How These 3 Simple SEO Strategies Make Your Author’s Website More Visible | Ep. 51

Want More Readers to Find Your Website? Start Here.

Your author's website is your online home, but what’s the point if no one can find it? Allison Lane breaks down three simple ways to boost your website’s visibility without getting lost in the weeds of tech and SEO.

You'll learn the easiest ways to optimize your site, from choosing the right all-in-one platform to hiring an affordable SEO expert (without breaking the bank). Plus, she shares her favorite FREE tools that take the guesswork out of keyword research so your audience can find you faster.

If SEO has felt overwhelming, this episode is your shortcut to making it work fast. Tune in now.

What You’ll Learn:

• The easiest website builders with built-in SEO features (zero coding required).
• How to find and hire an SEO expert for under $50 to optimize your site.
• Free tools that show exactly what your audience is searching for.

Resources Mentioned:

• Kajabi – Allison’s Website Builder: https://app.kajabi.com/r/XHNMfLXC 
• Fiverr – Affordable SEO Experts https://www.fiverr.com/ 
• Google's ‘People Also Ask’ Section: https://www.google.com/ 
• Keywords Everywhere – Free Chrome Extension: https://www.keywordseverywhere.com/

Timestamps:

00:02:12 – The #1 mistake authors make with their websites.
00:05:39 – Why I switched to Kajabi (and why it might be right for you).
00:09:56 – How an SEO expert on Fiverr fixed my website in 24 hours.
00:12:09 – Google’s free SEO hack: ‘People Also Ask.’
00:14:12 – The one tool that helps you find the best keywords instantly.

Love this episode? Help more authors find it. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Share it on social media and tag me @AllisonLaneLit. Subscribe so you never miss an episode. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3t-1yyMsg

Your book launch is your chance to build your visibility and grow your audience. In the Bestseller Launch School guided program, I'll show you how to get buzz before your book hits the shelves, master pre-orders and early sales to get attention and keep sales going long after launch day. Live trainings start April 30th - June 11. Grab your seat now: https://lanelit.com/bestseller 

Rate, Review, & Follow The Author’s Edge

“So incredibly helpful!” >>> If that sounds like you, I’d be so grateful if you’d rate and review the show! Your support helps more authors build their brands, reach their audiences, and launch their books successfully.

Here’s how:

• Click here, scroll to the bottom, and tap to rate with five stars.
• Select “Write a Review” and tell me what you loved most about the episode!

And don’t forget to follow the podcast if you haven’t already. I’m sharing bonus episodes packed with insider tips, and I’d hate for you to miss out. Hit that follow button now.

LinkedIn @allisonlanelit
Facebook @allisonlanelit

🔔 Subscribe for more tips and insights on writing and publishing!
👍 Like, comment, and share this video if you found it helpful!

