In terms of establishing an online presence, building an author’s website improves the way writers can engage with readers. A proper website acts as a place for finding your creations, advertising your work, and interacting with people. Some authors assume however that making a website is an expensive matter or that it involves technological knowledge that they do not have. This guide will help to overcome such misunderstandings and give an easy way to create author website free without writing code. Let’s begin!
Selecting the right content management system, configuring your website’s layout, and boosting it with SEO are the vital aspects of creating a successful website that reflects your vision and focus.
Step 1: Choosing Your Website Platform
Creating an author’s website becomes easier if you know the right web builders that will help promote your authorship. One of the easiest ways is to go with WordPress.com because it has a lot of resources and authors-related themes and plugins to choose from and customize your site. There are other free web-building sites that are Author’s friendly and have a good rating as well.
Wix and Site123 provide good website-building options as well. Wix has plenty of designs that are good for authors, while Site123 is a ready-made website builder without codes. On the other hand, Truehost is a very promising platform too, whereby it is user friendly and helps to build your website quite fast. In addition, Truehost is memorable in terms of hosting and buying a domain name, and any author who is looking for affordability can consider it an amazing choice since Truehost offers cheap plans.
In essence, the rewriting process while being able to engage and connect with your fans closely, depends on the platform you select.
Now then, I would recommend WordPress.com without a doubt if you were looking for a blogging site that you could pair your author’s site with. Conversely, if you are looking for a less hands-on approach that is more graphics-oriented, then Truehost, Wix or Site123 would be more appropriate. The chosen platform will affect how easy it is for you to create content and interact with your followers.
Step 2: Register Your Domain Name
Once you have gone through the websites that accompany the builder and are satisfied, the next crucial step would be to purchase the domain name. This means that your domain name should represent who you are as an author in the broadest context possible. It should be either your name or a brand that is closely attached to your work.
Try to make a domain name that is not too long, easy to remember, and straightforward to say. Use Truehost, GoDaddy, or Namecheap to check whether the chosen name is available and register the domain. We recommend that you refrain from doing so for now because many website builders issue free subdomains, for instance, yourname.wordpress.com, but you can invest in a more professional domain, yourname.com.
It is also easier for readers to track you down across the internet with a personalized domain name, this strengthens your brand. A good domain name gives authority and professionalism, which are important in appealing to potential readers and getting them engaged in your work.
Step 3: Design Your Author Website
After registering your domain name, now is the time to focus on your author’s website. Most website builders usually have templates that are tailor-made for authors making it easy to establish an alluring layout without having the necessary design knowledge.
Start by selecting a theme that represents your writing style and genre. Moreover, make sure you also highlight your recording side, showcasing on the main page what your readers should expect in your future works. Embellish your author website with a header image or video, a brief introduction of yourself, or your books/projects.
If you also have an “About Me” page, the listing of books written, events, and contact information, try also to set this into separate pages. A good design of a site will not only call visitors to the site but will also keep them glued to the site making it very vital in today’s world.
Read also: The Ultimate Showdown: Author Website Builder Comparison
Step 4: Add Content
Once the plan for your site is set, you can go ahead and fill it with content. The very first step goes by writing catchy content on every page starting with an “About Me” page that elaborates on who are you as a person, and more importantly, as a writer who creates.
Create separate pages for your books with covers, descriptions, author reviews, and buying or downloading links. And why not include writing blog posts and sharing your experience of the book world? This also helps you build up an authority in your niche and keeps the visitors interested.
Fresh content is always a reason for readers to revisit a website, so what about adding a newsletter subscription form so that the database can be directly emailed to them? Thus, by supplying relevant content that your target readers will be interested in, you will establish better links with future readers.
Read also: 7 Best Website Builders for Authors with Built-in Newsletters
Step 5: Optimize your website to satisfy the requirements of search engines.
Another important concern you should address is the visibility of your author’s website, which can be managed by search engine optimization (SEO). This is the placement of a normative combination of words that your potential readers are likely to type while searching for books of a specific genre or specific title of an author.
Do not forget to add meta tags and alt texts for each relevant image as they are key to telling search engines what this or that content is about! It is better to learn the simplest SEO strategies, or you may turn to SEO plugins offered by WordPress as a quick way to get familiar with the topic and know how to optimize your website efficiently.
And of course, regularly updating your site with new content indicates to search engines that you are active and that the site is relevant to web users – this could eventually help with your rankings position! By adopting good SEO practices from the very beginning, your exposure will come first, and later more readers interested in your writing.
Step 6: Promote Your Author Website
After you have created your site, now you need to give it a push! You can post on sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn whenever you have a new blog post or a new book out. Using social media in this way can redirect traffic to your website while increasing the number of readers who are likely to follow you.
Try working with other authors or bloggers from the same niche; through writing guest posts for each other’s blogs or cross-promoting one’s work, you can reach new target markets that might be curious to read your novels. Also, you can use websites that allow you to keep in touch with your fans by email newsletters about what you are doing, such as letting them know about future book readings or the release of new books.
Once you are active in promoting your author website on multiple platforms, you will grow your reach and attract more readers inviting them to get more acquainted with what you provide!
Read also: How To Build an Author Website with a Blog That Readers Will Love
Conclusion
There’s an understatement of how simple it is to create an author website for free nowadays! Just take these steps: from selecting a suitable website builder and registering an inventive domain name, through making interesting designs and adding useful content, optimizing it for search engines, and marketing it well – and your work will surely well showcased on the internet! Make an author website now and decide how you want to be reached out by readers! Not only do readers get to trust a well-designed and structured site, but it also creates new prospects within the writing world so what are you waiting for, do it now!