If you’re a self-published author and your main goal is selling more books online, your biggest concern should be making sure that your books are as “discoverable” as possible.
In the internet marketing world discoverability is simply a way of measuring how visible your book is to your target audience. In other words, it is the number of opportunities created for each member of your target audience to eventually stumble upon your book.
This is particularly true if your potential prospects have absolutely no idea who you are and are not even aware of the fact that you have authored a book that they may be interested in reading.
When you are done with writing your book and are ready to move on to the equally important task of marketing it, your top priority should be to create as many opportunities as possible for your book offer to land squarely in the path of any individual who is a potential buyer.
Making your book discoverable means ensuring that every aspect of the content marketing you do to support the book selling project revolves around proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
That way, your future customers can potentially discover your book offers by simply searching for the kind of information or entertainment they want online.
Why Organic Search Engine Optimization Is Important
In order for would-be readers to buy your book two things must happen:
- They have to be aware that your book exists.
- They have to feel that the content of your book is worth parting with their well-earned cash.
Fortunately, if you use them correctly, the combination of Google and SEO are an indispensable resource for creating this type of situation relatively quickly and easily.
Consider this…
Every day, hundreds of millions of people fire up their computers and navigate to Google’s search bar for one reason, and one reason only.
To get answers.
Unlike with Amazon.com, where a visitor’s main goal is to browse and search for specific items to purchase, Google’s visitor’s biggest motivation is asking questions and finding practical solutions to problems that are on their minds.
With a whopping 91.64% percent of all online queries, Google has the lion’s share of potential customers who are eager to find the next best read online.
This means that your efforts are best spent adhering to the Google SEO practices that make them and their user base happy. Your goal is to help prospects find your book by making it as visible as possible in the eyes of Google and its searchers.
To achieve this goal, you must first work to make your content highly appealing to the search engine and then to the people who happen to find it. Always remember that both are extremely important and they are not mutually exclusive.
Although the internet has only been around for a little over twenty-five years it has forever changed the way that products are successfully marketed to the general public. This is particularly true when it comes to digital books.
- Push marketing involves using direct marketing tactics such as running television, print and pay per click ads and which many modern consumers consider both aggressive and invasive.
- Pull marketing involves providing prospects with a large quantity of useful and free information, which in turn encourages them to seek you out directly in order to learn more about your offer.
For book selling success, a pull marketing or organic SEO strategy is far more effective because it allows your customer to find you based on their own specific needs instead of you having to hunt them down and beat them over the head with your offer.
This strategy is also very beneficial because it does not require the level of financial investment that typically comes with adopting a push marketing strategy as well as generally resulting in happier and more loyal prospects.
The Role of Keywords in Google SEO
If you to choose to adopt a pull marketing strategy to promote and sell your books, simple text phrases and Google’s systems come together beautifully to make it happen.
Google’s algorithm is the medium through which its users receive highly relevant search results each time they run a query.
The key to making your search engine optimization efforts successful is learning how to “speak Google” by using targeted keywords to properly position your book organically in front of an audience that is eager to consume it.
Studies show that most internet users only focus on the first few search results and consider them to be the most relevant.
This means that in order to get more prospects into your stream of influence and to sell more of your books, your marketing content needs to, at the very least, appear on the first page of Google search results for any specific query.
Being in the first position is best, but anything in the top three is still very good and dramatically increases the chances of your book getting noticed.
However, as you slip further down the page the number of potential eyeballs decrease. And if your content ends up on page two, three or more, the discoverability of your book dwindles significantly.
When Google’s algorithm clearly understands what your book is all about, the chance of it presenting it as the premier solution to a searchers query increases exponentially. This is why proper keyword selection is very important.
How to Use Keywords to Optimize Content for Google Searches
Keywords are the currency of the world wide web.
When you choose them correctly, they make it much easier for Google’s algorithm to properly assess the relevance of your content. The right keywords also help your prospects to understand that your book is very likely to meet and exceed their expectations for the kind of content they are looking for.
The simple act of using a search engine to run queries is something that most of us generally take for granted. However, if harnessed correctly, it is an extremely powerful tool for book sellers because of the power it has to connect potential readers to book offers.
So, for example, if you have written a book that teaches how to grow vegetables in small spaces, your keyword selection for SEO may include some or all of the following phrases:
- Small vegetable gardening
- Apartment gardening
- Urban backyard gardening
- Roof top gardening
- Kitchen gardening
- Urban homesteading
- Balcony gardening
Weaving these and other similarly related phrases into the titles, descriptions and body of your promotional blog posts, articles and other mediums, signals Google to consider your content as it looks for relevant pages to return for a query in the search engine results.
Keep in mind that with keyword selection for optimization you also have to strike a delicate balance with providing interesting and alluring content that potential customers actually want to read.
The best way to achieve this is by learning how to use relevant keywords to create compelling content headlines.
For example, here are two potential titles you could give to articles that leads into your fictional book offer:
- Urban Homesteading: How to Grow a High-Yield, Organic Vegetable Garden in Less than 50 Square Feet
- Apartment Gardening for Beginners: 10 Simple Tips for Growing Delicious Vegetables in a Tiny Space
Using these examples, experiment with finding and using keywords phrases to SEO your book marketing content. The result will be more attention from potential readers and more sales of your books.
Leave a Reply