, Author at Book Promotion.com

Using Analytics to Optimize Your Site

The first thing I do when I sit down to my computer each morning—before I check email or even Facebook—is check my site’s Web stats. Knowing who is visiting my site—and what they’re reading while they’re there isn’t just a way to indulge my voyeuristic side. Here, I uncover valuable information about which of my services are generating the most interest, how people are finding me, and who they are. You can also use the information you find in your stats to help discover what your visitors are most interested in and help them find what they’re looking for.

Google Analytics
Whenever I introduce my clients to Google Analytics, they are simultaneously awed and freaked out. If you aren’t already familiar with Analytics, it is a free service from Google to help you monitor and quantify site traffic. You place a small piece of code in your site’s header, which allows Google to collect information on visitors to your site. And how! The level of detail that you can get about your visitors is kind of astounding. You can pinpoint not only the number of daily visitors, but determine which of those folks are new and which are returning. You see plotted on a map where your visitors are coming from and get estimates on the length of visits and the number of pages browsed per session.

It’s also interesting to find how visitors are viewing your site—which Web browser (and version)—or mobile device. (This always proves to be a good incentive to get your mobile style sheets in shape.) Perhaps most interesting is the fact that you can see the typical flow a visitor takes to different pages in the site.

While all this information is fascinating, what do you do with it? Well, for starters, this information helps you identify the dead ends. For instance, if your goals are to lead visitors to your book pages, are they finding their way there? How are they getting there? Are they following through to read excerpts, and from there are they purchasing?

Choreograph their visits. If you are finding people are getting stuck on a particular page, make sure to add links to other relevant parts of the site. Is there a particularly hot blog post—even from your archives—that is pulling people in? Use that real estate to lead people to other parts of the site that they might not discover otherwise.

No discussion of analytics is complete without also addressing conversions. Google defines conversions as “the completion of an activity on your site that is important to the success of your business.” This can include completing a contact form, subscribing to a newsletter, or completing a purchase. You can use the Analytics interface to set up different goals, and then measure how you are measuring up to those goals over time.

This is just the briefest introduction to Analytics. My suggestion is to start collecting data on your visitors and make a habit of reviewing that information so you can improve the way you market yourself online.

WordPress.com Jetpack
If you are using WordPress, I strongly encourage you to enable the Jetpack stats from WordPress.com in addition to Google Analytics. While Analytics is extremely powerful, site traffic monitoring is still a relatively new science. It makes a lot of sense to cross-reference your statistics with another system to get a more complete picture about your site visitation.

WordPress.com users are probably already familiar with the stats program, which includes concise stats about the things that you are probably already most interested in knowing about your site—top posts and pages, search engine terms, clicks, and referrers. The stats program is now being offered to WordPress.org users as well as part of the free Jetpack plug-in, which runs the analytics in the cloud, so there is no additional load on your server.

When viewing my stats via Jetpack, I tend to compare my allover visitation to my Google Analytics numbers. And then I spend a good amount of time seeing what sites are referring users to my site. This is helpful, because in some instances, my articles have been quoted or retweeted, bringing in new traffic without my prior knowledge. This gives me the opportunity to connect with the referrer (if only to thank them) and hopefully continue to build that relationship.

I also like to see which posts and pages are the most viewed this week—and over time. This gives me an idea of what kind of services and topics there is a demand for. Plus, I get a great look into the search engine terms that are helping users find my site. This gives me a great window into what’s working—and what isn’t—for my SEO.

Stats can give you a nice peek behind the curtain of how people are using your site—information that you can use to make your site even better. Plus, seeing how people connect with your site is a gratifying way to how your work is being consumed online.

Lisa Hazen is a Chicago-based Web Designer specializing in author sites. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or the WWW. mailto:lisa@lisahazen.com

Book Marketing

Steps You Can Take to Protect Your WordPress Site

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It’s safe to say that I am a huge WordPress fan—I’ve built more than 70 sites using this platform. And suffice to say that there are a variety of other platforms that I can name that I am emphatically not a fan of. (But that’s fodder for another column.)

My clients also tend to love WordPress as well. Usually within an hour or two, I can train them to update most of the elements on their site with minimal stress. Even some of my most tech-adverse clients have told me that they feel comfortable adding and editing content on their sites—something that gives them a great deal of power when it comes to owning their brand. And it seems that it isn’t just my clients who feel this way. WordPress accounts for nearly one in five sites currently online.

