Promoting Your Writing Web Site

In "Web Site Design Tips for Writers" you learned some guidelines about the basics of starting and finding a home for your web site. No matter how brilliantly your site is designed, getting visitors to it requires some tactics that are specialized to the online world. To drive traffic to your site, knowing the business of naming and optimizing it for the search engines so that your web site is easy to locate is what will allow your site to reach large numbers of online readers. Keywords What will make people race to your site faster than the speediest Internet connection? Keywords! These words and phrases indicate what your site is about and contain more authority than a novice can imagine. Suitable keywords will feature terms and words used in the text on your home page. Each subsequent page you create should have its own set of keywords. Overture.com has a feature where it will show you just how popular the keywords that you've chosen really are. This is updated on a monthly basis, but you can also find the week's most popular keywords. http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion Also, investigate http://www.nichebot.com What is your site all about? What words best describe your writing, preferred genre, hobbies, etc.? What words would a person use to find your web site? For example, if you are building a web site to show you have screenplays for sale, the term "screenplay" using the overture site listed above, you'll see that this term was searched 12,000+ times, followed by "screenplay writing" 3,100+ times. On a highly ranked site these terms will be used along with others containing variations such as: screenwriter, scriptwriter, scripts, TV/Film screenwriter, etc. Thinking like a potential viewer Hollywood insider, producer, potential writing partner, etc., is the key to keywords. Meta Tags Description When you accurately describe what is on each of your web pages in the meta tags description area on each page of your site, this one or two sentence description will help anyone who discovers it in a search engine. You are doing your viewer a favor and they will return it by stopping by for a visit. For that screenplay site, here is what you might add for the home page: "screenplays in action, drama, romance and horror genres for sale." Using descriptive keywords is what works. This comes to only 10 words, or 64 characters including spaces. Some search engines accept up to 250 characters, others will allow far less. Keeping it within 100 characters or about 15-20 words is recommended. Web Page Titles As a writer, you're used to titles. But they aren't just for books, articles, movies and royalty. When designing your site you'll be able to name each page so that online visitors will locate your home page or other pages you've created. What you call your web site is as important as what you name your literary masterpiece[s]. Be as descriptive as possible. You probably want your writing site to have the term "writing" or "writer" or "author" in the title. But you also want to be more specific - such as "screen writer," "technical writer," "novel writer," "novelist," and so on. The marked lack of understanding page titles has repeatedly shown up as I've seen web sites with "New Page" or "Page 2" appear along the top of my browser. The web designer didn't fathom the benefits he or she had in naming pages. Naming your pages will get you more online traffic. Alt Tags These little tidbits of information that are hidden from view are other ways to boost your search engine rankings. In the book 'Search Engine Optimization for Dummies' by Peter Kent, he writes: "You use the tag to insert images into Web pages. This tag can include the ALT= attribute, which means alternative text." You can see them on many sites when you hold your cursor over an image. Mr. Kent explains that originally these tags were used back in the good old days of dialup-only access and connections being so poky that by adding text to the image it adequately described what the viewer was unable to see. Also, these tags are spoken to the visually impaired, so inserting them is a mark of kindness. But, to be frank, the best reason to add those alt tags is to have the search engines read them and decide your site should be ranked even higher than if no alt tags were included in the image[s]. Don't add too many of them, just enough to be able to describe that photo of you as: "award winning novelist [your name] has new book on bestseller list" or something of that nature. Links It's not about having a virtual link farm on your web site; it's about attracting relevant links. If you want to keep your site within the mainstream and family-friendly sites, be careful of where you are linking. Many search engines and directories won't accept sites with adult themes, gambling sites, or anything advocating illegal activities, etc. So, try to keep it clean. Oftentimes you'll read about a site having a Google PR [PageRank] of a number from 0-10, with 10 being considered the best. When one has reached a page rank status of 3 or 4, the links manager or site owner, might not welcome newcomers. This would mean your site, as that's what someone with a brand new web site is - a 0 page rank. But all sites begin that way and here you're learning what Google looks for when it ranks pages so your PR can start moving up. PR is determined by many factors including links coming from 'other' sites to yours, longevity of site, quality of information and keywords found within the site, and the number of pages your site contains. In other words, Google's search engine [or any major or minor search engine or directory] will spot a 100-page site sooner than it will a single web page. Many web masters create a links page and add anything that comes along. That's not the best idea and Google doesn't list more than 100 links per page anyway. Others will separate their links page into subjects so that a gardening web site is grouped in an appropriate category, as would a financial site being with others within the same category. A better way to add links is to have them on appropriate pages that can be reached from your main page. For example, if you're designing a writing site that caters to children's books and have a page devoted to children's artwork, add links to that page for such related items as: classic children's stories, art education, art for kids, children's clothing, baby products, and other topics that are both closely and somewhat-closely related. This would be helpful for both you and the other company's site you are linking with. It will also ensure that your children's artwork page will get more visitors than if there were no links listed there. While it's advantageous to have others linking to you, this is more difficult to do when you're an unestablished online presence. But that is why the following three sections should be of assistance. Announce Your Web Site Analyze your site at http://www.sitereportcard.com Keep statistics on a weekly or monthly basis to monitor your site's progress. 1. Press Release - Writing a press release is a great way to increase your web site traffic and generate more awareness of your site. Make sure your press release conveys what your site is about and look at the writing tips section at each press release site as to glean information on how to write effective press releases. Your press release will be seen by more people, get your site put into the search engines faster, and you can follow the statistics and upload photos if you pay for the service. http://express-press-release.com http://www.free-press-release.com http://www.i-newswire.com http://www.openpr.com http://www.press-world.com http://www.prfree.com http://www.prleap.com http://www.prnuke.com http://www.prweb.com 2. Write Articles - Getting your web site noticed by writing articles is another effective method for announcing your web site's arrival. Not only do your articles establish online credibility, you should be able to get your words out there more easily than those with no understanding of what constitutes effective online words. Another huge advantage to writing articles is that links are pointed back to your site from larger, more highly ranked sites. http://www.articlealley.com http://www.articleblast.com http://www.articlecity.com http://www.articlesbeyondbetter.com http://www.authorarticles.com http://www.businesshighlight.org http://www.e-syndicate.net http://www.ezinearticles.com http://www.goarticles.com http://www.homebiz-direct.com/articleWriting.html http://www.homehighlight.org http://www.isnare.com http://morganarticlearchive.com http://www.searchwarp.com http://www.submityournewarticle.com http://www.womensarticles.com 3. Submit to Search Engines & Directories - This is a way to allow more than your immediate family and friends see your site. When providing information about your site to these directories, you will oftentimes have to include a reciprocal link on your site. There are paid search engines and directories that will get your web site indexed within a matter of days, but many of them will also do the same service, only taking weeks or month, for no charge. Here is a comprehensive one that will get you started: http://www.isedb.com/html/Web_Directories Web Rings Signing up with web rings can bring you more traffic. There are more than 2000 writers web sites alone on webring.com, so this is an excellent place to begin. Adding your site to a web ring requires basic knowledge and an administrator will first approve your site, a process that can take a few hours or longer, depending upon the size of the community. http://dir.webring.com/rw Once you have designed and optimized your site for your online audience, revel in the fact that you have accomplished this task and always be prepared to update and expand your web site. After all, you never know who might show up...