#038 - You May Want to Consider SEO as a Marketing Strategy

As you're writing, publishing, and marketing your book, there may be moments where you feel a darkness coming over you. And it may not feel like literal darkness, but that darkness may be fear, it may be doubt. And it just. It just happens to all of us. So, first of all, you're not alone. But I just wanted to share. Yesterday, I was feeling some of this darkness over me. Fear and doubt and all the things I was journaling and I was praying and had CJ pray for me, and I felt like the Lord gave me an aha moment. And.

I had been researching for SEO search engine optimization. And if you're not sure what that is, it's when you optimize a blog post for people who are searching for things, like on Google and other search engines, or you can even do it on YouTube, Pinterest, Etsy, Amazon, you know, all of those things. And so we're gonna have a training go live in February 2023. It will be available inside Christian Book Academy on SEO, but also you can purchase it separately. So stay tun. I started my business on SEO, and I had kind of gotten away from that. And I was talking to CJ last night. I'm like, I don't know why I stopped doing that. That, you know, now looking back, I'm like, that doesn't make sense. You know, I should have still continued, but I don't want to look back and say I should have done that. You know, some people will say it's like you're shoulding on yourself. But I can look back now and I can say, oh, man, you know, I want to continue. I want to start that back up again because it can be a really effective way to find new people. And so I'm starting back with SEO. I'm. I was doing some keyword research. And the important thing with keyword research is that you find a phrase that people are actually searching for.

Not just that they're interested in, so something they're actually searching for, and then.

Something that not many other people have written about yet. So there's certain keyword tools you can use to find out this information. And we'll go into this in the training, but I was doing some of that keyword research, and when I was looking up things about Christian writers, Christian publishing, Christian marketing, marketing for Christian writers, and all the things, there are very few keywords to use, and there are very few people actually searching for that. And I. I realized yesterday my aha moment was that as I was researching for that, some of the things that people said to Me in the past came up again those things some people said, oh, it's too small of a niche, helping Christians, self published authors, you'll never be able to make a business out of that, it's too small. And I felt like in some ways my research was affirming that. And in many ways our business hasn't grown with profits as much as I would have liked to over the years. And part of that could be because it's a very small niche. So there are some things that are truth about that. But.

I, I just subconsciously I think that was weighing on me. And so sometimes I think when you feel this darkness, when you feel you know something come over you, then come to God and ask him. And I'm reading through John, excuse me, I'm reading through John right now. And I was reading John 12 and verse 46 says, I've come into the world as light, so whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. And it's so interesting because I read this today and I had this aha moment yesterday. But as I was journaling I asked the Lord.

You know, for just some insight. And I felt like he said, flip the switch, allow light to flood the darkness of worry, anxiety and overwhelm. You don't have to sit in the dark. It's kind of like flipping a light switch, right? You can flip the light switch so there's light. You don't have to sit in the dark. Sometimes we just sit in the dark. We sit in the dark, sit in the dark and sulk and pout and have a pity party, you know, I mean, have you ever been there? I don't know if maybe I'm the only one, but I was sitting there yesterday and he was like, you don't have to sit there, just flip the switch, come to me, say my name, Jesus, and I will be the light in your darkness. So that was yesterday. And then today I read that verse, John 12:46, I've come into the world as light, so whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. So friend, I want to tell you today, you do not have to remain in darkness. And yesterday, when God was also revealing to me what the darkness was triggered by. Because sometimes you're just triggered by different things and you don't even realize it. I realized that, you know, although yeah, there may not be a ton of exact keywords, with tons of searches for my specific niche, there still are quite a few keywords that that would relate that I can use to create blog posts. And there was probably enough to create at least 12 to 15 blog posts. So my goal this year is to do one keyword rich blog post a month and we'll see how it goes. But that's kind of what I would like to do to begin seeing if my website can get up in the search engines and, you know, new people can find me that are looking for exactly what we offer. But I had been watching a training and one of the people and in the training mentioned this whole concept of going after these smaller keywords and God brought it back to my mind when I was thinking about this yesterday, is that, yeah, there's not, it's not a huge market, it's not a huge niche, but there are people out there. And many of you have told me, I'm so glad we found Christian Book Academy. I'm so glad. I wish I would have found it years ago or whatever. But this person on this training was saying if you go after those small keywords and you know, start ranking higher up on those over time, all of those small keywords can add up to even more than a big keyword because it's harder to rank for those, you know, bigger keywords. But also you can just build momentum. And so I just felt like the Lord was encouraging me that just keep moving forward, keep doing this and you know, it could build momentum that then brings our target audience to us. So if you are interested in SEO search engine optimization, stay tuned. We'll have a training released on it soon. I really think it is a great way for anyone to be putting out things to the world that, I mean, it's a long term strategy. It doesn't disappear like social media. You can continue to get traffic from a blog post you wrote years ago. I, I'm only ranking for a few keywords on my site currently, which is crazy because my site is so old and I've been blogging and podcasting for so long, but I just haven't been focusing on it. But there are a few terms that I rank for and it's, it's for a blog post that I wrote years ago. And so people are still finding us and I mean I'll still get emails from people who find that blog post. It's the blog post 100 plus places to promote Christian books. And so this is a great thing to do if you're considering what marketing strategies to use because not only is it something that's great for introverts, it's, you know, low energy, but it can last for a long time. If you find, if, if one of your, your blog posts gets, you know, gets up in the search engines and people start finding it. There's no guarantee it's a long term strategy. You're not going to get rich on this overnight, but it could be a momentum builder. So anyways, I hope that this encouraged you spiritually, but also with that marketing technique. And I will talk to you in the next episode.