Monday, March 26, 2012

Optimize your website!

Is your website optimized? The way to find out is to go to Google Maps and call up your website. If in the top right hand corner after the name of the website there are question marks, then this site has not been verified yet. Somewhere on this page is place to submit for authorization. Once you do that Google will call you with a recorded message. You have to follow the directions from the message. Once your site is verified Google will send you a pin number. With that pin number return to this site within Google Maps and you can optimize your website.

The first step in optimizing your website is to make sure your URL is correct in every spot on this page. You can set five or six different categories on this page for your website. You can insert photos and check your reviews here.

Unfortunately you cannot delete bad reviews, but you can try to contact whomever left the bad review and rectify the situation and the person who placed the bad review can remove it!
Otherwise you have to just deal with it. The more reviews you get it pushes the older ones down. Then again Google has tools where potential customers can input (Show me all the one star reviews.) Then Google will display those. Deal with the Bad reviews when they arise.

For authors of books just ignore them!

A particular political columnist wrote a historical book which was not connected with his political column in anyway. His political opponents organized and started blasting his book with horrible reviews from the first day it was published without even reading it. The organized approach back fired because with such mass exposure coming out of the gates moved it up on the lists and attracted attention. Real readers were not going to accept all these bad reviews and started buying the book to judge for themselves, figuring something was there to attract so much attention. Those who actually read the book fought back with their true opinions on the book.

The overall result was a massive push of free publicity and pushing the book up on the SEO scales and making it top the good and bad lists. All the extra attention and resulting good sales caught the attention of Amazon who in turn offered the author a re-release book deal with their traditional publishing company.

Even with my books I’ve had several people miss construe that my second novel was a Young Adult book, and were shocked and stunned. Consequently they gave it horrible reviews. There is nothing I can do that is going to rectify their opinions of my book. I can’t contact them and say it was their own miss guided preconception of the book that gave them the wrong impression! Offering them a deal on another book from an author they feel is horrible is not going to smooth anything over. Let it go and forget it.

The other area I have had problems with is the people who are speed readers or skimmers trying to get through as many books as they can in the shortest amount of time as possible. They review the book and make statements about things that never even happened in the books! One person mentioned when so and so got their finger cut off it was excessive and horrible. Nobody in the book got their finger cut off! Somebody broke somebodies finger on purpose, which is bad and shocking, but they didn’t cut if off. The person who reviewed that book reviewed it within forty-eight hours of downloading the book. A book with one hundred and twenty-six thousand words roughly divided by forty-eight hours means you would have to read 2,625 words every hour for forty eight hours. I’m not saying it is impossible, but how does somebody enjoy and thoroughly comprehend a book when you read it that fast?

Long story short if you’re an author and get a bad review, let it go, move on, and keep writing. Somebody is going to get it, going to love it, and write a great review.

Back to SEO!

SEO software looks at how long your domain has been around, the volume of traffic, and the other domains connected with your site. Make sure your URL is the same on all of your domains.

The more places your URL is listed the more it moves it up in the Search Engine listings.

Make sure you put your URL on your signature for your e-mails. That way your putting you URL out there every time you send an E-mail.

Use Google alerts to notify you when your site is mentioned, or what might be being said on the web about you or your site. These can be filtered and notifications arranged to your preference.

Use Google tools to see who is searching for what.

Blogs

You can have a blog and connect it to your website! Google will look at the blog and website traffic together when they are connected which will contribute to it moving up in the ratings for Search Engine Optimization.

Mobile devices

Realize your site may be viewed on a computer or mobile device and the two will not look the same. Check and see what your site looks like on a mobile device. You may need to have a mobile Website Design made and when a person is on a mobile device have it directed to that site instead of the computer version.

This is the end of what I learned from the class on Website site design and SEO. It was focused to show the group the importance of a properly designed website, what you can do with a website, and to solicit business in designing peoples websites.

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