Transcript

Allison: 1:34

You are serving people when you are optimizing your site. What use is your website if the people you know you can serve can't find it. Welcome to the Author's Edge. I'm Allison Lane, making sure that your marketing is simple because around here we make market example for writers and creatives and entrepreneurs and thought leaders. Because being an expert yourself is one thing, but now you have to market yourself. Yikes, nobody wants to become an expert in marketing too, except me'cause I already am. I am here today, we are answering a listener question. I started last week, so this is part two. If this is the first episode you're listening to, you might wanna listen to last week's episode just to get centered. We're talking about website setup and SEO, because having a website is one thing, but making sure people can actually find it. It's a whole different challenge. And we need to talk about easy ways to set up and manage your website, which also, I'm gonna try to slow down when I use marketing language, but optimizing your site. Yes, yes, you can gag with me, that is Marketing Jargony. Optimizing your site for SEO, which is search engine optimization. Let's get into it because the good news is you don't have to be a tech expert to get your website up and running with solid SEO. So, today, I'm gonna break down some all in one platforms that can handle website building and SEO for you. I'm also gonna talk to you about getting easy to find SEO experts who can optimize your site in less than 24 hours because it really is not difficult when you find an expert. But if you try to become the expert. You will pull out all of your eyelashes and I don't want that for you. You will look weird. The third thing that we'll talk about are simple tools, and one of them is super duper, duper free. And it's really good. Simple tools to help you rank higher. And when I say you, you are already a big effing deal but I mean, your website is going to rank higher. So, if SEO feels overwhelming, stick around, I am making this easy. So, the question is, and again, every Thursday, I'm answering listener questions. If you want to ask me a question, go to this episode's description. And at the very top it says, send me a text. So, click it and send me a text. You can send me a question or a comment or a request, or a book that you love that you would like to shout out? PS, if you are writing a book or if your book is out, or it's going to come out. Yeah, send that to me. That would be great. I would love to hear from you. And if you make sure to give me your name, the thing is, it doesn't tell me your name, unless you put your name in the text or in the comment, I won't know. So, I will just call you listener or Hazel, since that's the name of my dog. Okay. Back to the question for today. How do you quickly set up and optimize a website for SEO, especially, if you're not tech savvy. I am not tech savvy. Tech tangles are my every day, and I have to know to slow down and find solutions that work for me. The solutions that work for me are what I am sharing with you. Only because you're here and you want to hear from me. There are many, many ways to make this simple, but because my tech head is not really a functioning part of my mind. I'm gonna focus on the three simplest ways to improve your website's SEO without becoming an expert. First, if you need a primer on what to name your website or how to establish your website. Go back and listen to last week's episode. You'll be happy you did. And it's less than 20 minutes, so for sure while you're in traffic, you can do it. Okay. There are three simple ways to improve your website's SEO, without feeling like you need to take a class'cause gosh, nobody has time for that. Okay. The first is using an all-in-one website builder, like Kajabi, which is what I use. I will put my link in the chat. And actually, if you end up going with Kajabi, I offer like a session with me so I could show you how I use it best. So, you can decide to use that. It's hassle-free and it has built in SEO features. And then, the great thing about Kajabi is that it offers like Kajabi University, and a community, and you'll love it. And everything's included. So, it's like a all in one experience and it is high, high delivery, super invested customer service. Another way to improve your website's SEO is to hire someone who could just get in there and set it up for you and a fast and an affordable way to optimize your site is to hire an SEO expert from Fiverr. Fiverr is F-I-V-E-R r.com. I have done this when I finally had a temper tantrum over tech Tangles, say that two times twice. I was so near angry tears that I was like, or I cannot do this anymore. I cannot spend one more second doing something that I know I'm gonna screw up. So, Fiverr is where I found someone, and I'll get into some details. The third way is to use free SEO tools like Google. Google has a section that you need to know about called people also Ask, and also there's a Chrome extension called Keywords Everywhere. These are easy ways to find what your audience is searching for. Let me break these down for you. The first thing I want you to know about is, are these all in one website builders like Kajabi? Squarespace is another one, but I don't use Squarespace. I think they're really kind of equal. You could go with either one. They both come with templates and whatever in terms of layout. But if you want an SEO friendly website without dealing with coding or plugins, platforms like Kajabi are great. I was formerly on WordPress, which people do love, but I deleted my website twice by accident because of, I don't know, sausage fingers. I don't know how it happened, but it required plugins and it was more than my brain could handle, but many, many people love WordPress and more power to you. Still, if you want an SEO friendly site, Squarespace, I use Kajabi. The great thing about Kajabi is that it's the website, the blog, the SEO, the email marketing, even online courses if you want to provide something. And there are no extra tools that you need to install. So, that