Good Keywords for Author SEO by Kayelle Allen @KayelleAllen #author #tips

Authors need good keywords for blog posts, books, marketing, even writing newsletters. SEO, which means Search Engine Optimization, is all about writing and content searchable by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. After all, if no one can find you, what good will it do to write material anyway? To be found, authors need good keywords and good SEO.
Included in this post is a shot of the Yoast SEO Wordpress plugin used on my personal site. I use this plugin on each post. This is one I used for a post called How to Leave A Review (which I'll mention again below).

A focus keyword.

For ex, a phrase that includes the genre, book or character name, or a descriptive phrase. On one of my posts, titled "How to Leave a Review" I used "leave a review" and repeated it in the title, url, H2 heading, and the body. By the time I'd finished it was there 13 times total. Anyone searching for info on how to leave one, when to leave one, where to leave one, etc. would be likely to find it.

Slug

The slug is what the words at the end of the url are called. Mine was leave-a-review (after the kayelleallen.com/ ) Making it the same as the focus word strengthens the SEO.

Meta Title / Meta Description

I use Wordpress, and a plugin called Yoast SEO allows me to choose the meta title and description. When you Google something, you know the words in bold that come up and show you a title? That's the meta title. The words beneath it are the meta description. If you can't specify, then Google (and other search engines) pick up the post title and about 150 characters of the first paragraph.

Yoast SEO shows a green line (meaning good) when a title is more than 54 characters but no more than 94 characters. For the meta description, use a minimum 120 characters but no more than 156 characters. Remember, if you don't have a program that will provide this info for search engines, write posts with this type of information right up front.

More SEO for Authors

Title and hashtags

I try to match the focus keyword and then research the best hashtags on https://ritetag.com/

H2 Header

Match your focus keyword somewhere on the page in an H2 heading.

Video

Because it owns YouTube, Google loves videos from there. Use the focus word in the description and/or header of that.

Call to action

Generally, I plan my call to action first, and then write the post to showcase that. I want people to leave a review of my book, so I pulled it in as examples in the entire post about how to leave a review. Then I asked if they had left one no matter who's or where, to share the link. It got a ton of views, but no comments. Typically, I get far more views than comments, so it wasn't a surprise.

Image alt tags

On my personal site, I highlight the title of the post and paste that into the alt tag line of each image in the post.

Featured Image

In Blogger, you usually see the first image when you post a url on Facebook or Twitter. With Wordpress, you can pick the exact image you want, even if it isn't in your actual post. When the meta title and description go up on Twitter, Facebook, Google, etc., that is the image that goes with it.

Other minor things to watch:

Use one category only. This is like the folder in the filing cabinet. It can only go in one at a time. Exception: On RLFblog, I use two categories when the author does an interview. One for the type of interview, and one for the type of book. This lets readers search for both.

Use keywords that are genre specific, book specific, topic oriented. Keep keywords simple so readers can easily click the tag and find everything in the topic. For ex, don't use the word book plus the word books. One or the other.

That's pretty much what I do. It's working very well.

If you use Wordpress, get the Yoast SEO for Wordpress plugin. It will teach you these very things. If you do them, your article is going to be much more findable by search engines. Use the checklist, and write good content that contains information people want to find. It's that simple.

About Kayelle Allen

Kayelle Allen is the founder of Marketing for Romance Writers. She writes Sci Fi with misbehaving robots, mythic heroes, role playing immortal gamers, and warriors who purr. She's a US Navy veteran and has been married so long she's tenured.

https://kayelleallen.com
Twitter https://twitter.com/kayelleallen
Facebook https://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author
Join the Romance Lives Forever Reader Group Download four free books and get news about books coming soon. You can unsubscribe at any time.

A #RetweetParty at #MFRWauthor and #MFRWorg - Find New Authors

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg

Once the tweet has been posted, click the ... (three dots) in the right hand corner.

This will give you the option to copy the link to the tweet. Copy the link and put it in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until Wednesday of the same week.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of the month.  Retweet everyone on the list.

