Guest Post: How to Get the Most out of SEO

The first in this series of Guests Posts comes from my new friend and fellow writer Elizabeth Cooper. Thankfully, for those of you who are tired of the topics I usually cover, she is writing about something totally new to this forum, SEO or Search Engine Optimization.

To find out more about Liz see her Google + page (here) or check out her blog (here).

HOW TO GET THE MOST OUT OF SEO

As writers and bloggers we want to use the Internet to share our life view with the world. Our words need to be heard, yearn to be acknowledged by those around us. One of the best ways to have your words discovered by new readers is using SEO. SEO or search engine optimization is a way of affecting viability of a website for organic viewers. Here are a few easy steps to increase your SEO.

1. Title

The title is the first thing your readers will see. The easiest way to write a good title is to use what how, why when, have numbers and use keywords. An example would be 5 Reasons Why you should be an Awesome Blogger. Some more keywords could include easy, fun, free or simple.

See Jeff Goins post on writing catchy titles: http://goinswriter.com/catchy-headlines/

2. Include links

Link back to your other work on the subject or great articles you've read about the same subject.

3. Keywords

Have the keywords that are in your title, also throughout your post. Title your pictures after your keywords. This will help your post to pop up during searches.

4. Post regularly

Have a posting schedule and sticking to it can do amazing work for SEO. The more content you have the more there is to view when searching.

5. Use a Plug In

There are some great plug ins that will do most of the SEO work for you. Our favorite is Yoast. All you have to do is type a few simple words and Yoast does all the heavy SEO lifting for you. See their site for more, www.yoast.com/Wordpress/plugins/SEO 

6. Create Categories

On most hosting sites there's an ability to create categories for your blogs. With Wordpress its a really simple action on your dashboard. Pick a few topics that you write about and make them into categories. 

Search engine optimization can seem overwhelming and difficult process, but with these simple steps, readers will be able to find your site with ease

I Used to be a Tsundoku-er (or is it Tsundoku-ist)

I don't necessarily find much to commend about the website "BuzzFeed." Usually there are the inane articles about pop culture or the image essays about how some star has changed over time. Just today one can find flotsam such as The Complete Evolution Of Kylie Jenner In Photos (here) (I'm not even sure I know who she is) or a video (here) of a fisherman in Brazil getting piranhas into a feeding frenzy (I would recommend the latter over the former if you are interested in pure spectacle).

However, every now and then it's possible to run across something interesting and today was such a day.

I've always loved the word "schadenfreude", and now thanks to the post 28 Beautiful Words The English Language Should Steal (here), I know that "mudita" is the opposite in that it means: "Taking delight in the happiness of others or vicarious joy." Who knew? (Probably lots of Germans).

Nevertheless, I've found several pearls in this post, among them, fernweh, meraki, gigil, but it is the following that I found most intriguing and perhaps useful in writing:

Komorebi - Japanese for sunlight filtering through trees.

Tsundoku - Japanese for the act of buying a book and leaving it unread, often piled together with other unread books.

Mamihlapinata - from Tierra Del Fuego, South America meaining the wordless look between two people who both desire something, yet are equally reluctant to initiate.

Jayus - Indonesian for a joke so poorly told an unfunny you can't help but laugh.

But I would bet it's Goya, from Urdu, Pakistan, meaning the suspension of disbelief that occurs in good storytelling; a story that feels like reality, that most anyone who reads this blog would most want to attain.

Love to Know More

Wouldn't  you love to know more?

Since the re-release of my books with the new covers (quite pleased about those, see full cover below), I have had several folks purchase the books and one new review on my first novel, Toe the Line (see here), the story that takes place in Seattle and deals with a murder mystery around a triathlete.

The latest review is from "musiclover" who writes:

I really enjoyed this book. It kept me guessing the entire time. The ending was a little abrupt but it was ok anyway.

Ah man! I want to know what she found abrupt about the ending. Did she need more exposition? More details? More denouement? What?

When I was a youngster I loved reading Stephen King novels. I hated how long and drawn out his endings were. The Stand, IT, I think even Salem's Lot, all of them had such horrible, almost unendurably long endings. I just wanted it over by the time I got to those final few pages. I remember deliberately trying to be precise in my writing in the end of Toe the Line. I didn't want people to be bored. I wanted it to be a climax to the end that came in a whoosh.

I would love to talk to musiclover about her thoughts.

Still she gave me a 4-star review. I'll take a 4-star review. Toe the Line has gotten four 5-star reviews, eight 4-star reviews, and four 3-star reviews. As long as she gives me 4-star or 5-star reviews she can think my endings are abrupt.

I think what I will do is track down ole musiclover and see what she thought was so abrupt. Could be an interesting exercise.

Actually My Favorite May Not Be The Best On The List

This list (here) from Arika Okrent found on the Mental Floss website from April 5th, 2013 shows all of the lines for harsh, not made for television movies, sanitized to be shown to the masses.

Does it have anything to do with writing? Maybe not directly, but it does have a lot to do with poor writing. Seriously, no one could think of anything better for Walter to say when he says, "This is what happens Larry when you fuck a stranger in the ass" than:

Then, since he's ranting as he says it, the writer gets a second chance and tries "do you see what happens when
you fix a stranger scrambled eggs?"

What's disturbing is that as much as I like this one, for the absurdity of it, for who is saying it, and for the movie itself, it's maybe not quite as funny as the one for Snakes on a Plane.

As If There Was Any Doubt

The other day I made mention of the first line from The Fourth Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders (see here).

