Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a foreign language to most authors. The goal of SEO is for your audience to easily find you by searching your name or your book title. Most people never search past the first page of results given by the search engine. So, you must optimize your search-ability within these search engines so someone actively looking for you and your work can find you.
Last year, when I signed my first publishing contract, no one knew who I was. My combined total audience was limited to my friends and family on social media. I needed to figure out how to convince Google that when someone searched my name, they were indeed looking for me. Oddly enough, Dacia is a popular car brand in Europe as well as a region in Romania (read this article about American versus European pronunciation of Dacia). Consequently, more people are shopping for cars in Europe than are looking for an unknown American author. I am also not the only author named Dacia, so attaching keywords like “Author Dacia” gave plenty of links—none to my pages, though.
My first step to figuring out how to rank high on Google’s algorithm: I purchased a book by Polly Letofsky called Buzz: Your Super Sticky Book Marketing Plan. I recommend this book to every author I know, seasoned and new. Letofsky talks about using keywords on your website and blog posts (if you blog). On sites like WordPress, there is a field for SEO description. This is where I started the uphill climb. For every single blog I posted after January 2018 (when I started my SEO mission) I included “Author Dacia M Arnold” in every single SEO description. Within three months, my links began to pop up when you searched variations of “Dacia Arnold,” “Dacia M Arnold,” and “Dacia Arnold Author,” but until the end of August, Dacia Maraini and Dacia Wilkinson dominated the “Author Dacia” and “Dacia Author” pages of Google. Now, my link is among these talented and accomplished women.
Second order of business: my book title, Apparent Power, needed to be searchable, but held a few more obstacles than my name. Until I had a book cover and Amazon listing, I had nothing to offer anyone in the way of searchable material for my upcoming book. Additionally, “Apparent Power” is a real electrical term that is searched nearly 2,000 times a day. I might also remind you, this is my debut novel and I am an otherwise unknown writer.
So why is it important for my title to come up on page one of Google? Until now, no one has ever needed or wanted to search for a fiction book by the same name as a popular electrical term. Imagine you are sitting in your favorite coffee spot and someone politely asks what you are working on. You tell them about your new book, and the premise is right up their alley. Unless you hand them a business card, chances are they might not remember your name (with a name like mine, they might never even figure out how to spell it), but they will most likely remember the name of your exciting new book. When they go to Google to find their next yummy read and are met with completely unrelated links, they might give up the search for your novel.
The day my debut novel was available on Amazon for presale, I DID NOT POST THE LINK!!! I went to my neighbors, family, friends, and followers on social media with a fun request. I announced my book was available, but I needed their help in boosting the signal. I asked them to Google the title alone, letting them know they would not find the link to my book. Then I asked them to Google the title of the book with another keyword like my first name, and when they saw the Amazon link to preorder my book, to click on it so Google would recognize they had found what they were originally looking for. So, from June 18th until August 25th, I asked a handful of people a couple of times to check back periodically and let me know on what page they found my novel by just searching the title. In a little over two months, I am excited to announce my novel, Apparent Power, is the third link Google suggests under a Wikipedia article on the actual electrical term.
What did this do to help me sell books? Well, folks, I have three more months to market my novel before it goes on sale. But many people who helped me get on the first page of Google also bought my book. My neighbors were excited to be a part of my marketing, my friends and family were eager to help in any way they could, and my followers also felt a sense of accomplishment with me. While my ultimate goal was to gain exposure and be easily found, it also resulted in a high number of preorders.
Being Google-able will only help you and your book sales. I will not say it is the single most important thing, but if your title is shared with, say, a popular music group, you will end up spending a lot of time sending people direct links to your book with little non-organic success.
As a new author, I am constantly searching for new angles of marketing. This idea to campaign Google searches was an original one. It was also free. If you have any other insights into unconventional marketing strategies, PLEASE leave a comment with your successes!
Interesting post, and thanks. My web guru installed a plugin called “Yoast” that helps make sure all my blog posts are optimized. It adds time to the process when it tells me what I should do better (and I don’t always listen; depends on what I consider to be significant in the post.) I only started doing this recently, and I don’t know whether it’s helped with SEO, but if I Google me, I fill up the first page. I don’t know what others will see.
Great! Thank you.