Thursday, July 09, 2009

Internet Marketing

More and more authors are turning to Internet marketing for their books. They are doing virtual book tours, blogs, maintaining Web sites, and whatever else they can do to increase visibility on the Web.

This is all well and good, but according to Don McCauley at Free Publicity Group, many authors miss a major component of all this which is making sure that they are consistantly positioned high in search engines.

Some key ideas that he covers in his article are:

1. Over 70% of the population now PREFERS to get their buying information from the engines.
2. However, they do not sit around and wait to get hit with a commercial or an ad. When they go to the Internet, they have ALREADY DECIDED what they might be looking for and intend to purchase
3. They will look for that item using search terms
4. They will only purchase what they are made aware of through these engines
5. If you are not there - for a GENERIC SEARCH TERM, you will be invisible

Remember - your buyers will not Google your name. They will not Google your company name. They will not Google your brand. They will, however, Google words like 'book' or 'kids toys' or some other very generic set of terms.

That's why it is important to use the right keywords and labels on all that we post on the Internet. Anyone have any suggestions as to what has worked well in getting good search engine placement?

2 comments:

Helen Ginger said...

I haven't a clue what words would get you good search engine placement. I would like to know though!

Helen
Straight From Hel

Maryannwrites said...

The specifics of what words would work for writers seemed to be missing from his article, but I did figure out he meant that people would look for things as opposed to names. For instance, on the Blood Red Pencil, we always use keywords such as writing, editing, etc. Those are the words people will type into a search engine when looking for blogs related to writing.

When I post about my book, One Small Victory, some keywords I use are womens' fiction, suspense, grief issues, family relationships. The book deals with all, so they are appropriate keywords.