Sites That May Supply Good Book Traffic

1. Alexa.com

http://www.alexa.com/

Alexa’s Web site is built on the notion that timely and relevant information is essential to a vital web experience.

Alexa Site Information – Alexa has built an unparalleled database of information about sites that includes statistics, related links and more. All of this information can be found on Alexa’s Site Overview pages, Traffic Detail pages and Related Links pages. To access these pages, simply type the URL of any site into the Alexa Search box.

Alexa Top Sites – Alexa has lists of Top Sites available by country, language or in a category. You can download a free file of the global top million sites sorted by Alexa Traffic Rank.

Alexa Site Audit – Alexa will crawl and analyze your website to give you an in depth view of your site’s visibility to search engines, insights into optimization, monetization and overall health of your site.

2. Good Reads.com (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 1,836)
http://www.goodreads.com/

Promote your book at Goodreads, which is a large community of readers and those in the writing profession.

Goodreads is the largest social network for readers in the world. We have more than 4,100,000 members who have added more than 110,000,000 books to their shelves. A place for casual readers and bona-fide bookworms alike, Goodreads members recommend books, compare what they are reading, keep track of what they’ve read and would like to read, form book clubs and much more. Goodreads was launched in December 2006.

3. How Stuff Works (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 804)
http://www.howstuffworks.com/

If you can connect with the audience for this site you may make many connections for your work.

From car engines to search engines, from cell phones to stem cells, and thousands of subjects in between, HowStuffWorks has it covered. No topic is too big or too small for our expert editorial staff to unmask … or for you to understand. In addition to comprehensive articles, our helpful graphics and informative videos walk you through every topic clearly, simply and objectively. Our premise is simple: Demystify the world and do it in a simple, clear-cut way that anyone can understand.

4.  Self Growth.com is a good site to connect with if you have books about topics such as self growth, self-esteem, better lifestyles, etc. (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 3,618)
http://www.selfgrowth.com/

Our company’s mission is to provide informative, quality Self Improvement and Natural Health information to help people improve their lives. We provide information ranging from Goal Setting and Stress Management to Natural Health and Alternative Medicine.

5. Prevention.com is good if you are into topics dealing with health, healthy eating, etc. (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 10,643)   http://www.prevention.com/health/

About Prevention

For 60 years, Prevention has delivered the kind of authoritative information, breaking news and energizing lifestyle advice that women can use today for a happier, healthier, stronger life tomorrow and beyond. With Prevention, she continuously discovers health, beauty, fitness and nutrition advice that makes her more inspired, more confident than ever before.

Industry acclaim, large and unwavering consumer demand and highly actionable, relevant content have changed the way these women see life: always fresh, always optimistic and always better with a dose of Prevention.

6. Huffingtonpost.com is a cool site for those “think tank” or news oriented type books or blogs

(Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 151)    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

(II) We want the Huffington Post to be home to open, transparent conversations in which people connect, discuss, share ideas, and debate the issues.

On-line Literary Communities to join and/or become active in

1. Authors Den  (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 37,157)   

http://www.authorsden.com/

AuthorsDen is focused on re-creating the historical face-to-face author and reader relationship where authors create, share, interact with each other and sell direct to their readers, but this time rather than taking place in a town square or temple it takes place online and throughout the world.

2. Red Room (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 77,741)   

http://www.redroom.com/

Many Red Room authors and members have discovered the benefits of being part of our online literary community. According to Red Room author Jessica Barksdale Inclán:

“What Red Room has done for me is remind me that writers—in slightly different ways—think about the same things. We have idea issues, editing issues, reading issues. We all must face the market out there, those who buy our work. No matter if we write children’s books or nonfiction journalism, we have to find our way to the public. We have to all sit down one morning and start.”

In addition to camaraderie, Red Room can provide you with the resources you need to grow your personal audience—whether you’re looking for an audience of readers or book buyers.

