Author website SEO basics: how to win searches for your name and books

Readers who search for an author have usually heard of them already, so they type one of three things: the author's name, a book title, or a series name. Your author website should be the top result for all three. You get there with a clear page title on every page, one page for each book, your name in the main heading, and the same name, photo and links on your Amazon Author Central and Goodreads profiles, which will sit on the same results page.

Most other SEO advice is written for businesses competing for strangers' searches, and an author with one site and a handful of books can ignore most of it. What follows is based on Google's SEO Starter Guide and its Search Central documentation, read on 1 November 2026.

The three searches that matter

A search for your name comes from someone who met you somewhere else: in the back of an ebook, at a signing, in a newsletter swap or on a podcast. A search for a book title often comes from a recommendation. A search for the series name comes from a reader who wants the reading order or the next book. Each one should land on a page that answers it, so your home page serves the name search, a book page serves each title, and a series page serves the series and its order.

Make your own page win

Page titles

Google's title link documentation says the clickable headline in results is generated automatically, mainly from the page's title element, with the main heading, other prominent text and links to the page as further inputs. Its advice is that every page should have a title that is descriptive, concise and unique to that page, with the site name added once at the start or end after a hyphen, colon or pipe. Repeating keywords does not help and can look spammy.

For an author called Jane Harrow, that might look like this:

• Home page: Jane Harrow, author of the Saltmarsh mysteries
• Book page: The Drowned Bell, Saltmarsh Mystery 2 | Jane Harrow
• Series page: The Saltmarsh mysteries in order | Jane Harrow

One page per book, with your name in the heading

A single "Books" page listing everything cannot match a search for one title as well as a page about that title can. Give each book its own page with the title as its main heading, the cover, the blurb, the series position and your buy links. Put your name in the main heading of the home page, because Google also recommends making the main title the most prominent text on the page. Our guide to the six pages worth building with one book out sets out the full plan.

Structured data, and what it will and will not do

Google's introduction to structured data says Google uses it to understand the content of a page and to gather information about things such as people and books. Its structured data policies also say Google does not guarantee your structured data will show up in search results, even when it is correct.

Two types are worth adding. On your About page, Google's ProfilePage documentation lists "About Me" pages as a valid use, with a Person as the main entity and a sameAs list linking to your other profiles, such as your Amazon author page and Goodreads. The page has to focus on a single person connected with the site. On each book page, the schema.org Book type lets you state the title, your name as author, the ISBN and the format.

Keep your expectations modest. Google's Book actions feature is limited to book providers that have filled in an interest form and supply data feeds, so Book markup on an author site will not produce a special result. The markup helps Google connect your name, your books and your profiles, and that is all you should expect from it.

Leave Google Business Profile out

Google's Business Profile guidelines say you can create a profile if your business has a physical location customers can visit or travels to customers. A writer working from home does not qualify, and a virtual office address is ineligible. Knowledge panels are a separate thing: Google's help pages say they are generated automatically, and you can only claim one once it exists.

Amazon Author Central and Goodreads share the page

A search for your name will usually show your Amazon author page and your Goodreads profile near your own site, and you cannot stop that, nor should you want to. Claim both, because both are free: Amazon Author Central lets you add a biography and photo to your author page and attach your books, and the Goodreads Author Program lets you update your photo and bio and fix your book listings. Use the same name, the same photo and a matching first line of biography on all three, and add the Amazon and Goodreads links to your site's sameAs list. Consistent details make it easier for Google to treat the three as one person.

What not to bother with

• You can skip meta keywords, because Google's starter guide says Google Search does not use the keywords meta tag.
• Repeating your name or title over and over will not help, and the same guide says keyword stuffing is against Google's spam policies.
• Paid link packages and SEO plugin scores do nothing to help a reader who already knows your name find you.
• Blog posts written to catch searches your readers never make will not help your name rank, although a post about your research or setting is fine if readers enjoy it.
• Checking your ranking every day is wasted effort, since Google says some changes take a few hours and others take several months.

It is worth setting up Google Search Console, which the starter guide recommends for monitoring how your site performs, and its URL Inspection Tool shows how Google sees a page. Submitting a sitemap is optional, and the guide says to focus first on making sure people know about your site. If you do not have a site yet, our article on whether you need your own author website covers what Amazon already does for you. The Indie Author Toolchest gives you an author page on its own subdomain with a page for each book, which covers the name and title searches without building a site from scratch.