One of the main reason I switched over to WordPress years was the nifty follow button that shows your follower count and more importantly the ease of new posts showing up on your WP feed Reader. So imagine my surprise when I found that the self hosted WordPress sites do not have the follow button natively?
Of course there is a way to get it added, and it is not too difficult. And I did the WordPress follow button on to my sidebar here and my home page here.
1. Ensure your self hosted wordpress site/blog is Jetpacked powered. Basically check if this Jetpack plugin is installed. It usually is, but if it is not just do it.
Where do you want the button
2. Choose where on earth your site you are going to add the button. Just make sure it is a prominent place.
The most obvious choices are
sidebar header
footer
But in some cases, like this post, you can add it to your posts (see the end of the post).
So what do you think about this little ‘how to’ guide? Do you have your WordPress follow button enabled? If you want any other guide for book blogging let me know. Let us talk.
As many of us would agree, book review posts draw the least traffic and engagement in a book blog. Despite this notoriety, many of us don’t want to stop posting reviews as many of us including me started our book blogs initially to talk about the books we read and how we feel about them.
What makes a visitor comment on a post or not is not easy to understand. While it is not possible for us to satisfy and engage with every visitor, it is possible to tailor our review posts to suit their needs. And in the process, motivate them to create engagement and increase traffic.
Make the summary more interesting
Do you still copy the blurb/summary of the book from Goodreads or Amazon?
The plot summary is something that is usually placed on the top part of the review. When the readers come across something that they can read elsewhere, they tend to skim over them and lose connection with the post.
Skip the copy paste. Write the summary in your own words and keep it as short as you can. And that reminds me of something else.
Avoid including spoilers
One of the reasons that your visitor is skipping reading reviews on blogs is to avoid spoilers. Repeat visitors usually remember these bad experiences in a blog and may avoid their review posts altogether.
Make sure that you don’t spoil the reading experience for anyone else. And if at all, you can’t avoid a spoiler or two ensure they are hidden unless they are specifically clicked open.
Make your star rating stand out
The first thing most readers look at is a score or star rating when they visit a review post. So make sure your rating stands out from all your other texts. Explain why you rated the book as you did and obviously be fair in your rating.
Anyone with a blog can write a review. What makes yours different from the thousand others? YOU. People visit your blog and your review to know what YOU think about the book. They are not at a blog to get an impersonal, critique review. (But if you think that is what you want to do, please continue to do it with style.)
Try including your life and emotions into the review posts, just like you would in any other discussion or tag post. Be the fangirl that you are (or the snarky ray of sunshine as it might be), people like that kinda genuineness.
Improve the aesthetics
It is no secret that people love seeing beautiful and colorful things. Make your reviews pleasant to look at and maybe pepper in a few relevant GIFs just to hold in their attention.
It is often a criticism that bloggers are so focused on hyping up a book they like that they shy away from talking about the negatives in a book. This is especially true when they review a book they received from an author or publisher.
In my opinion, our duty as a blogger is first to the reader – to tell them what our honest views about the book. If you also share that opinion, please do share both the positives and negatives you may find in a book.
But be gentle and professional about your critique – say what worked for you and what didn’t. Remember you can be critical of the book, not the author.
End with a question or two
Another way to motivate your readers to comment is to pose questions at the end of your review. Ask both book specific questions, for people who have read the book already, and generic questions for others so that there will be something for all the readers to mull upon and answer.
Relate to other books
At the risk of annoying some readers when you get it wrong, comparing and relate the book you review with some other book or movie may help your reader to take a decision about the book.
More importantly, now the other Bridget Jones’ fans might be interested to comment on how true your comparison is..
Read popular books
When all else fails, people search for reviews of book that they read or want to read. Thus reviewing popular and trending books may improve your chances of engagement in book review posts.
You do not have to go out of your favorite genres to do this but reading popular ones in your genre is a good idea. And getting off your comfort zone may work for you as well.
What do you think makes a reader motivated to read and comment on your review? Or what do you as a reader would want in a book review to make it useful to make a decision? How to improve engagement in book review posts? Let us talk.
