Whether you plan to list your self-published books for sale on your own website or on a popular book-selling platform like Kindle or Kobo, one of the most important things you can do is increase your visibility, also known as the ability to discovery, from his online books.

While there is no way to optimize your actual book for search engines, you can optimize the pages your books are published on and the links pointing to those pages to channel more potential buyers and increase your exposure.

Before getting into the details, think about this simple truth …

The way we discover books has changed forever

Imagine walking into a bookstore and looking for a book on a specific topic.

You will most likely walk to the section of the store that has the type of book you are looking for. For example, a cookbook, science book, or literature book.

From there, you will peruse the bookshelf until you find a topic that is closest to the information you are looking for. It can be a cake baking cookbook, a science book on geology, or a literature book based on space age science fiction.

For all your time and effort, you will most likely end up with a book that meets your needs.

Now come back to reality for a moment and think about how you would use the Internet to do the same kind of book search.

Without an actual title already in mind, it is often very difficult to perfect the perfect book that fits the information you want.

On the other hand, if you learn and use the language of the internet and combine it with the way the average internet user searches for information, you can place each book you publish prominently in front of an audience that is more likely to be interested in your information. contents.

This language is known as search engine optimization.

What is search engine optimization?

Search engine optimization or SEO is the practice of altering a website or a single web page so that it is naturally more visible in a search engine’s results. These unpaid search engine positions are also known as “organic” search results.

The goal of every search engine optimization effort should be to get the pages that list your books and your buy links to appear as high as possible in search engines for certain keywords and phrases.

If you succeed, the result will be a gradual increase in exposure, interest, and eventually sales of your books.

How to use keywords to optimize your search for books

If your goal is to optimize your book listings for attention on search engine results pages, you’d better start thinking of keywords as internet currency.

A keyword or keyword phrase is any term that a search engine or potential reader types into the search box to find the information they are looking for.

Let’s say you’re a self-published author focusing on creating specialty cookbooks and your latest title is about creating flourless chocolate cakes and other gluten-free desserts.

Someone searching for your book may not know who you are or that you even have that cookbook available to buy online. What they do know is what kind of information they are looking for.

If this person uses the Google search bar, they can enter any of the following terms:

• Flourless Chocolate Cake Recipe

• Gluten free desserts

• Flourless dessert recipes

• Flourless cake

• Books on Gluten-Free Baking

• Cookbooks for flourless cakes

Google then uses these keywords to find related websites, books, and videos before returning web pages that provide information that most closely matches what the search engine is looking for.

If you’re not sure what kind of keywords to include on your pages, try using a keyword tool like the free one provided by Google or one of the many other options available.

This gives you an idea of ​​the types of words that search engines can enter to find information related to the areas of interest that you cover in your books.

The power of backlinks

In addition to on-page optimization for specific keywords and keyword phrases, getting backlinks from relevant and related websites is another key to increasing your book’s visibility in search engine results.

This is because Google and other search engines see them as a kind of endorsement of other websites.

With that said, it is important to remember that quality is much more important than quantity.

Having a link from a highly reputable and relevant website is worth a thousand links from a spammy website.

Legitimate ways to get backlinks include:

• Taking blog tours

• Writing articles for websites

• Share on social networks

• Blogging to attract new readers

The simple creation of relevant and valuable content attracts links because it is shared and collected by various media outlets by its fans.

The key is not to push things and create a bunch of artificial backlinks, but to make your content so interesting that the links come naturally. Over time, you will see an increase in search engine rankings for your book page and a subsequent increase in sales.

While doing things organically takes time and effort, the long-lasting results are worth it.

Blogging and search engine optimization

When it comes to SEO, blogging can be one of the most productive activities you can do to increase the amount of natural search engine traffic that hits your author’s website or on the pages featuring your book titles. .

Earlier, we mentioned how the average Internet user searches for the information they want to find online.

They type in a search term or phrase in the search bar and scroll through the results to see if they find a page that seems to reflect the type of content they want to read.

Blogging on a regular basis is a simple and easy way to keep your website up-to-date and up-to-date with relevant information that your fans and readers want to know about, as well as providing search engines with keyword pages that they can use to index. your pages and direct search engines to your website and book titles when they indicate an interest in certain topics.

Along with naturally occurring keywords and keyword phrases, blogs tend to attract the attention of interested visitors, leading to social sharing and SEO-boosting backlinks when pages are shared with others.

Blogs are also a great way to bridge the gap for a complete stranger who comes to your sales page but isn’t sure whether or not they want to take a leap of faith and buy your book.

By giving them a taste of what you have to offer with review snippets, manuscript excerpts, and spreading a generous pinch of your true personality throughout your blog, your prospect gets to know you and your work better, which makes moving your book in his mind a perhaps a must-have, much easier.

The bottom line

Once you have written your manuscripts, you should never allow them to get lost in the vast ocean of the World Wide Web. By harnessing the power of search engine optimization, you can position your book titles and brand prominently in the minds of internet users, making them highly visible and easy to discover!