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Don't Have A Website? Get One!
by Melissa Lopez
Whether you are a well-known name or an aspiring author, a website is a key tool. It's your home in our growing cyber world. A website is where readers head to find out more about you. It is a place where readers can keep checking in with you. And a website is a hub where readers spend time.
Those of you out there groaning at the possibility of cost, test a free site out. Build a small one yourself, or get some help from a local college. Local colleges are a nice place to locate reasonable help. It's important to keep whatever website you offer clean, easy to read, and easy to navigate.
For anyone seriously writing, I recommend reserving your domain name with the .com suffix (http://www.yourname.com). There are various sites with differing prices and options where you can purchase your domain (eg. GoDaddy.com). You can also use .net, but I'd stick with those two extensions for an author website.
Website design is a total preference call. What do you like? What color scheme appeals to you? The design will often be the first impression for your readers. How do you want people to see you?
Mary Stella's website is tropically themed, which enhances her stories set in the Florida Keys. Sherrilyn Kenyon offers readers an interactive place to get lost with lots of tie-ins to her books and eye candy, while Mechele Armstrong has a wonderfully feminine site. Her site's theme isn't book related, but anyone who has met Mechele knows her site suits her.
Visit your favorite sites to get ideas of what you might like. Newbies, remember you're just getting your name out there. You'll have plenty of time for website growth as you build your writing career.
The big key to a website is updating, so let's talk about content. A website is a place to build an audience. Through your content, you can establish return hits.
Give the readers a little about your background. Personalize it. Add a picture of yourself. Readers like to see who they're supporting. They like a personal connection to the author they've read or are going to read. Let readers know what makes your muse speak, your favorite music, poems, goals, industry information, what writing groups you belong to.
Readers like to hear about books. If you haven't sold yet, give them a small blurb without giving away the premise. And once you sell, give them an excerpt. That's a beef for readers: where's the excerpt?
There are two schools of thought about links. You'll have to decide which you prefer. One is to never send people away from your website because they might never come back. That's why some authors don't have many links if any. I think the exposure is more important so I don't subscribe to this. You can link to helpful writing or research materials you've used. Build a little interest and help others while you're waiting for the call.
Your website can give you exposure, but it does require work and time to build, maintain, and promote. Want to talk to readers? Add a blog. Easily updated and can be fun to do. Link it with friends. Add it to blogger listing sites (Romancing the Blog and Authors' Blogs, to name two).
However, blogging isn't for everyone, some find it too stressful to maintain. You can try it out, especially if you've wanted to keep a journal or write articles, but keep in mind readers can get turned off of you by what you say just as easily as being turned on to you. And once you update your blog, your readers will expect you to keep the same schedule of updates.
A free short story might bring in visitors, but the key to online promotion is the continual updates. If you have a website, you need to make some changes to content at least once a month. Consistency is the key. Otherwise, you risk having people forget about you. A guestbook or message board can keep a site active. When someone chimes in, say "hello" back. And it's fun for the author to see who has visited them.
To promote your site, it's important to register with search engines. And remember not everyone uses Yahoo and Google so be sure you're listed on all the big ones. You can register with programs, or do it yourself.
Make sure you have good meta tags. These tags won't be visible to the site visitors unless they look at the html source of the web pages, but search engines "see" them. The desciption tag helps search engines to show what your site is about in search results. The keywords tag gives them a list of search words related to your site. Not sure you have all the possible keywords? Have a close friend familiar with your work go over the list.
Do you belong to any online groups? Make sure your web page or blog address is in your signature for every email or message board post you send out. For those that don't belong to any lists, I suggest joining a few to get to know readers and self-promote. Yahoo! Groups can be fun. (It's best to place http:// in front of your website address there when running it in your signature lines. If you leave it off, Yahoo! won't sometimes allow readers to click through.) It's never too soon to start building name recognition. Be sure to put your webpage on any promotional materials you put together.
Get linked! Make sure the RWA website, your chapter website, or any specialty groups list your site as a member. Ask your friends if they'd be interested in exchanging website links, especially if their writing is similar in genre. The more you are linked the more you build your visibility for things like search engines, plus you could have fans of other authors discover you by clicking on your link.
Websites are the way of the future and will only grow in usefulness. Don't have one? Get one. Decide on one you're comfortable with and keep it updated!
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