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Writer Websites: Advertising This section is all about how to advertise your site -- for free. Just remember the principle rule: cater to your target audience. (Don't advertise with a sports site if you write nonfiction about aborigines in the Congo.)Word of Mouth Never underestimate a scrap of paper (or business card) with your name and url. Search Engines Google is king right now -- I wouldn't even bother applying to any others. But there's something you need to do before applying to any search engine. There are these things called meta tags. They provide the search engine with the words and phrases that people will enter to find your site. Let me show you MY meta tags:
<meta name="keywords" content="ea blevins, e.a., blevins, ea, elizabeth, elisabeth, beth, belvins, bevins, blevnis, belvnis, young, teen, adult, young adult, books, writer, fantasy, romance">
Your keywords should include every variation of your name you can think of, variations of the names of your published books, main characters, and your genre. Don't include more than 250 keywords or the search engine might think you're trying to scam it. My description is just a short description that should pop up when the search engine shows my site. "The author website of EA Blevins. Fantasy and fun for teenaged girls." These need to be in between the header tags: <head></head> Button/Banner Rotations There are lots of free button and banner rotations out there. I've joined a few, and I even used to own one. I'll warn you that the people who join most button rotations are usually pretty young, and therefore you might not want to join if you write nonfiction books about the African dung beatle. Also, a rotation that allows anyone to join (that doesn't exclude pornographic sites) is usually a bad idea because you might have buttons popping up with nudity on them. Message Forums / Guestbooks I am NOT encouraging anyone to sign random forums or guestbooks saying "go to my site." That never works. I AM encouraging everyone to establish a relationship with a website or forum, or to leave a nice (detailed) comment about a site and let them go to your site if they want to. It always turns people off if you force or trick them into going to your site. Also, leave a courtesy note if anyone has a site (or blog) that mentions you. Swing by and say, "Hey, this is nice. Thanks for reading my stuff. Readers like you make writing worthwhile." Even if they have bad grammar. Suck it up. Plug Boards You may not know much about plug boards, but they're kind of popular. They're simply a temporary list of buttons or banners that you can add your button to, pushing all the other buttons down. Every time a button is added, the oldest button gets pushed off. You can go back and resubmit your own button once it has left the plug board. Review Sites Though this probably won't increase your traffic, it will help you improve your site -- and that is always a good thing. Example: YourSite.nu Faster alternatives include asking savvy family members (particularly teenagers or college age kids) or even your fans for website help or advice. Cheap Paid Advertising A lot of small web communities are allowing people to advertise on their sites these days (for, like, $1 a month). You would want to find a site that corresponds with your genre (advertising my teen fantasy writing site in a community of adult horror writers would be dumb). The best way to find these is just to surf and follow recommended links on related websites.
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