3. Authonomy (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 94,620)   

http://www.authonomy.com/

Authonomy Writing Community. Get Read. Get Noticed. Get Published.

authonomy^TM is a writing community site for writers, readers and publishers, conceived and developed by book editors at HarperCollins. We want to flush out the brightest, freshest new literature around – we’re glad you stopped by.

If you’re a writer, authonomy is the place to show your face – and show off your writing on the web. Whether you’re unpublished, self-published, looking to get published, or just getting started, all you need is a few chapters to start building your profile online, and start connecting with the authonomy writing community.

And if you’re a reader, blogger publisher or agent, authonomy is for you too. The book world is kept alive by those who search out, digest and spread the word about the best new books – authonomy invites you to join our community, champion the best new writing and build a personal profile that really reflects your tastes, opinions and talent-spotting skills.

4. Amazon Author Central (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 15)   

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/

Welcome to Author Central (beta), a free service provided by Amazon to allow authors to reach more readers, promote books, and help build a better Amazon bookstore.

We love books, and books begin with authors. As an author, you are part of a special community at Amazon. At Author Central, you have the opportunity to share the most up-to-date information about yourself and your work with your readers — you can view and edit your bibliography, add a photo and biography to a personal profile, upload missing book cover images, and use a blog to connect with readers.

One example of how we share this information with customers can be seen in Author Pages. We created Author Pages as a simple way for customers to more easily find their favorite authors and discover new ones. (Take a look at Author Pages for Nora Roberts and Neil Gaiman.)

Author Central also helps you to enroll your books in programs like Search Inside the Book and Kindle so that they are readily available for any customer to browse and buy.

If you’re an author with a book listed in our catalog, you are eligible to join Author Central. You can use your Amazon.com customer account to get started (or create a new one if needed).

As you begin to use Author Central, please don’t hesitate to give us your feedback along the way. Our author service team is available to answer questions, accept suggestions and feedback, and provide any guidance you need.

5. Papercuts (Alexa Global Traffic Rank: 93)   

http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/

About Paper Cuts

Paper Cuts is a blog about books and other forms of printed matter, written by the editors of the Book Review. Look here for book news and opinion, interviews with writers, regular raids on the Book Review’s archives, and other special features.

6. Scribd (60 million readers every month)

http://www.scribd.com/

Scribd is the world’s largest social reading and publishing company. We’ve made it easy to share and discover entertaining, informative and original written content across the web and mobile devices. Our vision is to liberate the written word, to connect people with the information and ideas that matter most to them.

Then there is Google Blog Search

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en

This is a search engine designed to find top ranked Blogs in your topic area. Take a look at the top five Blogs each time you conduct a search. If you find a post you like, read it and leave a comment. When you fill out the information for your comment, make sure to provide a link back to your Blog.

I suggest you leave one to five comments a day at five different Blogs.

Start small. Select one of these sites and explore for about a week before moving on. Join if possible. Read and leave comments when you can.  If the site allows you to leave original posts such as short stories, poetry, journalism, etc., do so. Once you have explored all of them, set up a schedule to drop by and visit regularly and leave content or comments.  Always find a way to provide a way back to your Blog and/or Site without being too pushy. On November 19, 2010, there were about 234 million global Websites and 151 million Blogs. Forty-seven million Websites were added in 2009. There are almost two billion Internet uses on the planet and YouTube serves more than one billion videos. In 2009, about 247 billion emails were sent and 81% were spam. Sources: Blog Pulse at http://www.blogpulse.com/  and Hub Pages at http://hubpages.com/hub/internet-usage-statistics-global-net-users-number-growth-of-world-traffic-trend

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

If you want to subscribe to iLook China, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.

Why Link Exchanges are Bad for Your Site’s Health

Site Pro News: October 18, 2010 Feature Article

By Neil Holley-Williams (c) 2010

Note from Lloyd Lofthouse: On Sunday, October 17, at the branch marketing meeting, I talked about the importance of linking but also warned about what this post by Neil Holley-Williams covers. I’ve read some excellent advice at Site Pro News, and they granted us permission to repost on the CWC Berkeley Branch Marketing Blog.

