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I've
written the book, now I'll write the publicity.
by
Nick Thorne
So you've written the book, self-published it, or got it published in
the traditional way. You have been told that writing your novel, or
non-fiction book, was all very well and good, but you simply must have
a website! The purpose of this will be to promote both the book and
you as the author. There are people who will gladly set up a website
for you, if you haven't the skill or inclination. But this is not the
end of it. Now how do you get, what the web people call, traffic to
your site? In other words you need to encourage people to visit your
website.
You can try to follow the rules of the likes of Google, Yahoo! And MSN
and have it optimised for search engines by including keywords in the
title, in the meta-tags, in the copy and have a certain keyword density...but
this is all starting to sound difficult. What is more it could take
months for your website to get listed.
You could use Pay Per Click, where you pay for advertising on the search
engines, but what about a free method of getting people to visit your
site? Well, there is a method of getting free advertising using the
very skills that hopefully you enjoy exercising...writing!
We are not talking about writing a novel here but various short articles
of approximately 300 to 600 words each. You are not going to get paid
for these and they should not be blatant adverts but at the end of each
you can include a resource box into which you can put your link directing
visitors back to your website. With the articles written you are then
able to submit them to various article sites that the search engines
are fond of and which have, what the technical people call, high page
rank or 'pr'. The extra benefit here is that other people go to these
article directories to find relevant copy to paste into their own websites,
or publish in ezines and the like. So why is this good for you? Well
they have to publish your article without changing it and that includes
the link in your resource box. More links pointing to your website should
mean more visitors and more sales of your book.
What, you may ask, makes for a good article? Well it must be relevant
to the website and the book you are promoting on that website. So your
articles should be about the same general subject, but can be from an
oblique angle. For example if your book is about a Victorian character
you could write some articles on the research that you did. If your
book is on a factual subject, then you could write some general articles
using information from your book. Perhaps you will craft the article
not to be as in-depth as the book that you are trying to sell; but it
should, none the less, give them good quality information that makes
them want to know more and so come and see your website to find out
how they can get hold or your book.
Your resource box should be written in the third person and needs to
be attractive to your reader so that it entices them to click the link.
You may, therefore, wish to steer clear of the straight forward: “J
Smith is the author of the novel “My Fantastic Novel” and
his website is at: http://www.yourwebsite.com”
Better still is to use a keyword as a link in the resources box as well
as the website address. For example if your keyword phrase is “developing
your first property” make this a hyper link in the resource box
that points to your website. The search engines will prefer it! For
example: Developing you first property
can be a nightmare, J Smith's book: Amateur Property Developer is available
from: http://www.YourWebsite.com
There are many places to post your article to including your own website
as an extra resource to make it interesting to the search engines who
are always looking for relevant interesting content. Make an article
index page and firstly list a copy of your articles on this for them
to find and see that you are the originator. Some experts advise that
it is good practice to change the wording on each article that you subsequently
list at each other site so that Google, who hate duplicate content,
gives you credit for unique content. A writer should easily be able
to re-spin their piece so that it is more than 30% different each time.
Of the many article directories you will find that the following have
good page ranks in the 5 to 6 rating:
www.ezinearticles.com
www.GoArticles.com
www.ideamarketers.com
www.ArticleCity.com
www.iSnare.com
www.ArticleDashboard.com
For
more tips on writing and self-publishing your book
take a look at our course:
Write
Your Way To Freedom
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