So, what’s the problem? WordPress is a Web-based platform (rather than an application which is downloaded and stored locally). This means that with the correct username and password, anyone with a Web connection can access your site. Also, plug-ins can go a long way towards extending the functionality of a site. But if not maintained and secured, they can provide backdoor ways for hackers to infiltrate your site.

You needn’t abandon WordPress, you just need to be smart about how you use it. Here are some tips for how to keep your site secure.

Backup
You’re already backing up your hard drive, right? (Right?!) Well, the same principle applies to your WordPress site. Make sure that you have automatic backups made of your site at least once a week. I recommend the BackupBuddy plug-in. which not only makes it easy to back your site up, but easy to restore if the worst happens. Another great one is WordPress Backup to Dropbox, which allows you to send the files directly to Dropbox if you need them, eliminating the need of storing and managing a bunch of backup files.

Keep Your WordPress Site Software Up To Date
Staying on top of your current version of WordPress is not just a good practice—it is an essential step to prevent being hacked. Periodically, WordPress offers software updates to both introduce new functionality and address bugs. I recommend updating your version of WordPress and all your plug-ins within two days of a new release—often software updates can be in response to a recently discovered vulnerability.

You know when it is time to update your site when you log in and see a message along the top alerting you to update your site. But if you don’t log in often, you may see this. You can stay on top of WordPress updates by following the WordPress.org blog or Twitter feed. If you’d rather have it automatically taken care of for you, you can contact me to update your site when new updates are released (this is one of the services I offer). Or you can host your site with WPEngine, which automatically updates your site as part of your costs.

Change Your Passwords
First of all, stop using Admin as the login name for your backend. Malicious forces assume that this is your login, and if they are right, they work from there to crack your password.

Use something like the Secure Password Generator to create strong passwords for your site. Document them, and change them often. Using strong passwords that incorporate a number of different characters can go a long way toward protecting your site.

Install a Plug-In to Periodically Scan Your Site
Having a service to regularly scan your site is key to making sure that everything is running as it should. Sucuri.net offers the best plug-in I’ve found to perform these searches, and it’s free. This plug-in does a lot of great things. First, it creates a firewall that automatically blocks blacklisted IP addresses. Second, it sends you notifications if it detects that any of your files have been modified. Third, it creates audit log files that allow you to see everything that is happening on your site. And lastly, it has a “1-Click Hardening” feature that allows you to do the following with one function: check software version, hide the version of WordPress you are running, create secret keys, hardening key files, and PHP verification.

If You Do Get Hacked…
It happens, but all is not lost. There are a lot of things you can do here to try to diagnose and fix the problem yourself. But I highly recommend using Sucuri.net to handle the problem. For $89.99 per year, Sucuri will perform the necessary functions to protect your site. But best of all, if you do get hacked, they will clean it up and restore your site as part as your subscription, with no limit on the pages it will restore. Better yet, it helps remove you from blacklists that may identify your site as compromised in search engines.

Lisa Hazen is a Chicago-based Web Designer specializing in author sites. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or the WWW. mailto:lisa@lisahazen.com

Book Marketing

Why You Should Join Amazon AuthorCentral

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A lot of my author clients aren’t fans of Amazon. I get it—the advent of Amazon has threatened the existence of indie bookstores and irrevocably changed the way people buy and read books.

But when it comes to participating in Amazon’s AuthorCentral program, in my opinion, this is a case of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” You may never end up loving Amazon, or choose to be their customer. But when you create an author profile through AuthorCentral, you will be helping to promote yourself and your books in the world’s largest bookstore, and for free. One of the things I consistently drill into the heads of my clients is that they need to control their message online. Because if they don’t do this, someone else will do it for them. This is a great way to own your property on Amazon (which already exists if your book is published) and manage the content associated with your name. Plus, creating an AuthorCentral page is just another opportunity to juice up your SEO results.

Start by going to the main Author Central site. If you have one, you can sign in with your existing Amazon account, but if you don’t, you’ll need to set up a new one. Once you verify your account, you will be taken to a page that invites you to build your page in three steps.

