Google doesn't hate you, its algorithm is just not designed for poetry. Image via CrunchBase
Being mostly an online poet I have experienced quite a lot of problems publishing poetry online due to the completely un-indexible nature of poetry on search engines. While large (and often impersonal) poetry sites will come up if you search poetry you will notice that it is unlikely to get results on individual poems. There are reasons for this and there are also simple ways around this so that your poetry can be seen online.
Why Doesn't Poetry Rate?
Search engines usually operate under certain algorithms (e.g complicated maths) that determine the weight of a page, article or post during a search. The main factor in this is keywords and as you may already have guessed 'poems' rarely contain the words 'poem' or 'poetry'. This does not mean you should start writing just poems about poetry as the other factor can also be the length of the post. Poetry is usually quite short in comparison to articles and so it can fall down in the search engines because of this as well.
The other problem for emerging writers is the dreaded 'incoming links' factor in search engines. Unless you happen to be a famous poet the chances are you won't have many incoming links to build your site ranking. This factor can be overcome by sharing links with other poets although the essential problem of poems being ranked among articles and product pages remains.
Solutions?
Even though I have painted a grim picture for online poetry I must say that all is not lost. Here are a few basic outlines of what you can do to survive in the online poetry world:
- By-pass the search engines (use twitter and other social media to promote your work)
- Make sure you write longer pieces about your poetry
- Have content to back up your poetry (discussions etc)
- Use 'poem' in the Title of your poetry posts.
These four simple tips will see your site get search engine visitors despite the problem I have outlined with SEO (search engine optimisation) and poetry. Personally I rely more on social media traffic than search engine traffic for my poetry because of the problems I have outlined here. You must also rely on other sites to 'get the word out' (excuse the pun). So don't despair if your poetry is not hitting the 'Google first page' like you read on most of the website tip pages as you are working with something completely different than a business website.
I hope you have enjoyed this discussion on poetry and search engines, if you need more advice, tips or want any follow up articles please contact me through kjwriteleft.com Remember we also do site reviews and other posts especially about poets so let me know if you run a personal site or blog.
Thanks for visiting!
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