SEO for Author Websites: Ranking for Name Searches and Title Queries

Want readers to find your books without spending a cent on ads?

Here’s the dirty secret. Authors create a website. Hit publish. Then wonder where all the traffic is. They have completed their manuscript. Designed a beautiful cover. But when someone Googles their name all they see is an outdated LinkedIn page on top.

That’s a problem.

Because for authors, two types of searches matter more than everything else combined:

• Name searches — “Sarah Whitlock author”
• Title queries — “The Quiet House book”

If you nail these two, the website becomes the storefront for your entire collection.

Here’s What’s Coming Up:

1. Why Search Matters So Much For Authors
2. How To Rank For An Author Name
3. How To Own Book Title Queries
4. The Pages Every Author Website Needs
5. Mistakes That Sink Author Rankings

Why Search Matters So Much For Authors

The shelf is crowded. Painfully crowded.

According to Publishers Weekly, there were over four million titles published in the United States last year. Approximately 3.5 million of those were self-published books by authors. Noise levels!

Even the independent author publishing process has changed. Authors are expected to manage the editing, the cover, the formatting, distribution and the marketing. Somewhere between brushing up on how to publish a book on Amazon, choosing appropriate categories and researching keywords, the author website is conveniently shelved at the bottom of the to-do list.

Ouch! That’s a costly lesson. Retailers can control their traffic however they want, whenever they want to. Your website is the only asset in the independent author publishing world that you truly own.

No website means no owned audience.

Search behaviour compounds this urgency. Research from SparkToro revealed that 68% of US searches now go unclicked. Readers find the answer on the search results page, then leave. It’s not enough to rank. You need the right information front and centre when they search.

How To Rank For An Author Name

Ranking how you feel about a name seems simple. Most of the time it’s not. Particularly if it’s a popular name.

Here’s how to fix that.

Make The Homepage About The Author

Title tag of homepage: Should include full name and either “author” or your main genre. Example: “Sarah Whitlock — Historical Fiction Author”. Straightforward. Easily tells Google what that page is.

Repeat it in the H1 and in the first paragraph. Google likes verification. Provide it.

Build A Proper About Page

An About page isn’t an afterthought. It’s one of the most powerful ranking pages on any author site.

A strong About page should include:

• The full name (and any pen names)
• The genres being written in
• Awards, features and publication credits
• A real photo with a descriptive file name
• Links through to every book page on the site

Get That Name Mentioned Elsewhere

Google is all about instilling confidence. When you see the same name on podcast directories, guest posts, interview transcripts and book listings your mind begins to make the association.

Accuracy is key. Having “S. Whitlock” on one forum and “Sarah J. Whitlock” on another cuts your readership in half. Choose which way you want to go and stick with it.

Author schema markup helps as well. It connects your site to your social profiles and allows Google to know who that person is. That’s when knowledge panels begin appearing.

How To Own Book Title Queries

Title searches are priceless. Someone typing in a book title already knows about the book and is half way to purchasing it.

So why do so many authors lose that search?

Due to lack of retailer page ranks and/or the authors site simply does not come up for that search query.

Give Every Book Its Own Page

Single page per title. Not a one “My Books” page with everything in a list.

Every single book page should have that exact title in the URL, title tag AND H1. After that you should add:

• The full blurb (rewritten, not copy-pasted from the retailer)
• The cover image with descriptive alt text
• Series order and reading order
• Buy links for every retailer
• Book schema markup with the ISBN

That last one is especially important, even more so than most realize. Structured data informs a search engine that this page is about an actual published book, as opposed to a blog post that just talks about it.

Answer The Questions Readers Type

Readers rarely search a title on its own. They search around it.

“is [title] a series”, “[title] ending explained”, “books like [title]” or “[title] reading order”. These are examples of low competition questions that a retailer product page will never rank for.

Capture those searches by adding a brief FAQ section to every book page. Expanding the page also helps it compete.

The Pages Every Author Website Needs

A good author site doesn’t need fifty pages. It needs the right ones.

• Homepage — optimised for the author name
• About page — the authority hub
• Individual book pages — one for every single title
• Series pages — for reading order searches
• Blog or news section — fresh content signals
• Contact and media page — for journalists and bloggers
• Newsletter sign-up — the audience nobody can take away

Speed is important as well. Slow loading sites push readers away before they’ve even opened the page, and search engines pick up on that behaviour quickly.

Mistakes That Sink Author Rankings

Some of these are painfully common.

Site composed of a single image. Gorgeous graphics-only websites leave nothing for search engines to index.

Copying retailer descriptions word for word. Rewrite them. Duplicate content rarely wins.

Neglecting your backlist. Older books still get searched for and are typically your easiest pages to rank.

Skipping internal links. Book pages link to series page, About page and to each other.

Forgetting mobile readers. Most book searches happen on a phone.

Repairing three or four of these will propel your site further than a month worth of social networking posts.

Putting It All Together

Author SEO isn’t complicated. It’s just neglected.

There are two searches that do the majority of the heavy lifting — the branded search and searches for your titles. Create a homepage that screams your name, create dedicated pages for each book, utilize schema, brand your name throughout your web presence, and anticipate what your reader is searching for.

Do that and you’ve slowly created the most dependable discovery tool out there for the independent author publishing process. One that isn’t a retailer algorithm. One that isn’t a social feed that changes overnight.

Work on your homepage title tag today. Build one single book page correctly. Repeat.

That’s how author websites get found.