As many of us did, I started my blog to talk about the books I read aka book reviews. At some point, people in my real life could only take so much of my nerdiness and were glad that I found a place (where they weren’t required to be present) to do that.
That is why, despite what the statistics say and constant murmur about how “nobody reads book reviews”, I can’t give up writing on book reviews on my blog. Yes I agree they bring fewer comments and likes, if at all, but it is something I do for myself – even if it has shifted being a rant review from the initial days to a more structured format now.
It is true that many book bloggers have reduced the frequency of posting book reviews. And a few have even stopped posting them altogether on their blogs and publish them on Goodreads instead. Well, that is never happening on Elgee Writes.
I am good at over-analyzing things and sometimes I do make sense. I have been wondering why book reviews don’t get engagement, despite the fact that just few years ago, that was all the book blogs were doing.
Why book reviews don’t get engagement, actually?
Why aren’t book reviews getting the attention they deserve? Especially considering they are one of the hardest type of posts to write on a book blog. Well, let me over-analyze that for you.
“I want review of *insert hyped book title*!”
The popularity of the book reviews is almost dependent on how popular the books you review are. But as a reader/reviewer, I can not always read books that are popular because
I may not have access to all the popular books due to geography and duh.. money.
I may not be interested in those books, bringing me to the next point.
“I don’t read historical romance!”
Every reader/blogger has a favorite genre of books. And not everyone will love to read all genres. I for one, read very few Science Fiction and fewer Fantasy books.
I am definitely losing on readers who are looking for reviews of Sci-fi/Fantasy books. For want of more readers, I don’t think I can spend time reading what I am not interested. I know that goes against everything blogging stands for, but sorry.
“Reviews are very subjective”
More often than not, book reviews in blogs talk about what WE THINK of the book, as blogs should be doing. We end up talking what WE liked in a book and what WE didn’t. We do not talk about what was good and bad in an objective manner, nor many of us aim to do that too.
Obviously, we like that kinda subjectivity and prefer to keep that way. So unless the reader shares our tastes and preferences in choosing books, they may choose to ignore our reviews and we can do nothing about it.
“Part three? I have not even read the first!!”
Trilogies are all the rage currently. And when you review a book that is part of a series, you have a fairly smaller audience because unless they have read the other books the readers may not be interested in yours at all.
Sometimes readers might hold out on reading your review until they read other parts so that they can avoid its influenced.
“Have I heard of this book?!”
If your reading tastes are anything like mine, your reviews will be books that very few people have heard of. My reading list rarely consists of popular books, though I am trying to change that and begun reading more Young Adults and romances last year.
So it goes without being said, those book reviews have fewer engagements. As a reader of “not so popular-yet” books, I have to take that chance.
“Reviews are not honest enough”
Of late there has been a shift in the review field, that bloggers are shying away or refraining from giving a negative or even a moderately critical review for any book.
Yes I understand why they decide to do that (saving their mind’s peace is one of the main reason) but still as a reader I might want to know what went wrong in the book by reading a review.
So when that doesn’t happen often they might tend to quickly dismiss reviews as mere promotion tool for the author.
“What to comment?!”
Many a times, readers are genuinely stumped, not knowing what to say. Unless your reviews stand out and make them want to talk about them, book reviews usually do not invoke much response. What could they say about your thoughts about a book they have not read yet?
I usually throw them a lifeline asking something generic at the end of my post so that it might help to comment, even without reading that particular book. But beyond that, there is nothing else I can do about it.
Can we make book reviews better?
On an average, I follow about 50+ book blogs on a regular basis and if each even posts one book review per week I read about 150 book reviews approximately each month. I am sure many bloggers do more than I do.
That makes it quite understandable that people skip commenting on book reviews, which let’s face it, are a drag compared to other posts like tags or discussions.
So it is on us as a blogger to make the reviews more engaging and interesting. I will post more on that in the coming weeks.
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Let us talk
Do you still post book reviews on your blog? Why do you think book reviews don’t get engagement at all? If you are a reader, let us know what do you expect from a review to make it more useful? Let us talk.
