Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Book Bloggers: Is Google Ignoring You?
Recently, I have noticed that my blog posts weren't showing up in Feedburner, I got little notes from readers that they were no longer getting my emails with updates as I posted and anything that started with book description copied from an author's website, Amazon or Goodreads were not being viewed like they had been in the past. Yes, Google has started noting that these posts were essentially spam since a book blast is probably posted by 50 blogs in a 24 hour time period and they all look the same. I have even heard that a few blogs have been shut down because they were deemed spam blogs.
First, I checked my feedburner account and found there were errors there. I reduced the number of post showing to three, which fixed quite a few errors on that side of the equation. (If you need help with that, feedburner actually provides easy to follow instructions that I did myself in about 30 minutes HERE.) Any time you get an error in a blog post (those nasty <DIV> not closed notes), pay attention to them and fix them before your post goes live. Most of the time a simple hitting of the return key fixes them and reduces errors in your feed.
Next, I started changing up how my posts are formatted. I have used the same format for posts since I started blogging. I post the book cover, book blurb, and then the author information. Most of this stuff is from the publisher and of course, everyone uses it which google now sees as spam. I am still trying to understand the analytics about how this works but basically if you start your post with unique content by making it personal, your posts will show up easier in Google. I now start my posts with my review or interview and a "hey, look at me!" type comment at the top. A good place to start is with Google's Webmaster Tools. I am slowly going through the articles to make sure my blog is visable.
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