Nonfiction Book Reviews

After I published SEO for Book Blogs, I was surprised by the overwhelming response that I got from readers and fellow bloggers.  It appears that I am not the only one who has spent a lot of time lost and confused when it comes to SEO.  At times, it almost seems as if people believe that there is a “magical” component to SEO work, that it depends on luck and a smattering of pixel dust to have Google traffic find its way to your blog.

I am here to tell you that’s not true.  You don’t have to depend on luck, you don’t have to depend on magic, and you definitely don’t have to depend on pixie dust (although if you have some pixie dust, it probably wouldn’t hurt to sprinkle it over your computer. ;-))

Along with having people link to you using helpful keywords instead of “click here,” there are other great SEO tips you should try to include on your book blog.  Let’s start with the most helpful:

Your title for your site

It’s hard to think of anything that Google pays more attention to on your site than the title of it.  It figures (correctly) that you’re not going to name your site “Captain Underpants” if it’s really about the architecture of 15th century Europe.  (FYI, the same holds true for your URL, but I’m assuming that you have already started your blog and have a URL.  If you don’t, then of course try to pick a URL that has the keywords in it that you want to focus on.)

The title of this blog was originally Nonfiction Lover, but since that is not an SEO friendly title, I have since changed it to Nonfiction Book Reviews.  You can see this title above my header on the left side of the blog in large letters.

One thing I have seen lately that makes me cringe is when people have the title of their blog all shoved together, so it reads like this: NonfictionBookReviews.  That makes it much, much harder for Google to read.  Google can read parts of words and rank you for them, but it doesn’t like to do it and it will rank you lower for that phrase than if you had the words with spaces between them like normal.  So just don’t do it!

Your tagline for your site

Google pays almost as much attention to your tagline as it does your title. You’ll notice the tagline I picked for this site:

The stories of a part-time librarian mixed with nonfiction book reviews. Join in the fun!

I have highlighted the parts of my tagline that I intentionally chose for SEO purposes.  You want to know what’s even more SEO friendly?  “A blog about library stories and great nonfiction book reviews.”  But I just couldn’t make myself do it, so I stuck with what I have now.  It isn’t necessary to completely kill all creativity on your site (in fact, I strongly recommend against it!) but do try to reach a compromise between cutesy and SEO friendly.

Your header for your site

Although there are blog hosts that allow you to attach keywords to your header, Today isn’t one of them, and I couldn’t begin to tell you how to do it for a non-Today blog.  And in the case of all headers, Google can’t “see” or read your header - you could have anything and everything in your header, and Google wouldn’t have a clue.  There really isn’t a way to optimize a header.

So why am I mentioning it? Because your readers see your header and they automatically attach whatever name you put in it, with your blog. For example: If I had put the phrase “Nonfiction Lover” into my header, then people would see that name and think that’s the name of my site, even though the title of my blog says, “Nonfiction Book Reviews.” So pick any words that you put into your header carefully, because your best SEO efforts may be unraveled by what is in there.

The titles to your posts

Think your post titles are finally a good place to become cutesy? Sorry, but wasting the title of your post with something that is not SEO friendly makes that particular post much, much less likely to be ranked high by Google, and isn’t that the whole point of SEO work?

There is a book blogger here at Today (and I hope she doesn’t mind me using her as an example) but she named a book review post, “Reading in the Tub.” Cute - yes. SEO friendly - not in the slightest. Unless you’re a home improvement store, you shouldn’t be naming posts “tub” anything!

You’ll notice that all of my book review posts are named with the following pattern:

Book Review - “Name of Book: Subtitle for Book” by Name of Author

This will sometimes make for an ultra-long title (like Book Review - “Schuyler’s Monster: A Father’s Journey With His Wordless Daughter” by Robert Rummel-Hudson) but you know what? It gets the job done. It tells Google everything I want it to know:

• That this is a book review, so I can get the Google searches for that phrase.
• The title of the book.
• The subtitle of the book, which usually has gobs of helpful SEO info it.
• The author of the book.

Google doesn’t care how long a title is. It doesn’t read only the first five words and then stop after that.  Whatever you name your post, Google pays attention to it all, so throw everything but the kitchen sink in it.  And no bathtubs either.

::rimshot::

Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week.

The posts themselves

Now that you’ve gotten to the posts themselves, you think you can finally be cutesy, right?!?! Well, yes. BUT! (you knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?) only to a point.

I have heard the following, and it makes sense to me, although I cannot testify that it is 100% gospel truth like I can everything else so far. But since it makes sense to me, I’m going to go with it until proven otherwise:

Google figures that the first sentence of your post is going to tell the world what your post is about. Since it too is trying to figure out what your post is about, it’s going to pay attention to that first sentence with a little more enthusiasm than it does the rest of your post. So choose your first words carefully. In a good book review, I can manage to include the title and author of the book in the first sentence.  I don’t always do that though.

