SEO strategies for Self-Publishing Companies in 2019

This 2019 is an exciting year for self-publishing companies. With its continuing market growth and developments online, book publishing and marketing strategies are constantly changing. Although there are major principles that remain the same, strategies evolve from time to time. One aspect is the Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Here are 9 items we think every SEO specialist should consider this 2019:

1. Make the Mobile move. Since the early part of 2018, Google began introducing the mobile-first index. While some already made steps to make sure that their website is mobile-friendly ahead of Google’s announcement, there are still many companies yet to fully embrace the era of mobile-first indexing. For self-publishing companies, it is important to make the site friendly to mobile devices whether it’s a tablet, a notebook or a mobile phone. The priority is to satisfy mobile users with a responsive design where images are clear and the content is easy to read. This said, creating short-form articles, as well as short meta titles, prove advantageous. With a smaller display, there should be no room for pop-ups and other unnecessary elements on the screen.
2. Technical SEO is still the future. Each year, various aspects of performing technical SEO is getting better with the help of so many user-friendly SEO tools now readily available. As long as one knows how to interpret and use the data provided, technical SEO should not be that complex. A complete SEO audit includes making sure that the site is mobile-friendly and correcting status code errors if there are any. Check any issues of your site indexing through Google Search Console. Another task related to site audit is checking the traffic statistics in Google Analytics. It is important to review your site content, its performance, and any duplicate title tags and meta descriptions. Lastly, check and fix any broken links on your site. Broken links contribute to bad user experience and poor rankings, especially for mobile visitors. Once you’ve crossed everything in your site audit checklist, you can now submit your XML sitemap to Google via Google Search Console.
3. Increase your site’s page speed. Checking your website speed is part of your site audit and ensuring a pleasant user experience. However, the reason why we are listing it as a separate item is that of its huge impact not only on site traffic but in conversions as well. More than half of all mobile site visitors abandon a page that takes more than 3 seconds to load. This is despite the fact that a landing page takes about 22 seconds to fully load. User experience can make or break a site and a slow page speed contributes a lot to the poor user experience. Minimizing file and image sizes, keeping plugins to a minimum, keeping redirects to a minimum, improve server response time, and the use of appropriate hosting solutions are some of the key elements that will help boost your page speed.

4. Maximize content marketing. The volume of data that flows through the Internet daily increases and you will have to contend with other pages not only within your target market but with hundreds of other interests available online. That thought alone should be more than enough motivation for you to intensify your content marketing strategy. For self-publishing companies, the task is not only to promote the site and its publishing services but also equally important is marketing its authors and their brand. ReadersMagnet Self-Publishing engages in extensive content marketing campaign through its comprehensive marketing services which include Online Brand Publicity, Dynamic Website, SEO through Blogging, Social Media Advertisement, Book Trailer, and Press Release Campaign. Through these marketing features, you can fill your resource hub with relevant and entertaining content and news articles that are related to your resource and interlink. With these contents you can also promote your articles and images on social media and other sharing sites. Also, you can update low trafficked content and underperforming pages.
5. Consistently provide fresh content. Providing fresh content does not necessarily mean posting new articles every day. Fresh content means new and relevant information that your target audience actually need. It also means posting timely articles about issues and concerns that affect and might interest your visitors. For self-publishing companies, providing fresh content simply means updated information about the authors, book promotion campaigns such as new book reviews, book signing events, tips or event updates like book fairs and radio book interviews.

6. Invest in advance keywords research. Producing is great, optimized content and generating established links is the recipe for ranking a keyword. But the key still is to make sure the keywords’ contextual relevance is aligned with the search queries. This is what makes advance keyword research a key component in any SEO campaign. As artificial intelligence and Google algorithm continuously evolves, ranking keywords are more important now than ever.

7. User Experience Checklist. For self-publishing companies, the user experience is paramount. This is not only for marketing their published authors and their brands but more importantly, in establishing the online reputation of their publishing enterprise and their marketing authority. According to Peter Morville, these are the factors that make up a good user experience:

Useful: Your content needs to be unique and satisfy a need.

Usable: Your website needs to be easy to use and navigate.

Desirable: Your design elements and brand should evoke emotion and appreciation.

Findable: Integrate design and navigation elements to make it easy for users to find what they need.

Accessible: Content needs to be accessible to everyone – including the 10 percent of the population with disabilities.

Credible: Your site needs to be trustworthy in order for users to believe you.

Valuable: Your site needs to provide value to the user in terms of experience and to the company in terms of positive ROI.

8. Quality Link Building. Link Building has always been a key factor in an overall SEO campaign. However, Google algorithm has evolved over the years. This 2019, it expected that machine reading and Google will appear to be more strict in terms of identifying links. While doing natural link building, it would also be wise generate link through Backlink Mining, Link Reclamation, and claiming unlinked mentions. The Skyscraper technique is also encouraged especially when producing original content for your blogs and pages. Broken link building can yield results but only if the outreach and content are highly targeted and provides value to its target audience. For self-publishing companies, there is also an opportunity to link their author sites to their own site and to other sites with similar interest. A self-published author can also guest blog to other sites. Guest blogging is another effective way to generate backlinks and build one’s reputation as a serious writer.

9. Embrace Schema to Boost SEO. The Schema Markup is the latest tools to SEO specialists.  A snippet is a result Google shows to the user in the search results. A rich snippet is different from a regular snippet. Rich snippets have a higher click-through rate and they help generate more traffic from those search results. This is because rich snippets offer more details such as corresponding image, ratings, and other related information making people click more on your results. With Schema Markup, it’s a lot easier to produce rich snippets and adding them to your webpage.

We hope that these strategies will serve as guiding principles in your SEO campaign and in your overall book marketing strategy this 2019. ReadersMagnet Self-Publishing Company employs the same principles through our various publishing and marketing services. Get in touch with us today and we’ll show you how it’s done. You can contact us at Office Number: (619) 354 2643 Toll Free Number: (800) 805 0762  or email us at info@readersmagnet.com