I am glad you are still with me! I was wondering if I had chased of all you guys with those technical (read as: boring) blogging terms. And I am gonna go out on a limb and imagine that you are here for my next post on the series on blogging for non techies. And today let us talk about SEO basics for bloggers, even if you are a newbie.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization are just techniques to help the search engines find your site easily. I know it seems like some sorcery to increase the traffic but it is not so. Maybe it is, but I am only talking about those little things that you and I can do without having to relearn blogging entirely.
While I still want blogging to be fun and a place to talk about things you love, I don’t mind taking these small extra steps that may not take much of your time. Also, it is not like you have to do them all. Just pick only what you can do and enjoy blogging rather than stressing yourself too much.
The aim is finding a balance between using an unique keyword (that nobody uses) and using something that everyone uses. Give a bit of thought on ‘What search queries would your post answer to? ‘ and this will help you in achieving a better SEO as a blogger.
For example, let us talk about the keyword for my review on Fahrenheit 451, instead of using just the title of the book, I use the title and the word book review, just to make sure it is not the film but the book that I am reviewing.
This is just to give a basic idea, there are several free keyword planner tools online to help you choose better. But that is a topic for another day!
While I totally support using the keyword three or four times in your post, DO NOT JUST DUMP THE KEYWORD IN EVERY ALTERNATE SENTENCE. Google will punish you for overusing (keyword stuffing) it !
SEO friendly title
The whole objective of a title is to tell the reader (and the search engine) what the post is about. I know it may sound obvious but you will not believe the number of blogs that fail to do this. The easiest way to achieve this is to use the keyword itself, when it is possible.
I have been using this “book review: title of the book” as a standard format where title of the book is the keyword. Quite recently I found out “Title of the book – a review” works better, the keyword being at the beginning. I will let you know if changing them makes a difference.
Permalinks
Having a strong permalink or URL to your post is kinda important too. Make sure it is not too long or too short. And it ideally should contain the keyword. In case of a review, I usually include the title, the term review and if that is too short I add the author’s name too.
One of the major advantage of moving to WordPress is that I got to change all my permalinks (AKA the URLs) and get rid of those dates from them. The dates do not have anything with SEO, but I personally didn’t like them because they dated the posts and made the permalinks too long.
Use shorter paragraphs and headings
It should not come as a surprise when I say we, readers, have a short attention spans and that posts with shorter paragraphs work better. But including relevant headings to your paragraphs makes the search engine appreciate it better, because you are now telling it see what is important, ie, your heading.
Make an attempt to use headings (H2) and sub headings (H3) in your post, as relevant. If you can, include the keyword in your H2 tags (the headings) without making it too conspicuous.
Meta description
Another place to sneak in the keywords is the meta description, which is like the blurb to your post. Since it is the first few lines that a reader sees make sure it piques the interest of the reader before they click the link.
In case you don’t write a meta description, the search engine will use the first 160 characters of your post which may not be as good as you write your own. So it is always a better SEO practice to include the meta description.
Attention grabbing first paragraph
Just like in the real world, you get to make the first impression just once. Many people stop reading after the first three lines and if you don’t impress them by then, they would leave your page.
For this reason, I usually avoid copy pasting the blurb content (from Goodreads) as the first paragraph in my reviews. But whatever you add in there, just make sure the keyword is included.
Put your images to use
With blogging becoming more and more visual, we need to make sure our images are top notch. Be it just using the book cover or a relevant image from Google search, we need to make sure they are not only on brand but also SEO friendly.
Though search engine crawlers are essentially “blind”, we can make sure they index and rank our images with the image alternate text/tag. Including the alt text might seem negligible but it will be so much better than “IMG56784” when you fill the alt text with something relevant like “Blogging terms to know keyword”.
While you are at it, follow the same rule when you name your image.
Interlinking
I may have already spoken about how crucial interlinking the posts in your site was and I think it is worth a repeat. Basically you are trying to hold the attention of the reader to your blog and make them go binge reading your posts. Linking to your older reviews or any other relevant posts is a way to reduce the bounce rates as well.
Creating an archive page like Evelina has at her Avalinah’s Space or a simple index of your reviews is also a good idea. They offer a bird’s eye view of all your posts to the readers and helps the SEO crawlers staying within your blog.