Also, try to use the title of the book several times throughout the post. Instead of saying “the book” or “this book” instead say, “Schuyler’s Monster.” Instead of “the author” say “Robert Rummel” or just “Rummel.” Don’t make it sound forced, and don’t stuff your post.  No one wants to read that.  Read through it and see if it sounds unnatural to you. If you’re unsure, grab a friend or spouse and read it outloud to them. You’ll usually be able to hear it fairly easily if it’s too much.

Another thing to try to incorporate into your posts: Link to your homepage towards the top of each of your posts. If another website links to a particular post on your site, then the link you placed in there to your main website helps “bleed” or lend the authority gained from the outside link up to your main site. When you link, try to use (as always) helpful keywords in that link.

Your categories

Go ahead and scroll down my blog. You’ll see in my left sidebar a listing of categories that stretches down most of the blog. I’ll be the first to admit it: My categories section is out of control. I never meant to have categories take over my blog like this - it’s like the kudzu vine in the South, seriously.

I have a love/hate relationship with my categories. I hate them because I have so darn many of them that it takes almost as much time to scroll through all of them and add the appropriate ones to my post as it does to write up the post itself. (An exaggeration, but honestly not much of one).

But I love categories because they bring in at least half of my traffic from Google, apart from the traffic I get from Google Images. Google seems to love and pay close attention to categories.

When you put the categories widget into your sidebar (which I absolutely STRONGLY encourage you to do!) do not use the option of making it a drop-down widget, where you have to select the arrow and pick a category from the drop-down list. This is very anti-SEO. It may look pretty, but it does nothing for you. Don’t do it.

To sum it all up, Google seems to absolutely adore categories, so if you’re using “Uncategorized” for all of your posts, the first step towards optimization on your site is to start using them! You’re missing out on some serious SEO goodness otherwise.

Speaking of SEO goodness…

Your sidebar(s)

Google doesn’t just look at the categories widget in your sidebar - it also sees and pays attention to the titles of your other widgets, and looks at what’s in those widgets. It thinks that if you think it’s important enough to put into your sidebar, then it’s important enough to pay attention to. So when you do things like name the title of your blogroll “Blogroll” you’re missing out on some (more) serious SEO goodness.

Break your blogroll into sections, and pick the names for each section carefully. “Other Book Review Blogs,” “Book Publisher’s Websites,” “Author’s Blogs,” are all SEO friendly names. “My Favs!” is not.

All other widgets are open to optimizing; I just wanted to mention the blogroll since that tends to be on most (all) blogs, and is usually very underutilized. I have even had Google pick up the names of my blogs in my blogroll on a results page, so it truly does pay attention to everything in there.

I am not saying that all of your widgets need to have an SEO friendly title and SEO friendly information. Sometimes that’s simply not possible. But take a look through your widgets and see if you can’t make a few tweaks here and there. Again, keep it natural. Don’t cram your sidebars with a lot of junk, just to try to rank higher. Google smells a rat if the ratio’s too high of your key phrase vs the rest of the words on your site.

Last but not least…

Google traffic vs Social traffic

I’m assuming that you’re trying to bring traffic to your site - that’s why you’re here, right? (It could just be because I am a stunningly funny and fantastic person, and you just can’t help wanting to be closer to me, I suppose…) You may look at my first post and this post, and think this looks like a lot of work, and wouldn’t it be easier to just get traffic from social networks like Digg, Reddit, Sphinn, and others?

Well, if what you mean by easier is “instantaneous,” then yes, social sites does bring in much faster traffic than Google and SEO work. But easier? No, I wouldn’t say so, not by a long shot.

Listen, I’ve done the social traffic gambit. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to bring in traffic from Reddit especially, and there is one thing that I’ve realized: Social traffic is the epitome of “easy come, easy go.” It is literally there one day and gone the next. Although I spent hours submitting various articles to Reddit several months ago, I get exactly zero traffic from Reddit today. The traffic came, the traffic went, and absolutely nothing is different on my site because of it. I didn’t even get a single comment out of the deal.

So what, you say. At least you got traffic, and traffic means ad revenue, right? Wrong again. I have heard the statistic (and I have seen nothing to contradict this) that you need 100 social traffic visitors to make the same amount of money you make from one single Google visit. 100 to 1 - that is a big deficit to make up. And it is something that you are constantly having to push and work hard to bring in.

Whereas if you do the SEO work right on your site, you only have to do it once, and Google will send you traffic from now until eternity for that post. You don’t have to do another blasted thing to that post - Google will do the work for you. It’s the ultimate in passive income.

Stop chasing the social traffic. Spend that time working on the SEO for your site, on gaining links from others sites to yours, and on posting quality posts on your site. You will see more long-term traffic and higher payouts from Google because of it, guaranteed.  And with less work overall.

Does it make me a hypocrite then to leave the social traffic buttons on my site as I do underneath each post? Nope! I figure that if someone else wants to submit my post to Digg or Reddit because they like it that much, and my post goes viral, I’ll take that traffic, and be thrilled to have it. But I am not going to try to force that traffic to come on my own.

I think I’ve covered everything. I am sure I will get more questions, and I will realize that I actually left half of the information out, but for now, I’m going to call this page good to go. 

Havs