing to do with the views expressed within...).
1) Free Radical by Vince Cable (Always like witty, pithy puns but time has a way of putting a new twist on them...)
2) Climbing the Bookshelves by Shirley Williams
3) I'm Not the Only One George Galloway borrowing a line from John Lennon's Imagine.
4) Mr Galloway goes to Washington - I haven't looked it up but I presume that's from the 30s Gary Cooper film Mr Dee Goes to Washington. Saw it on TV as a child - the little guy taking the big guys on and winning...lip trembling, heart thumping stuff...
5) Choose your Weapons...what a brave spit-in-your-eye challenge ...disappointed to find it isn't Douglas Hurd's autobiography, but the title of his history of 200 years of British foreign secretaries. He called his autobiography Memoirs. That's not really trying...
6) Let the People Decide by left wing Labour MP by Dennis Canavan
7) In My Own Time by Jeremy Thorpe because it doesn't even hint at the Liberal leader's scandal ridden secret life....
Did Charlie Haughey, the former Irish taoiseach, ever write his autobiography?
Haven'been able to find one but I've discovered that Aongus Collins has written his cartoon biography. The respected historian T. Ryle Dwyer has written the biography of two taoiseachs: Jack Lynch and Charlie. Jack's is called Nice Fellow and Charlie's...Short Fellow. Ouch!
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Have fun while you are gone! If you need help with the typestting or ebook conversion, let me know. :)