Set up your website to promote your book

Your own website is the best way to promote your book. It allows you to build an audience – providing you get the right traffic. To achieve this, you’ll need to add lots of relevant and unique content, and also inject the right keywords and descriptions. Your author website could benefit from Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). You can also set up a mailing list on your website.

What you should be including on your author website:

• An email sign up
• A blog
• A news page with the latest press releases about your books, events you’re attending
• A content page
• A category page about each of your books
• An image links section, where you can upload your book covers and link them to where the reader can buy them
• Your author bio
• Social media buttons so your readers can connect with you on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.
• Social Share buttons, so that you and your readers can share your content across social media.
• Consider having a separate website to promote a book series.

If you’re not a renowned writer, and you write crime thriller novels, you want to add these keywords or variations of them in your descriptions and page titles. You can pay someone to do your SEO, or you can figure out how to do this yourself from books and online tutorial videos found on YouTube and other relevant SEO and marketing websites.

To effectively promote your book from your website, run free giveaways and competitions and invite readers to review your books. You should include excerpts of your book. You can also publish your book trailer and a press release about your upcoming publication.

I use WordPress, which I installed myself through a self-hosting account. However, this requires some technical knowledge. If you’re not tech savvy and you don’t have the money to spend on a website, set up a Gmail account and create a website using Blogger. It’s easy to use. You can add your theme and unique domain name.

Another good alternative is Wix.