September 13, 2021– We’re talking about continuing education for authors this month, and I hope you’re learning about the importance of brushing up on your skills and seeking continual improvement in your craft. Today I’m giving you some tips on social media marketing for authors that I’ve learned over the years from some of the many courses that I’ve taken. Let’s dig into Search Engine Optimization for authors:
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) aims to draw your qualified target market to your website and turn them into customers. A strong foundation in your SEO helps direct traffic from your social media presence to your website/shopping page. Remember that you’re chasing profits, not popularity (which is social media’s main focus), or the number of fans, likes, or followers.
The number one thing to remember is that none of the SEO tactics will work if you don’t have excellent, engaging content that holds your audience’s attention.
Quick tip: Use standard search terms on social media profiles and use more rarely used terms on individual posts, photo captions, and updates.
SEO Terms
Organic search: The type of search results produced by a search engine’s own algorithm when indexing unpaid submissions.
Paid search: A submission fee has been paid to appear as sponsorships at the top of a search page (pay-per-click) ads in the right margin or the top of the list of search results.
Search engine marketing (SEM): Combines organic and paid search activities.
Search engine optimization (SEO): Is the process of tailoring websites, web pages, and social media pages to get higher up on the list in search engine results. Ideally, you want to be on the first page in the number 1 spot.
Social media optimization: Same as above, but on social media profiles and postings.
Spiders, crawlers, bots (robots): Automated programs used by search engines to visit websites and index their content.
Top Tip: Focus on the top search engines (there are only 2), Google and Bing. Ignore the ridiculous emails you get regarding submissions to 3,000 search engines; the top 2 are the only ones that matter, and when you submit to Bing, you’re also listed on Yahoo.
The Stats: 92.3% of all searches in June 2020 were on Google. Google executed 13 times as many searches as Bing (its closest competition). The remaining search engines combined accounted for 6.7% of searches. Primary search engines spider the web constantly.
- Google users are more likely to be male, while females use Bing more often.
- The search engines skew according to age. Users younger than 35 are more likely to use Google, while older ones are more likely to use Bing.
- Google users tend to search during work hours on weekdays, while Bing users search early mornings or weekends.
- Google users are night owls, most often searching from 8 pm to midnight, while Bing users are early birds with prime usage from 4 am to 7 am.
- Mobile searchers are more likely to use Google, while tablet searchers use Bing.
- Households with children and households with more than $75 thousand in household income are more likely to use Bing.
Don’t worry; we are all as surprised as you at the above information, and we fall into the group that is the exception to the rule. For the record, I’ve never used Bing a day in my life. Google for everything.
I quickly pulled our statistics for last week as a sample of how our customers found us:
50% of visitors to our site used Google
36% used Safari
26% used Safari in-app
15% used Yahoo
9% used Bing
Some interesting numbers for sure! And if you’re an author and not tracking this stuff, you should be! Data analysis is essential to your success because you can’t hit a target that you can’t see.