Teaser: Someday My Prince

Another Tabat story is brewing, this time explaining one of the city’s architectural features: the ninety-nine statues of figures from the history of Tabat, commissioned by a Duke to be placed along Salt Road. A mystery arises – what is it about the 99th statue that sets it apart from its fellows? Here’s a snippet from the beginning:

It was one of those rainy days that make up most of Tabat’s spring, a day when the clouds hung so low that the city’s upper terraces were shrouded in fog. When Nicolas started up the foot of Salt Road, it was clear, but as he ascended, the white mist around him thickened and he found himself breathing in cold moisture that made his lungs feel as sodden as the thick wool coat he had imprudently chosen that morning, thinking it would snow and he’d want the warmth.

He shivered and glanced sideways and slightly down at his companion. Feniker marched along with his hands in his pockets, smugly dry in his oilskin cloak and waxed leather boots, both brand new. An elaborate cockade was pinned to the black fabric’s breast.

Feniker glanced down at himself. “This is what all the expeditions are equipped with. Nothing but the best.”

“Still planning on going?” Nicolas asked. He regretted the words as soon as they left his lips, but Feniker didn’t reply, just nodded and kept on walking.

Nicolas kept his pace in step with his friend’s, despite the discrepancy in their heights. He hunted for a safe topic of conversation but everything seemed fraught, tinted with departure.

By now, they could barely see the street, surrounded by a wall of meaninglessness, robbed of any sign of wall or fence or street-sign. The cobbles underfoot were slick with moisture. Tonight when the temperature dropped, Nicolas knew, they would become black ice, and most of the city would come to a standstill, with only the lines of the trams moving up and down the terraces.

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Writers get told they must blog, but not a lot of advice about it. I’ve talked about this more than once, most notably in Do Writers Need to Blog? No. and How to Blog Without Really Trying But Still Managing Not to Be Half-Assed About It. But another thing to consider beyond the content you’re producing is whether or not your readers are finding it.

If you have a blog, take a moment and type your name into a search engine. If your blog doesn’t appear on the first page of results, you have a problem. The further down the page it is, the harder it is for a reader to find it. Type ‘Cat Rambo’ in and you should see this blog on the top of the list, along with other links that go to me rather than that taxi driver with a cat named Rambo who drives around with his cat in the backseat or the Cat Rambo featured in an article about underwater pumpkin carving.

So — if you’re not on that first page –how do you remedy that? Here’s five ways to make your blog more effective by making it more discoverable when people come looking for you.

Check your front page. Does it include the name you write under? Not just your first name, not a cute pseudonym. And not contained in an image rather than text. If not, please add it.

Make titles meaningful. A title should give a reader a reason to read, often to answer a question that the title has raised. For example: what are the five quick ways I could make my blog more discoverable? rather than “Check this out” or “Here’s something startling.”

Use images. Visual content makes a post more engaging and it provides something when people are sharing it on social media. Visual content gets shared more often than text-only. And a post lacking an image may not be pinnable on Pinterest, which is a valid social media site for authors.

Look at your site on your phone. Google Analytics tells me over half my traffic is readers using their phone to read it; it would be foolish for me not to make it as readable as possible for them. What’s not appearing? What looks weird? Menus that look great on a computer screen and are easy to select and click with a mouse are often much more difficult to navigate on a phone’s smaller touch screen.

Use what’s available. Tags and categories are both tools that search engines incorporate when creating rankings and they make things more discoverable for your readers. The Related Posts plug-in that I use on this blog depends on tags in order to find and display similar content that may intrigue readers of a particular post.

Bonus tip: Link to other posts. Internal links can help your reader find relevant content without leading them away from your site, and they also favorably influence search engines. You might even create pages that consolidate information, like this page of Resources for F&SF Writers. Look at this page — I can count five different ways I’ve done this. Can you find them all?