Start by building your Author Profile. Your biography is the most important piece of this page. Craft it so it ably highlights your background and achievements, but does so succinctly so the main points can be digested upon first glance. (Remember, people read differently online than they do in print.)

Next, add the RSS to your blog, and Amazon will automatically import your blog posts into your Author Page within 24 hours of posting. What? No blog? You might want to change your mind about that.

The next step is to add upcoming events. This is a great way to pull together all your events surrounding an upcoming book launch or even just let people when you will be traveling to upcoming trade shows or other event. Amazon makes it easy to add and edit these, and even archives them when the dates pass.

To embellish the content further, Amazon offers the ability to share up to eight personal photos. You can also share links to videos that are less than 10 minutes long and smaller than 500MB—these include video interviews, press appearances, book signings or book trailers. Lastly, you can pull your Twitter feed into your page as well. What, no Twitter feed? C’mon now!

When your Author Page launches, it will pull together all your books together on a page that integrates all the information you provided. It also allows visitors to start a discussion on your page—ask questions about your books, share opinions, etc. Plus, visitors can also click a link to be notified whenever you have new releases.

And yes, I do have my own Amazon Author Page. (Thanks for asking.) Please share your own page in the comments below. Or share your feelings about Amazon and their AuthorCentral program.

Lisa Hazen is a Chicago-based Web Designer specializing in author sites. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or the WWW. Email: lisa@lisahazen.com

Author Websites

Seven Recommended WordPress Plug-Ins for Your Author Website

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We’ve talked alot about author websites (so much, really!). What belongs on them, how to create them, and why you really, really need one. Today we have a special guest– website designer Lisa Hazen from Hazen Creative, to break it down even further and tell us some must-have WordPress plugins for your site.

Take it away, Lisa!

One of the things that I love the most about WordPress is how extensible it is. If you host WordPress on your own server (versus hosting it on their cloud server via WordPress.com), you have the ability to add functionality by downloading and installing plug-ins. (More on WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org here.) Following are some plug-ins that I consistently recommend to my clients to enhance their sites.

Akismet
If you think email spam is bad, consider comment or trackback spam. You will get spammy comments on pages and posts you didn’t even know you had—and hundreds of them. Akismet handles this problem better than any other solution I’ve tried. Every time a new comment lands on your site, Akismet runs it through a screening to determine if it is spam or legitimate, and automatically filtering out these messages.

All in One SEO
There are lots of different plug-ins available to juice up your SEO rankings. But my personal favorite is All in One SEO from Semper Fi Web Design. It comes with a lot of options for helping you optimize pages, posts, and even social media. It’s easy to use and makes updating information a snap. I recommend going with the Pro version since it offers so many advanced features to help drive up your SEO results.

Hustle (or whatever plugin is native to your autoresponder service of choice)
We’re all about you building your email list, so you’ll need a plugin to help you do that. Hustle is a popular WordPress plugin designed to help website owners boost their marketing efforts by creating eye-catching pop-ups, slide-ins, embeds, and email opt-ins, or another option is to work with your email list autoresponder service (we recommend MailerLite, Email Octopus, AWeber, and GetResponse) and install whatever plugin they have that helps capture emails.

Custom Twitter Feeds– A Tweets Widget or X Feed Widget
I have seen a Twitter plug-in or two in my day. It’s not unusual to discover a few weeks or months after you install it that it isn’t working in some capacity. The most reliable plug-in I’ve found is Custom Twitter Feeds– A Tweets Widget or X Feed Widget. Since it connects through Twitter’s API instead of just through their feed, it is the most reliable plug-in I’ve found. It gives you a lot of options for configuration and it’s (relatively) easy to format the look and feel using CSS.

WordPress Backup to Dropbox
If you haven’t already scheduled regular backups for your site, drop what you’re doing and make that happen. If your site gets hacked or if your data or server is somehow compromised, you need a backup to restore it to its original state. This plug-in lets you schedule automatic site backups and send the data to Dropbox on a regular basis. This makes it an easy way to keep backups of your site without clogging up your email with backup files, the way most automatic site backups are handled.

Sucuri Site Scanner
Unfortunately, vulnerability to hacking is a very real possibility with WordPress, as with any Web-based platform. The Sucuri site scanner runs regular site checks that scan for malware, blacklisting, spam, hidden code, or other site problems. It’s free for the plug-in, but if you want Sucuri to repair your site if it finds something, the cost is $89/year. (Which, in my opinion, is money well-spent.)

