Apr
27
There are certain techniques that can be used to ensure your website performs well in search engines, which will lead to more people finding your website. Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Use keywords throughout your website – Keywords are search terms that are used by the public to find your type of artwork online. Use them often throughout the website such as in page titles, headings, links, and throughout the copy. For an example of keywords, if you are a landscape artist from Canada you would use keywords such as landscape paintings, Canadian landscape artist, original landscape art, original paintings, etc.
- Name your image files with specific file names – The file names of images in your website should include the title of your work, not generic names such as “painting1″. If a collector likes paintings of a certain subject, such as Bow Lake in Alberta, Canada, if your image file name includes Bow Lake in it such as “bow-lake-painting” the chances of search engines finding your website if someone searches for “paintings of Bow Lake” increases significantly.
- Add incoming links to your website – (I wrote about this a couple weeks ago but because this is so important I thought I would include it again as a reminder). Incoming links are a large part of how Google and other search engines rank your website. If other websites link to you, especially websites with high traffic, search engines view your website as more reputable because you are being referred by others, so they in turn want to refer you. Ways to encourage others to link to your website include offering link exchanges with other artists, providing your galleries with your website address, participating in online forums and adding comments to blogs with a link back to your website, and submitting your website to online directories and art listings. Visit the Resources page on my website for a list of free art directories to get you started. Make sure to keep track of which websites you add your information to because you will want to update them at least once a year with a new image or if your contact information changes.
- Blogging – Having a blog can increase your search engine position because the more content you have the greater chance of search engines picking up keywords. (More about blogging to come soon)
