Photo by William Fortunato
As an author, your primary goal is not just to write a book but to ensure it reaches as many readers as possible. One of the most effective ways to achieve this is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO). For nonfiction authors, SEO blogging can be a powerful tool to build visibility, connect with your target audience, and boost your book sales.
SEO is the practice of optimizing your online content so that a search engine will display it as one of the top results for searches of a certain keyword. For authors, this means tailoring your blog posts, author website, and any other online content to appear in search results when potential readers search for topics related to your book. Ultimately, it’s not enough to simply have a website; you need to ensure that it shows up in results when people search for your topic.
Here’s a guide to help you effectively navigate the world of SEO blogging for nonfiction authors.
Why is SEO important?
SEO helps your stuff be found online. That means that people searching for topics related to your book will be more likely to discover it if you use the appropriate keywords and write blog posts targeting these keywords. It also means that your wider work will be more discoverable.
Many nonfiction writers are coaches, healers, and therapists. Others are business consultants and coaches. These are all helping professions: people who want to help others, using their unique area of expertise.
Essentially, SEO will help you to help more people, because they’ll be able to find you online. You may be the best coach/consultant/healer in your niche, but if no one has ever heard of you, it doesn’t really matter. SEO will help you get your message out there to a wider audience, meaning you’ll be able to help more people.
How it’s helped me as an author
SEO blogging has helped me in many ways. It’s doubled my website traffic and even led to TV appearances, podcast invitations, and collaborations on books by other authors. All of this leads to increased visibility and, ultimately, selling more books.
Know what they’re searching for
If you work one-on-one with clients on topics related to your books, you probably start off by sending them an intake form. This is very useful information. What do your ideal clients need help with? What problems do they want to solve by working with you (or reading your book)?
Go through your old intake forms and start making notes of everything that seems relevant. From now on, it would be good to start a new document where you drop in these problems and issues every time you take on a new client. Also go through your testimonials to see what stands out. What do clients praise you for?
Start with Main Topics
Plan your blog around a series of main topics. If you have multiple books, you’ll want to have a main topic for each book.
For example, on my blog, I have a few different main topics that relate to her outdoor books:
- Downs Link – One of the books is called Adventure on the Downs Link, which is a little-known trail in southeast England. I have four blog posts on this topic.
- Plant Communication – One of the books, Secrets of Plant Spirit Healing with Mugwort, is about plant communication and healing. I have three pieces of content on this topic.
- South Downs Way – My first walking book, Alone on the South Downs Way, is about one of the most popular National Trails in England, and I’ve written four blog posts on this topic.
- The Ridgeway – This is another popular National Trail, and I have written five blog posts about it.
- Tree communication – My bestselling book, If Trees Could Talk, is about tree communication, so I’ve got several blog posts and podcast episodes on this topic.
- Wey-South Path – Another book, Adventure on the Wey-South Path, is another lesser-known trail in southeast England, and I have four blog posts on this topic.
- Women’s safety – This is a topic that comes up over and over when I talk about my solo adventures, which I write about in all four of my walking books, so I’ve got several different pieces of content (both blog posts and podcast episodes) about this.
Please don’t get overwhelmed by this list. It’s just to give you an idea of how each main topic fits into each book. Since you’re just getting started, select one of your books to focus on and move on to the next step.
Move on to Keyword Research
Before you write a single word of your blog, you need to understand what your potential readers are searching for. Keyword research helps you identify the search terms your audience uses. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or SEMrush can provide insights into popular search terms related to your book’s subject matter. Another easy tool—and the one that I use—is called Keysearch.
What you want to look for are “long-tail keywords.” These are very niche keyword phrases that are longer than just a word or two. They may have lower search volumes, but they often have higher conversion rates. For instance, instead of “leadership,” you might target “leadership strategies for business coaches.”
This is where we’re going to find at least 10 keywords for each main topic. Ideally, you want to have one cornerstone blog post for each main topic, and then 3-4 smaller blog posts that link to the main one and are also interlinked with each other. Why? Because Google sees you as an “expert” if you have 4+ articles on a topic.
But let’s start with a list of 10 keywords (or as close to that you can get) so you can choose from them when you sit down to write.
How they link together
Here’s one example of how it all fits together. For the Ridgeway example, the cornerstone blog post is Walking The Ridgeway: Planning Your Ridgeway Walk. This is the main post and was written first. Four other posts link to this cornerstone post and they also interlink with each other:
- The Ridgeway National Trail: Events on The Ridgeway
- Camping on The Ridgeway: Planning Your Ridgeway Walk
- Walking The Ridgeway National Trail: Hillforts Along The Ridgeway
- Ancient Sites to Explore: Hillforts Near The Ridgeway National Trail
Can you guess which keywords are targeted in each post?
If you use the Yoast SEO plugin, be sure to flag the cornerstone post as such.
Crafting SEO-Optimized Blog Posts
Once you have your keywords, it’s time to start writing. However, simply cramming your posts full of keywords won’t suffice; Google values quality and user engagement. “Keyword stuffing” used to be a common practice, but thankfully Google has gotten smarter. Articles that were stuffed full of keywords were awkward to read.
When writing each post, think about how you can help your readers. Write content that adds value. Your goal is to solve problems, answer questions, and provide insights. Write naturally, and once your rough draft is finished, you can go back and add your keywords in strategic places (without going overboard).
Use headers to structure your blog effectively (see how we’ve done that in this post?). This not only helps with readability but also allows search engines to better understand your content.
If your content is visual (like a travel blog), be sure to include lots of photos. You can see examples in the Ridgeway posts that were linked above.
