My dabblings in the world of digital art are just a bit of a hobby, I actually make my living doing search engine optimisation, which, funnily enough, is a nightmare for artists, photographers, etc. With this in mind I’d like to give some pointers to artists who have a website, but don’t get many visitors.
Search Engines
Well, search engine would be a better heading as Google seems to be the only player in town these days, with something like 90% of UK searches. Unfortunately for visual artists, Google reads words and not pictures, so a decent amount of text is required to get more web traffic to your site. There are, however, a few things you can do to make your site “search engine friendly”.
Page Title and Headers
The single most important thing you can do is to craft a descriptive title for every page on your site – and the use of headers (H1, H2, etc) within your body text can really improve your search engine positioning.
When writing about your work, avoid being drawn too much into “art speak” – try to use plain English as much as possible – this will allow Google better understand your site.
Inbound Links
If you take the trouble to read Google’s advice for webmasters and search engine optimisers, you will find that Google regards every inbound link pointing to your site, as a “vote” for your site. Lots of quality, on-theme links to a site will push your website higher up the search engine results pages. Swap links with other art sites, submit your site to artists’ directories, etc. Get as many links as you can – but don’t bother with links from sites that are not relevant, they carry little or no importance to Google.
Things to Avoid
- Don’t pay some half-baked company to submit you to thousands of directories
- Don’t stuff your text with the same old keywords over and over, it won’t do you much good – and if you push it too far, you may incur a penalty with Google
- Don’t use hidden text or hidden links on your pages – this may have worked for a while in the late 1990s, but it won’t help now and will certainly attract a penalty from Google.
Educate Yourself
Read up on search engine optimisation, read what Google says about it by following Googler Matt Cutts blog (linked to from this site) and get it straight from the horse’s mouth.
Social Media
Another good way to get noticed – and to improve your standing with Google, is to get involved with the Social Media sites online. Two important ones are FaceBook and Twitter. Get yourself an account at each and get a blog going, tell the world what you are doing and join in with like-minded artists.