My question to authors is, “How’s your traffic?” Are you getting the visitors that would be interested in your books? The whole purpose of your website is to be one of, if not your primary marketing tools.

The first thing that ANY website must instill in visitors is a sense of credibility. I find it interesting the type of things people will put into their website that actually lessen the credibility. Much of it is design related, but it is also a balancing act.

Stanford University did a study on web credibility factors and came up with criteria on design that enhances the credibility and the legitimacy of a site. They are as follows:

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.
2. Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.
3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.
4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.
5. Make it easy to contact you.
6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).
7. Make your site easy to use — and useful.
8. Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently).
9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.

For details see http://www.webcredibility.org/guidelines/. Also look a University of Kentucky study here.

As authors, do the items above really pertain? All of the criteria above, which is not in any order, should be considered in your site, but may not have great weight. In number 2 for example, you want to be able to show the availability of your work, as opposed to proving that you are a real person, which is rather obvious.

Balance this against a the Stanford study that looked at what visitors actually looked for to determine credibility:

1. Design Look – 46.1% Overall
2. Information Design/Structure – 28.5% Overall
3. Information Focus – 25.1% Overall
4. Company Motive – 15.5% Overall
5. Information Usefulness – 14.8% Overall
6. Information Accuracy – 14.3% Overall
7. Name Recognition and Reputation – 14.1% Overall
8. Advertising – 13.8% Overall
9. Information Bias – 11.6% Overall
10. Writing Tone – 9.0% Overall
11. Identity of Site Operator – 8.8% Overall
12. Site Functionality – 8.6% Overall
13. Customer Service – 6.4% Overall
14. Past Experience with Site – 4.6% Overall
15. Information Clarity – 3.7% Overall
16. Performance on Test by User – 3.6% Overall
17. Readability – 3.6% Overall
18. Affiliations – 3.4% Overall

Source: http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/dynamic/web-credibility-report-evaluate.cfm

Now this is information you can use! Visual perception has a tremendous affect on whether people stay on your site, and thus, finds out more about you and more importantly, your book.

Once you have a great looking site that meets all, or at least most of the criteria above, you have to think about how you can actually get people to your site.

How can I improve my site’s ranking?

According to Google:

Sites’ positions in our search results are determined based on a number of factors designed to provide end-users with helpful, accurate search results. These factors are explained in more detail at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html.

In general, webmasters can improve the rank of their sites by increasing the number of high-quality sites that link to their pages.

As many of you are writers by trade, the recommendations that I have to help you accomplish this are quite easy. When you write on your own personal blog, or other social networking blogs, be sure to take those same articles and apply them to other networking sites. One thing you must do is to provide links back to your main marketing website in every article. For authors, I recommend sites like ArticleManager.com, Bookmarket.ning.com, and BiblioScribe.com.

BiblioScribe.com is a bit different from the other article and press release services in that we look to publish your submission with links back to your site AND to sell your book. Articles and press releases are syndicated at BiblioScribe.com to newsfeeds. Each article or press release contains your book as well as other books in your personal profile. There are also direct links to your book at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s as well as other domestic and international book sellers. BiblioScribe.com makes money from these companies by selling your book through our website and donating 10% of our earnings to First Book to provide new books to disadvantaged children.