Can Your Book Title Earn Millions?

SEO is not just for websites. SEO concepts can be applied to many other Internet related products like E Books and PDF’s. SEO helps a search engine find your content and a great title on a page or article headline encourages a person to click on it. There has to be a synergy between SEO for search engines and compelling headlines for people.

Recently I came across a post by a woman looking to SEO her E Book. Her original question was regarding the usage of hyphens in a book title.

Hyphens are fine, and encouraged by Google when naming a webpage or other Internet document. Google interprets the hyphen as a space. More importantly, hyphens make it easy for a person to read the title.

All said and done, you can do everything you can to please Google… but if a person cannot understand it… you’ve wasted your time.

Name That Book

The second part of my answer was regarding her choice of book name. While it was a catchy name (currently I do not have her permission to post any of the discussion) it really was meaningless to a search engine. Search engines are literal. You have to be specific in your naming. A person might get the “play on words” while all a search engine “see’s” is words someone might be searching for.

You Have 8 Seconds to Sell Your Book!

Five Tips for Writing Effective Web Headlines – Google Conversion University

Naming is a balancing act

Get too literal and you lose potential customer interest. Google wants keywords that reflect the information the Book contains, people want to have their interest tweaked. Google and people have one thing in common, they both want the title to accurately reflect the content.

Grab Attention

The vast majority of people scan a title and move on if it is not compelling and on topic. A great title will grab a persons attention and interest them enough to want to learn more.

Descriptive Keywords and Phrases

Clearly identify the keywords and phrases that best describes your book and topic. Use the keywords and phrase in the primary title for your book.

Quick: Tell Me About Your Book

If someone asked you right now: What is your book about? How would you answer? Your answer most likely contains several keywords and phrases.

Check Your Keywords and Phrases Against the Competition

What’s the competition naming their books? Check your keywords and phrases in book search engines like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Books, etc. What are the titles coming up in your search? Are they similar to your books topic or not? If not you need to do some more research on your topic to find the best descriptive words that are most used by other successful authors.

Sub Titles – The Run On Sentence That Sells

I’m sure you were just thinking ” How can I cram all the keywords and phrases in a succinct title?” Problem solved – Create a descriptive and supportive sub title. Use your keywords and phrases again if possible while keeping it understandable to people. Your a writer so you should be able to come up with a sentence that further elaborates on your topic while intriguing a potential reader.

SEO That Back cover

Are you ignoring valuable real estate?  The back cover of a book is all about the sales pitch. Your back cover text should contain the same key words or phrases that exist in your book title and subtitle. Almost everyone uses excepts from the book or testimonials.  You should still use these. But you should incorporate your keywords and phrases into the back cover sales pitch. Each and every word should be evaluated for it’s value in closing the sale.

Photo courtesy of Jack Dorsey via Flickr