Slick Social Share Buttons
There is no shortage of plug-ins that will allow you to share your site with other visitors. But I really like both the functionality and design of this particular plug-in. It is easy to configure and provides lots of options for how you want users to share your content.

One last word on plug-ins—although most are free, many request a donation for use. I recommend making nominal donations when you really like, enjoy, and widely use a plug-in. This helps support developers, which often keeps them on top of software updates, which are necessary as WordPress evolves.

So what are your favorite plug-ins? Share in the comments.

Lisa Hazen is a Chicago-based Web Designer specializing in author sites. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or the WWW. mailto:lisa@lisahazen.com

Book Marketing

Email Newsletter Tips for Authors

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I’m often asked by my author clients if they should include email newsletters as part of their self-promotion strategy. The answer is always an emphatic yes—if done the right way. Below, I identify tips to help you choose the right platform, build your list, and send out emails that will engage your readers—and never annoy them.

Choosing the Right Platform
As with pretty much any Web service, there are no shortage of options for email newsletters. Campaign Monitor is, in my opinion, the best email newsletter management system available. Newsletters are built and sent all through a simple Web interface, and after sending a newsletter, you can access robust results about who is reading your newsletters and what they are clicking on.

But I think Campaign Monitor’s best feature is the control it gives you over creating a unique template. If you have Web design experience, you have complete control over the HTML structure and style sheets. If you’re not, their robust template builder is a powerful tool that allows you to create a custom template through your browser. You can choose to pay monthly or by campaign. And prices vary based on the size of your list and number of times you wish to send.

MailChimp is another popular Web-based email newsletter service. It offers many of the same features as Campaign Monitor, but I have found that it is a little bit more difficult to create a custom design or break out of their template design offerings. But they are also less expensive than Campaign Monitor.

Building Your List
The key here is not to be a jerk. Because if you simply upload your entire address book into your email newsletter platform, that is exactly what you’re being. The CAN-SPAM laws define explicit rules for sending emails. Specifically, you must include a valid postal address, give the option to opt out of your list, and honor those requests promptly.

But most reputable email newsletter systems go further, requiring you to establish some sort of explicit permission before using their service. A good rule of thumb for whether your contacts are indeed kosher are if they are: obtained through a subscription form or an opt-in form; if they are emails from customers whom you have done business with during the past two years; or from business cards that you have received direct from the source. It might be tempting to dump in all the emails you can find, but keep in mind that you will do yourself no favors by sending people who haven’t given your consent unsolicited emails.

What Kind of Content?
Your templates must be built around the content that you include. So, consider the type of information you want to include and remember that you should never have more than 300 words per newsletter.

Consider creating unique templates for different types of content. If you are sending out an announcement exclusively to promote an author appearance or promotion, this might be best handled by a no-nonsense one-column template, like this one that HarperOne created to promote their top 10 Easter books.

If you have a lot of different pieces of information to include, you might want to have a template that includes different blocks and columns, like this one veteran mystery author Sara Paretsky used to promote the launch of her new book (above). Front-and-center is the cover and description. News about a recent appearance is in the block below. To the right, she uses her portrait and description to orient subscribers to her site and brand. Below that, she promotes her tour dates. Remember that copy works best in short blocks accompanied by a link.

Gretchen Rubin has done an exemplary job communicating and connecting with her readers through her email newsletter. Rubin offers a variety of options for email communication, depending on the level of engagement her readers wish to have. There is a monthly newsletter (with content like hot topics, useful tips, resolutions, and always an invitation to connect). There are daily inspirational quotes. Plus, there’s the opportunity to engage further as a super fan, join the book club, or just receive blog posts by email.

Engage Your Readers
This is an opportunity to engage your readers beyond the written page. Write from the heart and speak directly to your readers. Include information they are not likely to find in any interview or publisher materials. Invite them to engage with you through social media or email. Done right, your newsletter will help you connect with readers on another level and inspire them to delve deeper into your work.

