by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
I’ve recently become very interested in how my site, books, and bio show up in Google searches. This interest in search engine optimization, or SEO, has led me to make some changes on my site.
I read about a free tool called the SEO Site Checkup tool in Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed newsletter (click here for the archives to see if her newsletter might work for you). I typed in my website name, clicked ‘checkup,’ and it delivered a list of issues that I should resolve to improve my SEO.
The way it was set up was very informative. It provides passed checks (what I’m doing right and why it’s right, failed checks, and warnings. Each area that my site performed poorly on had a red, clickable box with ‘how to fix’ on it. I learned both from what I was (accidentally, I’m sure) doing right and what I was doing wrong from the fix it offered.
I read a lot of articles on the importance of search engines being able to find our books, our sites, and our bios. But frequently, the articles don’t outline ways to improve what we’re doing. Even increasing the image size to optimize it for Google (and so that the post will stand out when being shared on social media) helped the SEO…and that was a minor, easy tweak. Other tips involved creating a favicon for the site (icon representing the site in a bookmark or browser tab). Others might get tips to make their site easier to read on mobile devices, etc.
It only takes about a minute for the site to check your SEO (and it’s free to check a single site): SEO Site Checkup tool . How does yours fare?
Evaluating our website's SEO: Click To Tweet