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Book online «Plug Your Book! by Steve Weber (i can read book club txt) 📖». Author Steve Weber



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your site be added. To request indexing by the search engines, go to:

Google: #http://Google.com/ addurl.html#

MSN: #http://Search.MSN.com/ docs/submit.aspx#

Yahoo: #http://Search.Yahoo. com/info/submit.html#

Another way to get your site included in the search engines is to have at least one incoming link from another site that's already been indexed by search engines. The next time Google and other search engines crawl the other site, they'll follow the link to yours.

The essential ingredients for a high-ranking site change periodically. Many bloggers and Webmasters waste time and money chasing the "perfect" formula for getting to the top of search results, and then must start over when Google changes the way it evaluates Web pages. Rather than spending lots of time trying to game the system, you can better spend your time adding valuable content to your site.

Keyword density

One effective way to make your content more visible with search engines is keyword density. Let's imagine you're writing a blog post about how to wax a car in 30 minutes. You might write the title: "Waxing your car in less than 30 minutes: Here's how." This way, the most important words, waxing and car, appear at the beginning of the title. Your first sentence might be, "Waxing your car can be a time-consuming chore, but here's how to get it done fast." This reinforces your keywords. Repeating them again will enhance your keyword density and ensure your post ranks high in searches for those keywords.

Be consistent with word choices to maintain keyword density. Let's imagine you have a page on your site devoted to antique Ford Thunderbird cars. Naturally, you'll want Thunderbird to appear several times on the page to rank high in search results for that keyword. So you'll want to keep using the word Thunderbird instead of slang or nicknames. The sentence "The 1969 'Bird was a stylish car" would dilute your keyword density.

Although keyword density makes it easier for your target audience to find you, don't overdo it. If you artificially jam the same keyword several times in each sentence, search engines will detect this and penalize you for "keyword stuffing."

Another way to get penalized with search engines is by participating in so-called "link farms." These are sites that trade or sell Web links, but it seldom works. The only links that will truly boost your site are from high-ranking sites with content similar to yours. So forget about buying links to boost your SEO. Simply produce good content for your audience, and the links and traffic will come naturally.

You've probably seen advertisements for consultants who promise to make your site No. 1 in the search engines within 30 days. Don't waste your money. Chances are, anyone who makes such promises is incompetent, a charlatan, or both.

Your most important links will be from sites in your niche. Links from crowded social sites like MySpace or discussion boards won't strengthen your site's rankings much, says Dave Taylor, author of _Growing Your Business with Google. _ "Theoretically all links are good, but I don't believe that links from jungles like MySpace are going to give you any real boost," Taylor says. "Those sites that are easy to get links from just aren't going to have the value of, say, a link from the home page of Stanford.edu or Wiley.com."

Google provides an excellent tutorial for optimizing your Web site:

#www.Google.com/Support/ Webmasters#

The length of your lease

Many factors influencing how much juice your Web site has are outside your immediate control. For example, if your domain is new--registered within the previous year--it will get short shrift in search results. Some experts call this the Google sandbox effect, meaning that new Web sites are given a probationary period.

Why would Google penalize new blogs and Web sites? Isn't a new blogger or Webmaster just as capable of producing valuable content? The answer is, newcomers are penalized to help the search engines deal with spam Web sites, a growing problem. Fly-by-night companies build spam sites using stolen content or machine-generated lists of keywords. The spammers sprinkle their sites with Google advertising and make a bit of money, at least until Google wises up and cuts off its ads. To limit their costs, the spammers register their domain for the minimum, one year--they don't want to pay in advance for a site they'll be abandoning soon. Google limits the traffic it sends to new sites to avoid helping these spammers make even more money.

How can you turn this to your advantage? By letting Google and the other search engines know your site isn't spam. Extend your domain registration several years into the future, instead of paying the one-year minimum. By paying your domain registration fees nine years in advance, you'll spend about $90 instead of the minimum $9 for one year. But the $90 investment can provide a big return. Bloggers and Webmasters report huge increases in search-engine traffic just weeks after extending their domain registration for multiple years, according to anecdotal reports.

Publishers Portal

Designed for independent publishers, this service provided by Dial-A-Book, Inc. displays chapter excerpts of your book in more than 1,000 library online public access catalogs and on these Web sites used by readers and book dealers:

Baker & Taylor, Title Source III

Barnes & Noble.com

Bowker, Books-in-Print Online

Bowker, Syndetics

Buy.com

EBSCO, NoveList/NextReads

Ingram, iPage

On-line Computer Center, WorldCat/FirstSearch

Publishers Portal costs $25 per book, and participating titles are added to Dial-A-Book's Chapter One database. To participate, send an e-mail to info@publishersportal.com or visit:

www.PublishersPortal.com Privacy policies

If you collect data from your Web site visitors, consider posting a disclaimer. Privacy policies explain how names, addresses, and other information is used or shared with third parties.