While you are interlinking, make sure you fix all your broken links. There are lots of free link checkers like this one that list the error links for you.
Bonus: Install Yoast plugin
If you use self hosted WordPress for your site, do not think twice and install the YOAST plugin for all your SEO needs as a book blogger. It even guides you step by step.
If you need any help or have a query about any of these things, feel free to DM me on my social accounts or leave a comment here. I would be happy to help you out!
Do you focus on SEO as a blogger? Are you already doing any of these? Or if you don’t, why not? Which of these ideas do you think will be difficult to follow? Let us talk.
Do you ever feel intimidated by all the blogging terms around the internet? Have you ever tried to follow a blogging tutorial to attempt to make your blog more awesome than it already is, but then gave up because it got too technical?
Trust me, I have shut more than one article just because of that. Like I don’t have time to learn all that! I just want to know what to do make my blog better without having to get a PhD on blogging. Are you with me or is it just me?
If you are like me, your girl is here to save your butt. I put together a glossary for all those pesky blogging terms so that you don’t have to search anymore. And it is beginner friendly, so fret not.
[toc]
SEO or Search Engine Optimization
As the name suggests, SEO techniques help the search engine AKA Google (or whatever you are using) to find our website.
Do you often go to the second page of results on Google? I guess not. It is essential for us to rank higher on the SERP. The higher our page shows up in the search results page, better chances of a visitor clicking it.
To put it simply, Keyword(s) is what you type on Google when you are looking for something online. If we type a bunch of words, then it is called the keyphrases (since it is a bunch of keywords).
When you look at it from the other side as a blogger, when I am writing an article on the topic 8 Common grammar mistakes to avoid while writing, I have to make sure I sprinkle the keyword “Common grammar mistakes in writing” a few times.
This will help Google know what am talking about, and to show the page to someone who is looking for it.
Alternative text/tag/attribute
Alternative text describes when the image does not get loaded or is not visible. Screen readers usually read out these Alt texts, thus helping a visually impaired reader understand the image better.
Not only that search engines also use these texts to index the images in your post better and improves your SEO. So do not shy away from adding them to your images!
If you are posting an article on the topic8 Common grammar mistakes to avoid while writingwith relevant images, all you have to do is add descriptive text to those images in the alt tags. Here I used ‘Blogging terms to know – Keyword’. Pretty simple isn’t it?
Meta Description
Meta description is a short preview or snippet of what your post is about. These two lines are what Google shows you at the first glance before you click a link to a site.
They are also relevant for the search engines because meta elements (like meta descriptions) provide the administrative details about the author, description, date of publishing related to every post.
When you do not provide with a meta description, the search engines usually pick the first lines as the default settings, which may or not be an accurate description. So make sure your meta description is brief and straight to the point, even if your first few lines are not.
Take a look at my meta description for my review on A very large expanse of sea!
Backlinks
Backlinks refers to incoming links from other sites or blogs. For example when a blogger links to your post in their blog it is called a backlink.
Though it is not considered as important as it was once, backlinks still are important for a blog for the search engines to consider it important.
While permalink and slug are not the same, they are very similar in this context.
Permalink refers to the URL of your post in your website. Slug is a part of the permalink and it comes after your domain.
I promise I will write more on SEO and other blogging related stuff focusing on new bloggers. But you will have to wait for that. Until then you can take a look at these related posts.
Also if you have any questions or issues related to blogging you want me to address, feel free to leave a comment or contact me through social media.
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Let’s chat
Do blogging terms and techniques intimidate you? Do you follow any of such tips and tricks on your blog? Is there something specific you want me address in this series? Let us talk.
As someone who has been a book blogger for a while and silently lurking in the blogging world for even longer, believe me when I say that book blogging is not like the other niches of blogging out there. True that blogging is blogging and you are anyway talking to the void filled with imaginary (or not) readers but it does go deeper than that, even if you do not want to accept it.
Every time someone (not a book blogger) talks to me about new blogging tips and shortcuts they follow (read as: read on other blogs) and then lectures suggests me to apply them on my blog, I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. It is a good thing that most of my discussions are not face to face.