Also in an effort to help people find tweets to share of yours, click the ... (three dots) again and pin your tweet to your profile page. This will give you an easy way to find and count how many people retweeted your post.

Don't forget the Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link and share everyone's post on Twitter.

4. Click the G+ symbol on the tweet so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

5. No more than 3 hashtags in a post. Any more than this and Twitter might believe it is spam.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Writing contemporary romance, Tina Gayle enjoys wring stories that has strong women fiction elements as well as touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created storied to help put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dreams. 
Find her at www.tinagayle.net  or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

Join the Fun Retweet with #MFRWauthor and #MFRWorg

For this month's Retweet Day on Twitter, we'd like to invite all Marketing for Romance Writers to set up tweets for their books.

Go into Twitter and create a tweet. Make sure to use #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg

Once the tweet has been posted, click the ... (three dots) in the right hand corner.

This will give you the option to (copy link to tweet). Copy the link and put it in the comment section of this post.

Remember to visit the blog on Second Monday of the month. You can post your tweet until Wednesday of the same week.

Retweet Day is on the second Wednesday of the month and retweet everyone on the list.

Also in an effort to help people find tweets to share of yours, click the ... (three dots) again and pin your tweet to your profile page. This will give you an easy way to find and count how many people retweeted your post.

Don't forget the Rules

1. Have #MFRWauthor or #MFRWorg in the tweet. (This retweet day is to promote each other and our group.)

2. Do not use profanity or sexual explicit graphics. Keep it for all age groups.

3. Return on Retweet Day and click each link and share everyone's post on Twitter.

4. Click the G+ symbol on the tweet so you can see where you left off, and to add a little more visibility to the post.

5. No more than 3 hashtags in a post. Any more than this and Twitter might believe it is spam.

Here's to a great day of retweets,

Tina Gayle

Writing contemporary romance, Tina Gayle enjoys wring stories that has strong women fiction elements as well as touch the heart. Her writing started at a young age when she created storied to help put herself to sleep. Now, she spends her days living her dreams. 
Find her at www.tinagayle.net  or pick up her free read at https://www.instafreebie.com/free/EwL6x

10 Reasons Why Not to Read Romance @kayelleallen #humor #romance #MFRWauthor

After careful consideration, and much placing of tongue in cheek -- no, not French kissing, get your mind out of the gutter -- I have decided that Romance books are not good for me and have decided to give them up. (yeah, right!) Here are ten reasons why.

1. Reading Romance might lead women to believe men can be more sensitive and caring, and this unrealistic expectation could lead to unhappiness. I might think that I could find a perfect love and have a happily ever after, and that isn't realistic. Just ask a psychiatrist.
2. In fact, living happily ever after probably isn't good for the economy. You wouldn't need anti-anxiety medication or drugs for depression, and since this is a huge market in the United States, living happily ever after could actually cause a loss of jobs in the pharmaceutical industry.
3. Realism is better for the world. The sooner we face the fact that life is tough, the better we can deal with it. Best not to get your hopes up.
4. Women are in danger when reading these books. I read that "...marriage therapists caution that women can become as dangerously unbalanced by these books’ entrancing but distorted messages as men can be by the distorted messages of pornography." (Shaunti Feldhahn quoting another source)
5. If I read Romance novels I might end up being dumb. According to at least one blogger, these kinds of novels are children's stories with adult themes, and don't deserve any real attention anyway. They are not "true literature." (referenced tongue in cheek by Leia Shaw, on Susan Hanniford Crowley's blog)
6. Romance books about ménage partners, same sex partners, and other non-one woman/one man Romances might destroy the fabric of America. I mean gee, aren't those kinds of stories somehow wrong? (don't look at the books I write, by the way. Just go with it. *cough*)
7. Women have better things to do than sit around reading Romance books. There are kitchens to clean, floors to scrub, and there is laundry to be done. In fact, reading anything other than cookbooks or articles about child-rearing and being a good wife is probably just a waste of a woman's time.
8. Taking a Romance novel to the beach to read might lead me to make bad choices. (Eryn Brown, LA Times quoting Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care)
9. Hunky male models on the cover of Romance novels might make me less than satisfied with my own husband. I might be unable to differentiate between a photo of a man on the cover of a novel and a real man who's sitting beside me.
10. While we're talking about hunky male models, looking at the covers of Romance books with hot models on them might cause me to engage in lust. *crickets chirping* Okay, you got me. That one's true!