The Better Business Bureau provides this suggested outline for privacy policies:

#www.bbbonline.org/privacy/sample[underscore]privacy.asp#

Web site cardinal sins

Here are some of the most common ways author sites can be counterproductive:

� Insist the customer buy on your site. # Your site generates awareness of your book. The customer decides how to buy. You can make a suggestion, but if your goal is to sell as many books as possible, offer every buying option possible.

Sure, your profit margin may be higher if a reader buys directly from your site. But you'll probably lose more sales to people who just aren't comfortable buying from a stranger, or prefer buying at a retailer where they already have an account or perhaps can combine their shipments.

Selection is important to book buyers, so the best strategy for authors and publishers is to be visible everywhere and available through every possible retail channel. "You need to be channel-agnostic," says Bill Schubart, president of Resolution Inc., a consulting firm. "All of the power has moved from you, the publisher, to your customer, the readers. They will buy the book how, when and where they want. Your job is to make it easy and intuitive."

� Static Web sites. # Repeat exposure encourages sales, so your Web site must encourage repeat visits. Good static content can draw lots of traffic, but probably won't produce many book sales unless visitors return and are exposed to the book again. An easy way to add fresh content is by using a blog. � Offer no sample content. # Authorship and publishing is all about spreading your ideas. If you have a good book, your best advertising is your own writing. Offer your first chapter, table of contents, and index in a free PDF that visitors can download from your site. Selling on Amazon, beyond

Self-publishing authors whose titles aren't distributed through a trade publisher have three basic options for ensuring their books are available on Amazon:

Print on demand

Amazon Advantage

Amazon Marketplace

Print on demand

If your book is handled by a printer such as Lightning Source, it will automatically be available through Amazon and BarnesAndNoble.com. Also, Lightning Source titles are available through Ingram Book Co. and Baker & Taylor, the two primary U.S. book wholesalers.

For more information about print on demand, consult the Recommended Reading section of this book.

Amazon Advantage

Amazon Advantage is the company's inventory consignment program for small and midsize publishers.

With Advantage, publishers ship books to Amazon, which warehouses them and lists them for sale on the Web site. Amazon handles the orders, customer service, and shipping. Advantage members pay an annual fee of $29.99 and provide a 55 percent wholesale discount. In other words, if the full retail price of your book is $20, you'll receive $9 for each copy sold. For your previous month's sales, Amazon will deposit money into your checking account via electronic funds transfer.

Advantage has two major incentives for publishers:

It provides your book with the same exposure as titles from other publishers having wide distribution and big marketing budgets.

Amazon shows your title as available for "one-day shipping," which boosts sales.

You can apply online for the Advantage Program and submit your title for consideration. If approved, you'll list your book in Amazon's catalog, provide descriptive content, and ship books to an Amazon warehouse. When customers purchase your title, Amazon processes the order within 24 hours. Amazon tracks your inventory and sends e-mail requests for more copies according to customer demand.

If your title is enrolled in Advantage, it will also appear for sale on other Web sites such as Borders.com, Target.com, VirginMega.com and Waldenbooks.com.

Publishers must retain North American distribution rights to participate in Advantage, and your book must have a scannable barcode and valid ISBN.

Amazon Marketplace

Most publishers use a distributor to get books into the hands of retailers. Some small publishers and self-publishing authors prefer to handle sales fulfillment themselves, for a variety of reasons. Handling the shipping provides access to buyer information, giving publishers who sell a line of related books the ability to upsell and pitch new titles directly to those buyers. When bookstores or Amazon handle sales, the publisher doesn't know who's buying the books.

Anyone with a U.S. bank account can open an Amazon seller account to list copies of books for sale. One advantage of Marketplace is that Amazon handles payment collection. Funds are deposited to your bank account in about a week, and sellers receive a shipping credit to help cover shipping costs.

Sellers pay Amazon a 15 percent commission on Marketplace sales and miscellaneous fees of $1.23 and 99 cents per transaction. The 99-cent fee on each sale is waived, however, if you become an Amazon Pro-Merchant subscriber. If you sell more than 40 books per month, the subscription pays for itself. Having a Pro-Merchant subscription also provides access to bulk listing and inventory tools that can help automate your bookkeeping.

Catalog accuracy

Like Woody Allen once remarked about life, 80 percent of book sales success is "just showing up." The more information potential buyers know about your book, the more likely they are to buy it. Your book's detail page on Amazon is where readers make their buying decision. The address is:

#www.Amazon.com/gp/product/ISBN#

Replace the above letters ISBN with your book's ISBN digits.

Ensure your book's cover art is displayed on your book's Amazon product page. Despite the popular saying to the contrary, people do judge a book by its cover. It's amazing how many books on Amazon lack a cover image, something easily corrected by the publisher. Perception is everything: Shoppers who notice a missing cover image might assume the book isn't available. In a study of 20,000 titles where a missing cover image was replaced, sales rose an average of 60 percent, according to BarnesAndNoble.com.

Ensure your title's bibliographic data is displayed properly on Amazon at least once a week, including title, description, editorial reviews, format, number of pages, and other basic data. Most book sales occur on Amazon after a customer searches for keywords related

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