Search engine optimization was one of the motivating factors for my taking the time and effort to start a blog for Outskirts Press.
It can work for promoting your published book, too. When you publish with Outskirts Press, you receive promotion tips just like this, and then some.
It seems to be working. I've been posted 1-3 posts a day since January 4th (it's now the 19th), and this blog comes up number 6 overall on a Yahoo search for Custom Book Publishing based solely upon content.
The beauty of XML and other "feed" blogs is they generate links dynamically and automatically, one of the difficulties in creating valid search engine optimization for algorithms like Google.
Another advantage is that, while "Custom Publishing" was taken as a domain name, it was available as a sub-domain name for my blog. So were "self-publishing" -- a highly sought after position for our industry. Now it's ours and we'll soon contribute to that blog to create contextual search engine placement.
I'm contemplating open a general blog for all Outskirts Press authors so they can all log in and post their promotions, or thoughts, or feedback. While there's no shortage of positives for doing this, the potential negatives are making me think it out more thoroughly. For one, from what I can tell of this Blooger.com service, once a person has access, they can re-edit previous posts to their hearts' content. Fine for me since I like being able to adjust my typos, but bad if Joe Schmo logs in and places his post and then alters Jasmine's. I could program our own blog for Outskirts Press, and this may be ultimately what we end up doing so I can have full control over the look and functionality, but that's waaaay--aaayyy down on the to-do list.
Brent
CEO
http://outskirtspress.com
