| Caridad Pineiro® Romance Author

November 27, 2018

Christmas Cookie Recipes #TuesdayTip

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas all over so it’s time to think about some holiday baking! My fried Kathy makes the most delicious walnut crescent cookies every Christmas and we look forward to them every year. My other friend Jayne, a regular at our holiday table, also brings tasty cookie treats for our Christmas Eve dessert. So today I’m sharing some links to Christmas cookies you might like to try for the holidays! Just paste and copy the links into your browser!**

Hershey’s Christmas Cookie Pizza: http://bit.ly/2P5rmSS
Betty Crocker Recipes & 24 days of Cookies e-mail: http://bit.ly/2OZNRbX
Good Housekeeping 100 Top Christmas Cookie Recipes: http://bit.ly/2P3g2qn
Country Living 60+ Recipes: http://bit.ly/2P4rZME
Walnut Crescent Cookies: http://bit.ly/2P2WEK8

**Why no active links? Well, Google is punishing sites with broken links and with third party sites changing up content, it’s really hard not to have broken live links. Since I’ve been dinged by Google (and with over 6000 links it’s no wonder), I’ve got a link checker working on cleaning things up, but thought I’d avoid the issue by not having hyperlinks in the posts.

January 4, 2011May 10, 2017

Increasing Backlinks to Increase Website Traffic

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts will tell you that one of the most important things you can do to increase website traffic and improve search engine listings is to increase the number of backlinks to your website.

What is a backlink? Backlinks are incoming links to a website. Backlinks are also one way that Google determines PageRank in order to assess the popularity of a website. (Did you know Page is actually the name of Larry Page, the inventor of the ranking algorithm?)

Wondering how your website ranks and how many backlinks there are to it? Click here for a nice backlink checker that also provides a ton of other info.

So how can you boost backlinks?

1. Exchange links to your website with others. List them on your links page in exchange for them linking to you. If you’ve got a book/author/writing related website to share, leave a comment with it and I’ll add you if you’ll add me!

2. Article submissions. Writing articles in your area of expertise or about topics of interest are a great way to create backlinks. E-zine Articles is a great way to do this. You can check out some of my articles by clicking here.

3. Social sites (Facebook, Twitter and Myspace) and social bookmarking are also great ways to create backlinks and it doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Applications like Hootsuite and sites like Ping.fm allow you to propogate multiple sites. Make sure to bookmark important pages on your site to Digg, Delicious and Stumbleupon, but also remember that “social” bookmarking is about being “social”. Share fun and interesting links as well via these sites.

4. Video submission sites are another manner in which to generate backlinks to your site and your uploaded videos.

5. Get listed at the various search directories like dmoz.org, Alexa, Google, Bing and Yahoo. This will assist in making sure that these search engines spider your site. This will help boost where you appear in their listings.

6. Guest blogs and comments on blogs also help create backlinks to your site. While every blog/website has a different method for leaving comments, try to use choose the method that allows you to leave your name and URL.

I will leave you with those tips for now, but I also invite you to drop by later today and visit with me at the Carina Press blog where I will be chatting about AZTEC GOLD and what inspired the story, including my own personal fear which influenced the herione’s character.

June 22, 2010May 10, 2017

Promoting Yourself Using Social Bookmarking

If you’re a published author and you want to learn about how to promote your book, I highly recommend that you sign up for the Author and Marketing Experts newsletter. The newsletter is chock full of tips and tricks for how to publicize your book. You can also check out their free online courses and podcasts at Publishing Insiders.

One of the tips in a recent newsletter was about social bookmarking and you can also click here to read an article on maximizing book reviews by using social bookmarking.

Of course by now some of you may be wondering, “What the heck is social bookmarking?”

Social bookmarking lets you share your favorite websites, pages, etc. with others. Sites such as Delicious, Digg and Stumbleupon are just some of the sites which store your bookmarks and share them with others.

If you’ve got the Google Toolbar, you can also post your content to Blogger, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Yahoo and a number of other services with just the click of a button.

What can you share? Articles or blogs that you’ve written, reviews for your books, videos, contests and basically anything that you have online and that you want to share.

These bookmarks are great tools for having people discover you and your work and will help drive people to your website.

You can also make it easy for others to share information you’ve created by using buttons such as these in your posts and on your website! You can get this simple social bookmark widget at Addthis.com.

I hope you enjoyed today’s Tuesday Tip.

Also, many thanks for all your help last Tuesday when I asked for suggestions for some upcoming contest. The lucky winner of the Valere! Please e-mail me your postal address so I can send your prize.

July 28, 2009August 18, 2009

News Alerts

News I was searching for a friend’s website the other day when I ran across some nice comments about him at a blog site. I sent him the link and suggested that he set up some news alerts so that he would know about such comments.

Whether you’re a pre-pubbed or published author, interested in a particular topic or have a client you wish to follow, news alerts are a great way to stay abreast of what’s happening.

I use both Yahoo alerts and Google alerts to keep me advised about possible reviews of my novels, but it also helps me to judge the efficacy of online press release sites as well as keep an eye out for people who are pirating my books.

I recently had an incident where a Google alert brought my attention to a site offering downloads of the MISSION: IMPASSIONED series in which I participated for Silhouette Romantic Suspense. I immediately sent the link to my publisher’s piracy contact.

I also watch for reviews and make a point to visit any reviewer who has been nice enough to read and comment on the book. Word to the wise, however – Don’t engage if there’s negative comments. It accomplishes nothing and everyone is entitled to their opinion. Just agree to disagree.

How do you set up a news alert? Click on one of these links to some of the news alert services that are available:

Yahoo: http://alerts.yahoo.com/
Google: http://www.google.com/alerts?hl=en

You may need to open an account with them and check to make sure the account is free.

You can also sign up for news alerts at your favorite television stations, newspapers and magazines, but these may not include searches for activity on the Internet, such as reviews on blog sites, etc.

Keeping abreast of what’s happening puts you one step ahead and will help you to meet lots of new interesting people! Try it out and see!