I asked why the line read that the chain mail sky was raveling instead of unraveling. Well, turns out Sanders knows more about the lexicon than I.

I will say this though, the next novel I write about a fellow who is slowly falling apart a la William Foster in Falling Down or Wilhelm Adler in Seize the day, that character's name will be something like "Larry Raveling."

Sure it will be a gimmick on my part, but how many people will be as erudite as Sanders and truly know the meaning of raveling?

Two Fer in the First Pages

After yesterday's raveling (see here), I was surprised to find another quotable line for this blog in the first few pages of The Fourth Deadly Sin.

Whenever I think about quotes about the morning, I think of Roger's comment from a few July's ago (see here). When I posed the question, "I wonder why authors love to write about the morning so much." Roger wrote:

It's because mornings are so much more vital. After you've said, "the evening sun cast an ochre smear over the dying sky", or something like that; what more is there to say.

Still, it's no longer in doubt. Whether because it speaks of new beginnings or perhaps they say just as much about the night but I haven't started a series on it, author's love writing about the morning.

By Monday morning the sky had been rinsed; a casaba sun loomed; and pedestrians strode with opened coats flapping. A chill breeze nipped, but New York had the lift of early winter, with stores preparing for Christmas, and street vendors hawking hot pretzels and roasted chestnuts.

Sanders, Lawrence - The Fourth Deadly Sin

A "casablanca sun" is right up there with "a wine dark sea." And I particularly enjoy the fact that he references (not too obliquely) the November chain mail sky from the first line (see here).

The First Line of the Fourth Deadly Sin

Other than quotes about the morning (see here) and Tuesday's post (here), I love looking at first lines (see all of them here). I love that so many people put so much thoughts into first lines. I truly love first lines that are horrid and over thought. This one I love for the prose.

The November sky over Manhattan was chain mail, raveling into steely rain. A black night with coughs of thunder , lightning stabs that made abrupt days. Dr. Simon Ellerbee, standing at his office window, peered out to look at life on the street below. He saw only the reflection of his own haunted face. 

He could not have said how it started, or why. He, who had always been so certain, now buffeted and trembling … 

All hearts have dark corners, where the death of a loved one is occasionally wished, laughter offends, and even beauty becomes a rebuke.

Sanders, Lawrence - The Fourth Deadly Sin 

Granted, Lawrence Sanders is among my favorite authors (see here) so his lines should naturally speak to me, but having recently been to Manhattan, having seen a sky that was "chain mail, raveling into steely rain", this one I particularly like.

Just can't get past the fact that I think the sky should be "unraveling" instead of "raveling."

200 Words . . . Tall Order

According to this article (here), a Maine Bed and Breakfast owner is selling her bed and breakfast in the same manner by which she bought it, giving it to the person who writes the best essay.

Janice Sage, the owner and innkeeper of the Center Lovell Inn and Restaurant, wants to retire. Rather than sell the inn traditionally, however, she is holding an essay contest to find the person who will treat the old place right. She is charging $125 per entry, and hopes to attract at least 7,500 contestants, netting her the $900,000 estimated value of the property.

My prediction . . .  she will get far more than 7,500 entries, and mine will be the toughest to reject.

The difficulty for the entrants as I see it is the 200 word limit. 200 words aint alot of space to get your point across. This post by itself is already 151 words. I have 50 more words to get my point across in this forum. Tough, tough, tough.

What I don't like about this article:

The rules don't say anything about essays written in calligraphy with a quill pen on a piece of faded parchment, but you should definitely do that. If you think you're going to beat that person, you just don't understand B&B culture. And the Center Lovell Inn will never be yours. Good luck, though.

Oh please, please, please don't go in for gimmickry. If that's the case I have no hope. I hate gimmicks. Delivery by horse messenger, an olde English school marm recitation, town crier style verbiage. No thanks!

I will say, my reaction to that above snippet makes me wonder if I really should be entering at all. Then again, does an innkeeper need to rely on gimmicks? I'll let you know after I've won.

New Covers

The other day, in an effort to spark my creativity and to help me buckle down and get to writing, I started looking up pre-made and custom made covers from professional cover designers. Anyone who has read this blog knows that I fashioned (or tried to) my covers off of one of my favorite authors, Dick Francis (see here).

Based on the face that I've sold two or three books with the new covers without any promotion (which is two or three more than I sold of the old cover design) I feel we can chalk up my old cover design philosophy into the ole loss column.

I'm quite happy with my new cover designs, and was pleased when the artist, having read the reviews of my books, recommended a new promotional campaign as she said "Based on the reviews, it sounds like you have a decent book." Sadly, I don't think my reviews, nor her covers, inspired her to actually buy a copy for herself. I comfort myself with the thought that perhaps thriller cum mysteries aren't her milieu.

Nevertheless, the new covers are quite spectacular, and the price of the novels is still quite unbeatable (see here and here).

Been Awhile

I know it has been awhile since I last posted a blog post, but I ran across something, in a trashy novel no less, and I thought, "Man, this would be a perfect post," so I decided to at least get it down for no other reason than I want to remember it. Additionally, it falls into one of my favorite series . . . my posts about authors' love for writing about the morning (see here).

I poured coffee and settled in for the long wait. A band of orange appeared on the horizon. A light blinked on in the apartment next to Spiro. Another light appeared a few apartments down. The charcoal sky turned azure. Ta daaa! It was morning.

Evanovich, Janet - Two for the Dough

It wasn't the best novel, but fun for a trashy novel and a short get-away from heavier fare (really even my heaviest fare is still quite light).