Listen I am not trying to say I know it all or the other person doesn’t, but how many times do I have to explain that most of those tips and techniques do not work for us, as a book blogger.
Why book blogging is different from other blogging niches?
Our problems are different.
The problems that the book bloggers face are so different from the other bloggers. So unless someone specifically addresses the problems of book bloggers in their posts (discussions and guides) we will not be able to use the generic blogging guides. Let me tell you why.We mostly blog for ourselves
We book bloggers blog because we need a place to talk about books. More like, yell, shout and scream about books. Everything else comes later.
I started my blog because I didn’t have many friends who read in real life. They didn’t understand my angst when a character died or the pain of waiting out for a sequel. It was not their thing. There began my journey of writing whatever I felt (even dared to call them reviews- forgive my young and stupid self) and later found my kindred spirits who understood me so well.
Credit: Tenor
That has not changed for me, and most of us. But that makes a huge difference from the other niches which predominantly work aiming at making money or coaching/training people. MOST OF US DO NOT HAVE SUCH A GOAL OR COURSE.
That being said, if you have a successful business idea/plan based on your book blog, you, my friend, are a rock star! Kudos!
We do not get paid or even expect to get paid
Speaking of making money, about 95% of the book bloggers I know do not make money out of their blog. Or even expect to. In fact we spend on the blog much more than we get out of it, financially speaking.
Many bloggers (non book bloggers) earn money to run their blog and more. They charge a good sum of money to review new products or just to talk about them on their channels. They have more avenues to earn, which book bloggers fail to utilize or maybe they don’t simply work for us.
Credit: Tenor
To be honest, we are more than happy to consider receiving free books to review as a fair remuneration. Many of the internationals (a term we use to refer to book bloggers who live outside the USA and the UK) do not even have access to them.
But most of us are happy doing what we love, ie, talking about books for free. Even accepting remuneration for book reviews is kinda looked down upon in the current scenario.
Far fewer number of page hits
Deciding who the audience are makes a huge difference in the blogging world. That is where the niche comes up. A lifestyle blogger might cater to a different set of audience from a fitness blogger. And most of the generic blogging tips will work for a lifestyle or a tech blogger will not work for other niche bloggers.
For example, a mid range ‘successful’ blog in any other niche gets about 1000 to 5,000 visitors each day, which seems too very far fetched for most book blogs. But trying to improve SEO and pinning on Pinterest can only get us to a point, it will not take us to the million hits in the near future. ( I seriously hope I am wrong though.)
What holds good for others, mostly doesn’t work for us.
Many affiliates are not successful
I have seen many many bloggers who stand by affiliate marketing and they even earn a sizable amount as income. By affiliates I mean linking to other sites like Amazon, Barnes and Nobles etc. And it does sound easy money, in paper, even for a book blogger. But in reality not so easy.
As it in my case, 70% of my visitors are other book bloggers, not a random person who is looking to buy a book, who already has or sometimes, even read the book already. Combine this with the already fewer number of page visits and be prepared to be dejected with the even lesser income through your affiliate links.
More genuine reviews
Not everything is bad, to be honest. I feel the book reviewers are far more honest when it comes to talking about the products, ie, books. Maybe it has something to do with ‘not getting paid’ that I spoke about earlier.
Credit: Tenor
They do not particularly have a need to boost up the sales of a book or the author, even though we do all that anyway.
Amazing and strong community support
I know the blogging world as such is really friendly. But the book blogging community is even more welcoming to newbies and others alike. They are more understanding because most of us are inner nerds and introverts and we understand what it is to be a bookworm who disappears into a book.
The community has so much love and warmth to share, mostly, and you always get a helping hand if you ask for it. I think the book bloggers are more powerful collectively. Look at how we campaign for diverse representation in books! I am not so sure if other niche bloggers feel so loved and non competitive among each other.
Credit: Tenor
Despite all these, do not lose hope. There are some amazing book bloggers who have been sharing guides and how to’s specifically for us. Let me know if you need any help!
Do you agree with book blogging is so different from other niches? If so, how? Do you think book blogging can ever be a full time income earning career? Why not? Let us talk.
