It began innocently enough… I was reading an article about Amazon’s latest strong armed tactics with POD publishers and saw a comment by an author who listed her web site as a contact in the comments section. Her words were thoughtful and well presented, so I clicked on the link to learn more about her at her web site which was included in the comment.

Because she didn’t ask for my advice, I’m not going to publish this author’s name or web address. This is NOT written to “shame” anyone. It’s just my web savvy opinion of her web site and is presented here so you can learn from someone else’s mistakes.

This author is doing one thing really, really, really well… she’s actively promoting her web site.

1. She’s commenting on discussions and entering her URL wherever she can.
2. She’s signing up for and using various author promotion services
3. She’s participating in forum discussions and using her URL when possible.

I can’t place enough emphasis on how important these steps are for ANY author!!!! If it weren’t for the fact that this author is actively promoting her web site, I would have NEVER found her site. Which is why I was SHOCKED at what I found when I went to her site.

When I arrived at this author’s web site, I was positively ALARMED by what I saw. Remember, this is someone who is “web savvy” enough to be promoting her web site by commenting on other people’s blogs. I was expecting to have another “shining example” to feature in my Author Web Sites category.

While to the casual observer, it appeared to be a “nice” web site…. I was HORRIFIED by the underlying structure of the web site. The author, in response to being “challenged” by the rigors of HTML had created each web page as an image. Every bit of content on the web site is contained within an image.

For the human visitor, this is not a big problem. While some of the text is “fuzzy” (the result of using cheap image software) it is legible. However, looking at my “magic” tool bars I see she has ZERO PR (page rank) and N/A for an Alexa ranking. This doesn’t surprise me. Here’s why:

1. Her domain name is comprised of her name… which is 20 characters long. There’s nothing wrong with this but she uses a combination of her first name, her maiden name and her husband’s last name as her domain name. Twenty characters in all and only one of them is a “common” name. THIS MEANS getting people to the site using off line methods is going to be a challenge and unfortunately, she won’t be getting much “Google love” because of #2….
2. Every bit of content on her web site is HIDDEN inside the image files. When the search engines arrive and try to decide where to put this site in their index, all they have is her domain name and files names 01.gif, 02.gif, etc. So when she talks about writing for a tightly targeted niche market, the search engines don’t know what she’s doing. For all they know, these are dirty pictures posted on her web site.

Content contained within images is more common than you might imagine. It is very common for aesthetes (one who cultivates great sensitivity to beauty) to turn to the comfort of creating image based web sites because that is one way to ensure that the content is presented EXACTLY as intended. Because different users are using different computers, it’s IMPOSSIBLE to create a standard HTML web page that displays EXACTLY the same for everyone… because everyone’s computers are using different settings to display content.

By creating a web site with only images, she is essentially HIDING her words from the Search Engine robots that index the web.

What makes this so sad is this author has done a LOT of work promoting her web site on the web. As a matter of fact, I recently joined one of those resources because it appeared FIRST when searching for her by name via Google. Unfortunately, the only way her web site comes up in that search is when you search her name as it appears in her url… all three names as one separate word.

Writing this has “flipped” my “guilt” switch. See, she’s working HARD at promoting her web site… honestly, a LOT harder than I am at promoting this one. This blog was “launched” with the post “Getting Your Book Found on the Web” a little over a month ago. In that short period of time, authors have begun to subscribe to the e-course offered to the left and WHEE it has an alexa ranking!

It’s not fair and I’m the first to admit it. However, I’m more that willing to share this unfair advantage with you. Unlike my competitors who charge $2700 and more for similar services, you too can have a powerful self hosted Wordpress blog to promote your work. Your web presence will be search engine friendly and will automatically create a new XML site map every time you update your content. That means that if you work HALF as hard as the author in question here has, you’ll find your web site growing exponentially in no time.