Angela, I just wanted to point out that your first commenter, Lp, is someone else combining text and sound. You might want to visit his site, Lp Kids.
Oct 10, 2008 Rating
Thanks! by: Angela
Steve,
Thank you! Thank you for taking the time to send me thoughts on how I can improve my website.
I'm still working on it...but I think it's getting better!
Angela
Oct 09, 2008 Rating
Pre-orders from libraries? Exciting! by: Steve B. (webmaster)
Angela, it sure sounds like you're doing a lot of things right. I especially like that you have a website up and running ahead of your books being printed.
Now I want to tell you why that website isn't going to attract a lot of traffic in its current incarnation. But it has potential!
The good news: You picked a much better domain name than most children's books authors. It's not named after you or one of your books. Rather, it includes the word "books" and the word "speak." (Better if it had been "speech.")
That means you have a chance to be found if a searcher types in something like books to help children speak. But that's a rather "long tail" search (that is, rare). Is there a way to rank highly for a more popular search term, like speech therapy books?
That's not a huge search term, but Google reports about 390 searches a month that include that term. And frankly, as I look at the search results for that term, I don't think you'd have to do too much work to get your site to rank at or near the top!
You could also shoot for the stars and try to get a high ranking for speech development, a phrase that features heavily on your site.
Let's see if we can't come up with a plan to send you higher in the rankings.
1) Give your home page a "meta" title (seen in the blue bar at the top of your browser) other than "home." Make sure it includes the phrase "speech therapy" or "speech development."
2) Let's get some "content" (some TEXT) on your home page. Say some more about your subject. And where it says "Children's Books for Speech Development"? Guess what? That's an IMAGE, an image of words. The search engines can't read it! Let's turn those into words.
3) Change the meta title on your children's books page to Speech Development Children's Books.
4) On your Book Content page, get rid of ALL those images of words and change them to actual text. That's the lingo that knowledgeable searchers will be looking for. Yahoo and Google don't know it's there!
5) Lose your blog! There's nothing timely about the information, so incorporate it into your website. In fact...
6) Keep adding information to your site about speech development/speech therapy. The search engines judge you not on the quality of your book but the quality of your website. Providing helpful free information to gives the search engines a good reason to send your target audience to you, and it gives your target audience reason to think your books will be helpful.
How's that for a lot of advice you didn't ask for? Thanks for posting!
Oct 09, 2008 Rating
the perfect self publishing storm by: Lp
congrats Angela. you've combined all the key elements of a successful self publishing venture. with a unique positioning, attention to detail, affordable price point, guts and hard work. we can all make self-publishing work. And you even used a local printer - which is an added selling benefit in today's "produce local" world. cheers