Where to put keywords
Include keywords naturally in your title, headers, and throughout your content.
- Title and subtitle (see how we’ve used both in many of the blog posts we used as an example?)
- First paragraph of the blog post
- First subheading of the post
- As many other subheadings where the keyword naturally fits
- Throughout your blog post
- Meta description
People also ask
Sometimes, when you search for something on Google, you’ll see a section of the search results called “People also ask.” Once you’ve written your blog post, search for your topic and see if that comes up. Make note of each of the questions and add them to your blog post as subheadings. Write at least one solid paragraph to answer each question.
Link to your book
Remember, we’re not just blogging for the sake of blogging. Ultimately, you want people to buy your books. So be sure to include a prominent link in your blog posts—along with an eye-catching image of the cover—so that people can purchase it. And be sure to write a call to action: something like “Do you want to learn more about [TOPIC]? Click here to buy my book.”
Update your posts
Don’t think that once you’ve hit “publish” on your blog post, you’re done. You’re just done for now. Google likes it when your website—and your blog posts—are updated regularly with fresh content. That’s why, when I write a list post, I plan for expansion: 35+ Ways to Make More Money from Your Nonfiction Book and 50+ Ways to Market Your Book, for example.
Whenever I have new ideas to add to an existing blog post, I update it. My cornerstone post on Walking the South Downs Way: Planning Your Adventure has been updated 27 times, for example. Sometimes it’s just little details, sometimes it’s a new paragraph or two. It’s also a good idea to Google your keyword and check to see if there are new “People also ask” questions that you can answer in your post.
One easy way to update a blog post is to go into Google, search for your keyword, and see if there are new “People who ask” questions that come up. Add those as subheadings and write at least one paragraph to answer the questions.
Another easy way to update a blog post is to keep an eye on your website traffic and look at the search terms people are using to arrive at your website. See if any of them are different enough to add as subheadings to your blog post.
Google Search Console
You will also want to sign up for Google Search Console if you haven’t already. This will give you a monthly email with useful data that will help you to update your blog posts with even more useful information.
You’ll get the following info:
- Top growing pages compared to previous month
- Top performing pages
- How do people find you? Top growing queries compared to previous month
- Top performing queries
- And demographic data about your audience and how they access your website
See if you’re already targeting the exact search terms that people are using. You are probably using some version of them, since people are using those terms to arrive at your site. If you’re not using the exact terms, but something similar, add the exact terms people are using to your blog posts.
Create other content
If you’re the kind of author who loves creating content, then consider adding podcast episodes and YouTube videos that are related to your main topics. You can link to these from your blog and provide podcast and video transcripts that will help your SEO.
For example, I have a main topic of “women’s safety” and I’ve created a number of blog posts and podcast episodes around this topic. The cornerstone blog post is Solo Hiking for Women: Staying Safe in the Outdoors. Six other posts and podcast episodes link to this cornerstone post, and they also interlink with each other:
- Podcast episode 477 Nicole Snell ~ Mastering Outdoor Self-Defense
- Podcast episode 462 Holly Worton ~ Overcoming the Fear of Solo Walking and Adventures
- Podcast episode 414 Rebecca Walsh ~ Solo Hiking for Women
- Podcast episode 393 Holly Worton ~ Staying Safe in the Outdoors
- Solo Trail Running for Women: Staying Safe in the Outdoors
- Tips for Traveling Alone: Solo Female Travel Tips
Set yourself a goal
Once you’ve written your first SEO-optimized blog post, all you need to do is repeat the process for your subsequent posts. Set yourself a goal of 30 optimized blog posts, and slowly work your way through the list. This was first suggested to me back in 2020 when I did SEO blog coaching with Yvette Webster. Yvette recommended writing 30 SEO blog posts and waiting six months to see the results. It worked!
SEO is not an instant solution that will bring you massive web traffic within days. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. That’s why it’s important to get started sooner, rather than later.
Clean up your blog
If your website is an older one, you may have years of blog posts on all kinds of topics. To improve your SEO, you may want to delete or hide these posts. I have been actively blogging on my hollyworton.com website since 2011, with blog posts on life coaching, social media marketing, business mindset, and outdoor adventures.
When I decided to start blogging for SEO on outdoor and nature topics (rather than blogging about whatever I felt like), I went back and deleted hundreds of old blog posts. It was painful, but my website traffic increased significantly in the months after I decluttered the old posts.
Keep a list
Keep a Google document, Apple Note file, or some type of system to collect ideas for blog posts, whether or not they relate to your main topics and cornerstone posts. Whenever a client asks you a question that requires a lengthy response, this can be made into a blog post for use with other clients. Just do some keyword research before you write it so you can use the best search terms for the article.
Optimize Your Blog Posts for AI Search
If you haven’t been living in a cave for the last couple of years, you’ve probably heard how AI has disrupted just about everything. And that means that SEO is changing, too. Everything I wrote in this post is still relevant, however you want to think of a few additional details when optimizing for AI. Learn more in my blog post, SEO Blogging for AI: How Nonfiction Authors Can Optimize Blog Posts for AI Search.
There’s more to SEO
There’s more to SEO than just blogging with keywords, but this is a great start, and you should see results within six months or so. You might want to expand into learning about link building and other SEO strategies. But for now, start with blogging.
Start small, keep learning, and continuously refine your strategies. Remember, the ultimate goal of your SEO efforts is to ensure that when someone searches for information relevant to your book, your content is what they find first.
Need more help?
If you’d like someone to map this out for you, we can help! Check out our SEO Blog Strategy for Nonfiction Authors service.