is super duper. This is a choice that you can make if you are trying to establish your digital presence in your digital headquarters fast and without dealing with headaches. This is probably for you. The next option for you is hiring an SEO expert, which I have done on Fiverr. If you already have a website, and you need SEO help fast. This is the way to go. Fiverr is a great place to find affordable experts who can do what you need done. This includes anything beyond SEO. You need a jingle for your podcast. You need your YouTube channel set up. You can find someone, they tell you exactly what they're gonna do. There's a price that they assigned to it, and they ask for your information, and they do it. It's not coaching or consulting. It's, they get it done and it is incredible. When I hired my guy, and you could do this too, you can hire an SEO expert to do exactly what I had done. And I'm gonna tell you exactly what he did. First, you'll want them to optimize your site's meta titles, which is data that's kind of under the hood. We can't see it, but it's in there. So, the metadata, which are titles and descriptions of each of your web pages. Because Google ranks your pages higher when your site is optimized. Also, they can find and add the rate keywords so that your audience can actually discover you. They might audit your site and say, I know that you're focused on this, but the keywords associated in with your topics also include, you know, these five keywords that you're gonna wanna sprinkle in onto your pages and in your page descriptions. They can also improve the speed of your site, like the loading speed of your site and the technical SEO. Slow websites, send viewers away. People do not have even a millisecond to waste. And if your site has a bunch of automations where things are moving around. You were eating up their time and I would say do less of that. But your SEO expert can help you do that. I would look for people who describe their services as SEO audit or website optimization, and that's usually found in their title. And there's a search window that you can search for what you want. The person I hired, I think, oh, well, first of all, he was finished in a day and a half, which was amazing. I was like, oh my gosh, what else can you do? And he did it for under 50 bucks. So many people offer this type of quick fix for under 50 bucks. The third step you could consider is using Google's people also ask, which is if you go to Google and you type in what your listener, or what your audience, or what your reader is searching for, or what they're complaining about, or what they really want in life. Scroll down maybe a third of a page and you'll see a section called people also ask with three or four questions. What Google's doing is showing you what people are usually searching for. Which is amazing. So, you'll see this box with related questions. These are the real questions people are searching for. Which means they're great content ideas for your website or a blog page on your website. Answering these questions in your site's content will help you rank higher in search results. So, it's like Google is saying, please do this because we know people are searching for something and it would be great if we could just point them to your site. The other free tool, and I think this is free, or it might be like, I don't know,$25 for a lifetime subscription is A Chrome extension. So, you can go to the Google App Store, and get this extension for Chrome called keywords everywhere. And this tool shows the volume of searches and keywords when people Google something. So, you'll see which words and phrases are most searched. Which means you can include them on your site. So, for example, if you are writing about, I don't know, rescuing feral cats, your keywords everywhere might show related searches. Like, what to do with feral cats in my yard. You know, it'll look for Feral and cats, or rescuing cats. The tip here is to use tools that find the exact phrases that your audience is searching for. And then, use those words on your pages, and your blog posts, and in the descriptions of the page, which are on the backend of your site. We can't see that in the front. So, summing up, take a look at these all-in-one options. These all-in-one platforms like Kajabi, or go to Fiverr, and find yourself an SEO expert that can do an audit and take care of that for you. They're quick and affordable and really lifesavers for someone like me who does not want to invest time in becoming an expert in SEO. Or use some free SEO tools like Google's people also ask, I mean, it's there for everyone, for the taking. And It really helps you find what your audience is already searching for so you can rank higher. So that people can find the solutions that you are providing. That's what Google wants and that's what you want. We are here to serve, not sell. So you're serving people when you're spending time optimizing your site. I want you to really take that in. You are serving people when you are optimizing your site. What use is your website if the people you know you can serve can't find it. This is their way of finding you, so please help them, for the love of Pete. Setting up and optimizing a website does not have to be complicated or take months and months. And whether you go with an all in one platform like Kajabi, or hire an expert, or use the free tools, the key is getting started. Do one thing. Go to Google and take the 30 seconds it takes to scroll down and take a look at people also ask, that's your first step. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with someone. Just go to the episode and forward to someone or post it on your socials and tag me. I am Allison Lane Lit on all the socials and you can find me on LinkedIn. Make sure also to subscribe. Subscribing allows me to give you more and for you to get the information I'm providing faster and be reminded of it. And it also helps people find the podcast so that more people can get their work into the world. Thank you for listening. Make sure to send me a text, and I will see you next time.