Now that you have a website, what are you going to do next? Optimize it!

In this digital age, it’s hard to imagine promoting your book and building your author brand without a professional website. If you don’t have a website to capture your target audience, you are missing out on huge opportunities.

If you do have a website, what initiatives do you take to make it better? Here are 10 ways you can do to optimize your website so you can get more visitors, as well as leads and sales:

10 Ways To Optimize Your Author Or Book Website banner
  1. Find the right keywords

The aim of keyword research is to identify and determine strategic words or phrases that users search for on Google and other major search engines. These are words and phrases that you want to rank for that are relevant to your book.

2. Audit your website

The aim of a website audit is to give you a better and deeper understanding of your website’s performance, such as traffic, sales, and conversions. It allows you to improve on areas where you are weak and to make certain adjustments to optimize your website further.

3. Optimize for on-page SEO

On-page (on-site) SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages to improve a website’s search engine rankings and earn more website traffic, as well as leads and new customers. It requires optimizing the content or improving the title tags and meta descriptions.

4. Optimize for off-page SEO

Off-page (off-site) SEO focuses on increasing your website’s authority through content creation and earning backlinks from other websites. It aims to drive organic traffic to your website and raise brand awareness through techniques that include link building, social media optimization, and forum posting.

5. Integrate Google Tools into your website

Google provides a range of free tools to help you drive more traffic to your website and achieve better rankings. Google Tool you can use includes Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Website Optimizer, and Keyword Research Tool.

6. Promote with social media

Social media is a great way to grow your online presence, build authority, and expand your reach. You can use different social media platformsto build a more authentic connection with your target audience and keep new and existing readers chatting about your book.

7. Publish relevant and fresh content

Publishing relevant and fresh content such as articles, blogs, infographics, and videos can help drive moretraffic to your website and rank it higher on the search engine results pages.You can publish new content not only on your website but also on your social media, as well as microsites and private blog networks.

8. Use high-quality graphics and photos

By addingimages to your website, you illustrate your content and provide your readers with helpful visuals. Make sure your images are high quality, right file sized (and not pixelated), responsive, and scalable, and have the appropriate file names, captions, alt text, and title texts.

9. Direct visitors with multiple call-to-actions

Never assume your visitors will know how to view or browse your website. You need to guide them through your page so they wouldn’t get confused. You should have clear call-to-actions (CTAs) throughout all of your webpages so your visitors know what exact steps to take on your pages.

10. Add a blog

Adding a blog is one of the best and easiest ways to optimize your website, retain your readers, and stay relevant in your niche. By blogging, you update your website regularly with new content and pages, thus helping it rank higher with SEO techniques versus other authors who rarely update their websites.

Discuss with a digital marketing expert today about what you can do to optimize your website.