To those who don’t work specifically in marketing or technology, thinking about SEO seems like a Herculean effort. SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization” and it is part of the way that readers find your website when searching for your name or books. Ideally, you want your name to come up in the first position. Same for your book titles. But for more specific terms like “equestrian literature” or “gay erotic romance”, it’s SEO that’s going to help you rank on the first page. (Unless you purchase Google ads, for example.) I use a WordPress plugin called AIOSEO to help me with my SEO, and for the longest time I looked at the scores it gave me and wondered how to interpret the Headline and SEO scores.
The image above shows the headline score in orange (55 meh. That’s okay, but I could do better) and the overall SEO score in green (89 Nice!). In this blog post, I’ll walk you through how to interpret the headline and seo scores and what you should be aiming for. Just so you’re aware this screen image came from a blog I wrote a couple of days ago on another site.
Let’s start with the Headline Score
The headline is the title of your post or page. Good headlines are short, about 5 to 7 words, try to convey what the post is about, and draw in the reader. To the left you see the headline I started with, and it scored 66. That’s good, and you see the program even tells me with a “Looks good!” and two thumbs up.
I try to strive for a headline score close to 50 or higher, and I love it when the box turns green. I got this screen by clicking on the headline score, and there’s an option to try another headline. The results were much improved and that’s the headline I went with.
To me the headline is probably the most difficult part of the blog post. And if you are uploading an episode for your serial, a blog hop post that requires a certain style headline, there may be times when you can’t boost the score. That’s okay. I don’t know about you, but I much prefer blogs that sound like they were written by people, not AI or marketers trying to hit a certain keyboard enough to get paid.
If you’re curious as to why your headline is scoring the way it is and looking for ways to improve it, when you scroll down you’ll see the breakdown of the scores. This is from the current headline. It leads with “How To” which is considered a power word, has a good length, and contains common words.
To be honest, anything beyond an overview of this, I think is getting into territory where most authors won’t need to venture unless they really want to. For the most part, aim for scores around 55 to 65 or higher, and I’ll be sharing more tips in future blogs about SEO, because it is a topic I think especially for those authors selling courses or services, to be aware of. And it’s also a huge topic to get your arms around, so starting small like with these scores is a great way to handle it.
Why I recommend AIOSEO
Why should you even install the WordPress plugin AIOSEO? I’ve tried a few SEO plugins and I’ve found AIOSEO to be one of the easier ones to use. It gives clear information and direction for help. The free version is also robust enough that most authors won’t need to get the professional version. I’m very happy with the free version I use on all my sites, and frankly, until I run out of features to explore I probably won’t even think about upgrading.
I’ve also interacted with their support team and gotten reasonable help, which is saying something for the free WordPress support forums and using the free version of a plugin whose pro version comes with a pretty hefty price tag. All in all, it’s a plugin I recommend to my clients and one I use myself.
If you’re looking for more SEO and WordPress related posts, I have several planned over the next few weeks. Just check the “SEO for Authors” category for more.