I hope no one has taken any of this seriously. Please do not write letters, folks. This is humor, okay? Thank you. :) So... do YOU think Romance is bad for you? Please tell me about it in the comments.

---

Kayelle Allen is a a best-selling American author. Her unstoppable heroes and heroines include contemporary every day folk, role-playing immortal gamers, futuristic covert agents, and warriors who purr. When you're immortal, Romance Lives Forever.
https://kayelleallen.com
Join the Romance Lives Forever Reader Group Download four free books and get news about books coming soon. You can unsubscribe at any time.

When We Self Sabotage #MFRWAuthor

I met her in the Sprout's parking lot, the Summer sun blasting down on me. Intense heat and I are not the best of friends but I would face even worse for what she was bringing me. My heart beat harder as

 I took the package, covered in a plain brown bag, end stapled shut. At last, I could satisfy the craving she had created in me.
Mushrooms, folks...what the heck did you think I was blathering on about? Oyster mushrooms, to be precise. So much flavor, with such an amazing texture. This was the second bag she'd delivered, and this time she said the grower was happy to keep me supplied if I would just blog about them, get the word out among my various contacts.
Well...yeah of course I would! Share recipes? You betcha. Just send me the contact information...address of the farm, the website, the Facebook page. In preparation I took pictures of my bounty, and of some of the ways I used it (did you know good mushrooms make amazing hash browns? Seriously!)
My friend gave me a business name, and I turned to my good friend Google. To find...nothing.
Not one thing about this person, this farm. Heck I couldn't even bring up the farm address. I knew they had to exist, I had the proof in my fridge. Well what was left of the proof, anyway, after my 'shroom binge. Mmmmm.
Eventually my friend did get in touch with the farm owner, who said she'd have something up soon and was I able to get the word out? Well, not really since, except for the fungilicous 'shrooms there was no word to get out. When that information is available I will definitely swing into action. I've already primed my friends to descend up her for their own oyster mushrooms.
These people had a fabulous product but they were sabotaging their business.

Pretty picture to break up the text

How often do we do that to ourselves? How often do we have a fairly successful book release, or, heck, any book release, and we're caught flat footed without sufficient information about us, our other books (current or future) or any information about us which might attract potential readers. Yeah I know, we writers are a solitary sort. If we wanted to interact with people we wouldn't have selected such a solitary occupation.
When we find out people want to KNOW us we get that deer in the headlights feeling. However, unless we want to write books for giveaway, we need to get ourselves OUT THERE. That means a website, a blog, a Facebook or Twitter or whatever presence. We don't want to be winking in the dark, do we?
Confession time, I have my ups and downs about doing this for myself but I'm trying to overcome that problem. Resistance is, after all, futile! And with MFRW's own guru (AKA Kayelle Allen) we have no excuse, do we?

So I'll stick in a bit of promo for myself. The second Stormhaven book, A Question of Faith, is out and the third, A Questions of Trust, is well underway.
Stormhaven is a ranch in northern New Mexico that welcomes veterans not quite ready to move back into society. My heroes have put others first for so long, they've begun to think they don't deserve their own happiness.
Silly guys, they're actually just waiting for their perfect mate!
I'm available through Black Opal Books , on Amazon, and at Mona's Blog

When not clandestinely acquiring mushrooms or pounding the keyboard, Mona helps monitor the MFRW discussion group. Yeah, she's the one who begs you to PLEASE trim and remember to promote your fellow writers, not yourselves. Which makes for a stronger writing community, don't you think?