Lisa Hazen is a Chicago-based Web Designer specializing in author sites. You should totally subscribe to her newsletter. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, or the WWW. lisa@lisahazen.com

Author Websites

Free Hosting vs. Self-Hosting in WordPress

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The first step to creating a site is deciding how you will build it. The decision to use a content management system (CMS) is a no-brainer. A robust CMS will make it easy for you to modify everything from the site structure and navigation to styling, images, and content.

The following is a look at the pros and cons WordPress.com—the free version of the popular CMS and WordPress.org—the self-hosted version of the same platform. Although are many of other free and paid content management options available (Blogger and Squarespace, to name two), in my opinion, these two are the best in each class for authors.

Pros of WordPress.com

It’s free. This is the biggest pro, and for a lot of people, it’s a big one. Setup is incredibly easy. Simply visit WordPress.com and sign up for a free account. When you do, you will get a confirmation email that will permit you access into the dashboard of the account. Here, you will find all the tools you need to start building your site.

WordPress.com allows you just over 3MB of space for storage (which includes post copy and images). You are automatically set up to track statistics using the robust Stats tool. You can choose to build your site in posts or pages, with or without comments, and choose from free custom themes or elect to purchase a premium theme (more on that later). Most themes offer some sort of theme customization tool that allows you to select colors, layout options, and more. You also don’t need to worry about performing software updates or backups—these are all handled automatically right on the WordPress.com servers.

One other nice feature is that when you sign up for a WordPress.com site, you are automatically part of the WordPress.com blog network. Which means that your site may receive extra traffic from network referrals.

Cons of WordPress.com
Every big “Pro” deserves a proportionally big “Con.” And in WordPress.com’s case, the biggest is the terms of service. Specifically this part:

By submitting Content to Automattic for inclusion on your Website, you grant Automattic a world-wide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, modify, adapt and publish the Content solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting your blog. If you delete Content, Automattic will use reasonable efforts to remove it from the Website, but you acknowledge that caching or references to the Content may not be made immediately unavailable.

So, while you own your content, WordPress.com has full rights to it. Since what you are creating is your intellectual property, think long and hard about whether or not you would be willing to give up exclusive rights to it in order to have a free site.

Another big con is that WordPress reserves the right to display advertisements on your blog. Ads that you can neither approve nor control, much less make money from. You can purchase the No-Ads Upgrade for $30/year, which will prevent any ads from displaying on your site. But this obviously isn’t free.

If you have a site with sufficiently high traffic, you can elect to have WordPress.com host ads on your site, while you share in the revenue. You must apply for an account via WordAds and be approved through their service. Keep in mind that you still don’t have control over the ads served with WordAds—you are simply sharing in the revenue.

The next big downside is that WordPress.com has a lot of limitations to its usage. You cannot use custom plug-ins, only the suite of options that comes with the free service. You are also limited to the themes available under the THEMES > APPEARANCE tab. Although there are a variety of free themes available, premium themes range between $60 and $150. You are limited to that 3MB storage space (unless you upgrade and pay more). And no hosted video (again, unless you upgrade and pay $60/year for VideoPress). If you want your own domain name to register the site, it is $13/year. To get control over your site’s cascading style sheets (CSS), it is another $30/year. You can see that all this starts to add up.

What About WordPress.org?
When you self-host your WordPress site, you have pretty much all the freedom you want. You can host the site anywhere you want, install whatever theme you like—or build one from scratch. Whatever plugins you choose are only governed by any restrictions that your host might have.

Self-hosting for WordPress sites starts at about $7/month, and many hosts offer one-click installation, which means that you don’t need to worry about setting up databases, transferring theme files, or editing configuration files. Also, if ads are in your plan, you have the freedom to use them however you choose. In addition to increased costs, you are also responsible for backing up sites, and for keeping the WordPress software and plug-ins up-to-date. If you don’t maintain your free software updates, your site could be at an increased risk for hacks.

My Advice?
I have a friend who frequently quotes the following axiom, “You either pay. Or you pay.” (The latter said with the requisite gravitas and raised eyebrows.) In my opinion, there is no cost savings that could compensate for owning your content, controlling its use, and creating your brand. You want control over your personal identity, content and (most importantly) your books, and the extra work and cost involved is money well-spent.

Lisa Hazen has built countless author websites. You can find her on Twitter, Facebook, and the WWW. lisa@lisahazen.com