All right! A little behind schedule, we’re digging into the website reviews. Ted will get to the visual side of the reviews ASAP, but I want to get these reviews up even sooner than possible (ESTP?). And we’re starting with one of my fellow crusaders, Sierra Gardner!
Hi, Sierra! Since I’ve subscribed to your blog for almost four months now, I’m familiar with some of your great content already. Highlighting that content can be a challenge for all bloggers, but I can see you’re working very hard to do just that. We’ll also look at your future marketing efforts, since you’re not pursuing an agent or a book deal yet.
Content and navigation
I’m always happy to find an About page quickly and easily on a new blog. Your bio is cute and personable. You might consider using the sidebar widget version of “About Me” in addition to the page, so we get some idea of the face behind the blog without having to dig deeper.
Also, you might consider breaking contact me into a separate page. If I came to your blog to contact you, I might not think to look on the about page for that info—and if I did, I’d still have to scroll down to find it.
You’re working hard to highlight several types of content on your blog, and that’s great. You’ve got a page that lists writing samples you’ve shared as well as one for your favorite posts. Both of these are great ideas. You might be able to make these pages work even harder for you by sharing a short summary or synopsis of the post or sample to encourage clickthroughs. On your writing samples page, at the very least an indicator of the genre could help entice readers to click. The favorite posts page might also benefit from a sentence or two of description to hook your readers.
The Submissions page is a little bit confusing, especially on a writing blog since we’re used to seeing submissions on only agent and publisher sites. While the name is appropriate, a title like maybe Guest Posts & Questions might help, too. If you have any examples of either type of submissions, maybe list & link to them underneath.
You might also consider moving the followers widget higher to highlight that feature of your site and encourage people to follow your blog. Generally, the archive isn’t the best thing to have first in your sidebar—it doesn’t ask your readers to engage or take further action as effectively as subscribe buttons, a Followers widget, social media buttons or even your bio. Show your readers how to
Search engine visibility
On Google, your blog comes up third for your name. Your LinkedIn profile is fourth. There are a couple Facebook profiles, but they’re not yours. In Bing/Yahoo, your LinkedIn is first, but your blog doesn’t show up in the top 10 results—although your Blogger User Profile does. When you’re ready to begin the agent search, be sure to include your name prominently on your site, and get links using your name as the link back at your site (such as from guest posts). If possible, it might be good to move your blog to sierragardner.blogspot.com (or better yet use Blogger’s Custom Domain feature to put it at sierragardner.com, sierragardnerauthor.com or blog.sierragardnerauthor.com).
Optimizing for your name does post some challenges. There are a lot of people out there named Sierra Gardner or Sierra Gardener, and there’s even some competition from the Riverside, CA, community of Sierra Gardens. However, it doesn’t look like anyone is actively trying to rank in search engines for your name, so a little bit of effort could pay off quickly and well.
I’m sure you come across this pretty often, but it might be difficult for readers to remember how to spell your name. (NO, I’ve never had that problem. Sigh.) You might think about also optimizing for Sierra Gardener so your site ranks high when people search for your name spelled incorrectly.
Sierra, thanks for sharing your site with us and good luck in all your writing and blogging efforts!
What do you think? How can you highlight the content in your blog better?