Read the entire post but pay attention to Holley-Williams’ last few paragraphs.  Read them more than once. If you have questions, ask me.

_________________

About The Author
Neil Holley-Williams runs HW marketing, a Chichester web design company providing very affordable websites and SEO for small and medium sized businesses. Neil has worked in the IT industry for over 25 years for companies such as IBM, Carnival UK, Invesco Perpetual, and Skandia Life.

For more information visit www.hwmarketing.co.uk/seo

_________________

So you’ve got yourself a website and are all excited about it. You tell your friends, colleagues and business contacts and the first thing they say is ” Oooh, that’s great, you can link to mine and I’ll link to yours”… and everybody involved thinks this is a great idea because hey, the more links you have the more popular your site is with Google.

Now this is all very well if you are talking about a few links between ‘networking businesses’, but in the bigger picture, exchanging reciprocal links is not a good way to ingratiate your site with Google.

Be wary of joining Link Exchange Schemes or you could catch a nasty cold!

If reaching Page 1 were that easy, all we’d have to do is put a couple of hundred (or a thousand) links from our web pages to other pages and ask them to do the same. Websites would immediately become ‘huge link banks’ rather than sources of information which is essentially what they should be in every case, even commercial sites.

Google views 1 to 1 reciprocal linking very, very low in importance, for just that reason.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do your friends a favor and they not do the same for you, but just think about what Google thinks is important or you might just experience a long-term negative impact.

Google LIKES inbound links to your site where there is no reciprocal link back. Why? Because that scenario is a neutral (and therefore more valuable) editorial vote for your site’s content.

Google ABSOLUTELY LOVES the inbound (and not reciprocated) link where the link is from a site that is relevant and complementary to your own, ESPECIALLY if that site is regarded highly by Google already. So if you do arrange that reciprocal link with a business friend, just consider that your visitors may find their site irrelevant to what they are looking for. e.g. don’t link to your friend’s Doggie Washing Service if your site is about Commercial Property Investment—for example. Keep it relevant.

So how do you go about getting quality links?

What about Link Exchanges? You know, those people who drop an e-mail into your inbox, offering a campaign where your site offers other sites (with similar relevant content to yours) a link, and in exchange they add a link to yours.

Well, we’ve just blown reciprocal links out of the water, but schemes that promise hundreds of links are not a good idea.

Don’t take my word for it. This is what Google has to say: “..Excessive link exchanges, could “negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”

“Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or Page Rank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or ‘bad neighborhoods’ on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.”

“Some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results.”

“The best way to get other sites to create relevant links to yours is to create unique, relevant content that can quickly gain popularity in the Internet community. The more useful content you have, the greater the chances someone else will find that content valuable to their readers and link to it.”

So ok. If you can’t use Link Exchanges, how do you go about getting quality ‘votes’ for your site?

Link exchanges used to be popular, but are the old way of getting links and although links of any type to your site are still counted, there is always the risk that you could catch a very bad cold if you actively participate in link exchanges.

Start to look at the social networking sites and get your site out there. Social networking sites such as Digg, Twitter, Delicious, Facebook, and StumbleUpon are able to drive massive traffic to your site; but only if you have unique and interesting content.

The more interesting your content, the greater the chance that someone else will find your content useful to their visitors and link to you. Always consider your outbound links as part of your content.

If you link to sites stuffed with irrelevant adverts or to a site that tells you how to Wash a Dog (and your site is about Property Investment), then visitors are going to question your motives and will not link their sites to yours.

So focus on good quality content and then look at using social networking to drive visitors to your site. If you have good content, then other sites will start to link to yours.

If you ARE involved in Link Exchanges, visit the reciprocal links as often as you can and make sure you don’t have an unhealthy neighbor and that you still have a link back.

Always remember that the risks of a Link Exchange system far outweigh the benefits.

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Re-posted with permission. This post is courtesy of Site Pro News