If you aren’t best optimizing your website or blog for it to show up in search engine results, what are you waiting for? There are trillions upon trillions of searches going on a year and you definitely don’t want to miss out on the extra discoverability for your book you can get through that. Even if you only end up with a small percentage of those trillion searches converted into hits and later actual sales, it’s still way better than none.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something that can greatly help authors find an audience for their books, if they can learn how to work with it. Best of all, it’s free to use. It just may take a while to get the hang of.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) on the other hand, while may be similar is something completely different. SEM are the paid ads (sometimes showing up as “sponsored”) that first show up when you search for something. Check it out: do a cursory search for “Barnes & Noble”, the first hit will be an ad paid for by B&N themselves, while the second hit will be their homepage.

Like SEO, few authors take advantage of SEM, possibly because they do not fully understand it. But when properly utilized in a strategic book marketing plan, it can be the extra boost you need to find the audience you are seeking and become a success.

With every other part of your promotion plan, you’ll need to do research about which search terms will provide you with the best results and proceed from there.

Read more up on the differences between search engine optimization and search engine marketing and how they can both help you at Media Bistro.