Author Website Tech: Search Engine Optimization

A Tale of Two Kates: Examples of Very Different, but Effective ABOUT Author Pages

The last, of course, is the title of the post I wrote on ABOUT pages. In writing titles, think about a long list of titles and what will make yours stand out.

Specific. Be specific. I reference two authors named Kate and that intrigues.

Numbers. Titles with numbers often get better results.

Adjectives. “creative, intriguing” will pull in more readers.

How To. Promising to explain something is important to readers, especially is you pull off the explanation well.

You know that comment you always get from editors on the rejection letters? “. . this manuscript just didn’t stand out in today’s crowded market. . .” Think of search engines as that crowded marketplace and your title as a log line or the briefest elevator pitch (you only get 100 characters or so). Make the title snappy.

And–after you’ve got everything set up and you want a couple more tasks to do, study SEO. The year I did that, I doubled my website’s traffic. It’s that important. But you’ve got time to get everything set up right before you have to stress out over this. Just know that SEO is in your future.