Essential Element 5: Help Readers Find Your Author Website
Help Readers Find your Author Website is part five of the Essential Elements of an Effective Author Website series.
Picture this: A golden retriever, lying on the floor next to your chair, hears a soft bang. He looks up, tilts his head and focuses on the sound. Will he have to leap into action or can he put his head back down on the floor and go to sleep?
Google is a little like that golden retriever. Every so often it tilts its digital head and listens for anything coming from your website.
If Google detects something new they leap into action, retrieving information, building new links, adding your fresh content to their search engine, and bumping up your ranking if they see the new information as useful.
If it sees the same thing that was there yesterday, or last week, or even last month, it puts its head back down and rests – no longer paying attention to your author website.
New content is the lifeblood of any website
This post is not to try and convince you to blog on a regular basis at your site. I personally think read more…
Essential Element 6: Does your website tell the story of you and your books?
We started this training on the Essential Elements of an Effective Author Website by comparing your website to a house. Let’s take a minute and go back to that analogy.
Picture yourself walking down a sunlit street, looking up a slight hill at a beautiful home. The front yard has several large, mature trees. There’s a magnificent flower bed to the left of the home, and there are flowering plants and vibrant shrubbery lining the walkway to the front door.
The view from the street is creating a story in your mind about the house and the people living inside it.
Your website does the same thing.
What story do you want your site to tell visitors about you and your books?
I’m not going to get into branding, type fonts and color selection in this post. What we are going to get into is being clear on what you want your site visitors to think about you and your books when they visit your site.
Do you write cozy mysteries featuring a pastry chef? Is that obvious to site visitors without going to your book page?
Maybe you write historical romance that takes place in Ireland. Better yet, maybe you write multiple series, but they all feature glamorous locations around the world.
Can you begin to picture the different ways these websites might present themselves to readers?
As authors, we want our sites to attract readers who enjoy reading the type of books we write, right?
In a world where 55% of website visitors click away in less than 15 seconds, you want to let them know immediately if your books are a good fit for their reading preferences.
Taglines
A great tagline combined with the right images can tell a story in less than a few seconds.
Here are a few of my favorite taglines, ranging from the clever to the short and simple that I’ve seen over the past few months:
Author Liz Magavuro (The Pawsitively Organic Mysteries)
Elizabeth Edmondson writes historical fiction, but her two-word tagline refers to her work as:
Barbara Freethy is more to the point with hers, but it quickly tells site visitors what she writes:
JF Penn is equally short and accurate with hers, which simply says:
In each of these examples, it’s easy for readers to know what the author writes within seconds of arriving on the website.
So what does your website tell visitors about you and your books? Can a potential reader figure out what you write within 15 seconds? If not, they may be gone.
This post concludes the Essential Elements of an Effective Author Website series. If you missed any of the lessons, you can find them here:
Lesson 1: Why you Should Have a Separate Webpage for Each of Your Books.
Lesson 2: The Four Most Important Elements for your About Page
Lesson 3: Making the Most of your Contact Page
Lesson 4: Using your Website to Build Your Email List
Lesson 5: The importance of fresh content on your site
Lesson 6: Telling the story of you and your books (this post)
If you’d like to download the entire series as an e-book, that will be available soon. You can signup to receive a free copy the minute it becomes available by clicking the button below.
Creative Commons image by Hans
Essential Element 4: Using your website to build your email list
If you’re a regular listener to The Author Biz podcast, you know that I and most of my guests believe an author’s email list is one of their most valuable business assets.
One excellent way to grow your email list is by actively encouraging your website visitors to sign up.
Here’s a simple two-step process to encourage people to sign up to your email list from your website: read more…
Essential Element 3: Making the Most of Your Contact Page
Making the most of your Contact Page is part three of the Essential Elements of an Effective Author Website series.
Quick – you’re an author with a new book coming out and a radio station wants to contact you to schedule an interview about your book.
How do they reach you?
Easy answer, right? They go to the Contact Page on your website. Well, not always.
Here’s a real life example of this that I experienced a few weeks ago. I saw that an author who’s work I admire had a new crime novel coming out in six weeks. Of course, I wanted to have her on CrimeFiction.FM, so I go to the website and click on the Contact page.
Oh No – Not the contact form!
The dreaded email form. You know the form – Enter your name, email address and a message and I’ll get right back to you. That form?
So, I enter my name, email address, and the interview request, and then I wait.
After a week, I wonder if the author got the message. Should I try again? No, I don’t like being a pest. I’ll give it another week.
Another week goes by, and I’ve totally forgotten about following up.
A third week goes by, and I get an email:
Hi – Ms. Big Time Author would be happy to be on your show to discuss her new book. Her email address is X.
Great – except that I’ve already booked the two weeks surrounding her book. So, I’m unable to interview this author.
I understand why some authors use those forms, but my experience with them is that somewhere over half those messages are never responded to, even three weeks later.
(If you’re wondering why someone would use a form rather than just including their email address on the page, it may be the fear of being overwhelmed with email. They create the form rather than expose an email address. The form often directs email to an address that’s rarely checked. Of course, it may also be a website default, which can be changed.)
So, unless your books routinely land you on the New York Times bestseller list, and you’ve got people who handle your email, don’t use an email form on your Contact page.
Who visits your contact page?
1. Readers and fans who want to open a dialogue with you. read more…
Essential Element 2: The Four Most Important Elements for your About Page
The Four Most Important Elements for your About Page is part two of the Essential Elements of an Effective Author Website series.
Is the About Page on your author website doing all the work it should for you?
Does the photo you have help to tell readers who you are? How about your bio? Is it as dry as a stale cracker or does it give readers a glimpse into who you are and what you write?
Every element of your website is an opportunity create or enhance your relationship with readers and potential readers by helping them to understand who you are as an author.
What Should your Author About Page Include?
Before we get into detail, there are a few elements that your About page should include. Let’s be sure you have each item that applies: read more…
Essential Element 1: Why you Should Have a Separate Web Page for each of your Books
Why you Should Have a Separate Web Page for each of your Books is part one of the Essential Elements of an Effective Author Website series.
Which website ranks the highest when readers search for your book?
For many authors, it’s Amazon, or maybe Goodreads.
Some of you may be saying that’s great. My reader can go directly to Amazon and buy the book. That’s what I want, right?
Well, yes and no.
Yes, we want readers to buy the book — that’s a given. But not everyone is an Amazon customer. How hard to you want those readers to have to work to find your book?
More importantly, If you’re sending your web search traffic to Amazon, you’re helping to cement the relationship between Amazon and your readers. Our goal as authors should be to build adirect link between the reader and ourselves. The best way to form a mutually beneficial relationship with your readers and fans is read more…
