Internet for Artists: Desiging Your Website: Step 1

Before we talk about the actual design of your website I want to talk about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It's important to understand how this works and keep it in mind as you're laying out your website. This will also allow you to instruct your website designer about what to do. If you're doing it yourself this will help you promote your website.

ALERT: Once your website is live you may get emails from "SEO Companies." Ignore them all. Most likely they are SPAM and some will even attempt to offer you first page ranking. Anyone who does is making a promise they can't keep. If you do some of the following things or get your website designer to do some of the following things your page ranking will get better and better. It takes some time so have patience but it will happen.

The first thing is to think about is your target market. Sit down and write out who your ideal buyer is. What is their income level? Where do they live? Do they have children? What are their hobbies? Where do they work? Who is your dream buyer that will become a collector. No holds barred. The answer "Anyone who has money"' doesn't count. Think of this person in the most well rounded way that you possibly can Get a pen and paper and write a list of who these people are and what their attributes might be.

Once you've done that think of how they would find you on the Internet. What websites do they visit the most? Do they look at portals for art. Sites like www.saatchi.com or www.fineartamerica.com? Do they go to brick and mortar galleries or only search for art online?

After you've done that start writing a list of words or two word phrases to describe your art. Keep the information you've gathered above in the back of your mind as you do this. Keep going until you can't come up with anything else. You can do this all at once or keep a list by your side for a few days, adding to it as words come to mind.

These words will eventually become meta-tags known as keywords. These will be included in the .HTML code of your website but they won't be visible. They are included in the "Head" tagging which instructs the computer how and where to make your page visible. You should add a maximum of 8 words per page only. I have seen artists who make the mistake of using as many as 30 keywords. It will only confuse the Search Engine Spider and it will negatively effect your page ranking.

I recommend that the first two words be your name and something descriptive about your art. You can also include your location if you feel that there is a localized market for your work. You can add meta-tags to every page so you don't have to put the same thing on every page but your name and that descriptive word should be on every page. I am including links at the end of this post where you can test the popularity of keywords. It's a balance of most popular words and words that set you apart. You should hook your website up with Google Analytics - more on that in another post - so that you can track the effectiveness of your keywords. You can change them if you feel that your website isn't generating enough traffic.

You will also need to create a two sentence narrative description of your art and this is for a Meta-tag known as the "Description." This will appear under your website name on a listing on a Search Engine. A good description can make the difference between someone visiting your website for the first time or not. So make it a good. You can use some of the writing tools in previous posts on this blog for writing your artist statement. Think of it this way. If we were meeting for the first time in an elevator how would you describe your art to me? You have approximately two minutes. Go! Off the cuff. Tell me now. Don't think. Just blurt it out. You can do it by commenting on this post and I'll give you feedback.

An important factor in SEO is links to and from your website - otherwise known as cross linking. This is because Search Engines operate on the idea that if a website has more links - especially from websites with high page ranking - it must be important. This is something you will want to work on all the time. Don't be afraid to ask for links from colleagues, if you're carried by a gallery or are a member of an arts organization. You can also generate links in other ways which we'll discuss later.

ALERT: You may receive emails from companies having nothing to do with your art asking for cross linking. Remember that you ARE the company you keep. Do not link to these companies without researching their relevance first. It's also important to keep your mission on your website focused. Your links should reflect your art, who you work with and your interests - in the sense of business interests - only. Keep everything consistent and clear and you'll have success.

Another thing that really helps is something called Page Titling. Take a look at the top of the browser you are using to view this blog in. Above the URL (Website Address). You will see some words that describe the website. These are known as Page Titles. It not only looks professional but it works like Meta-Tags: Keywords. Sometimes it even works better than a keyword. You can use your name and then something to describe the page your viewer will be on. Example: Jane Smith::Gallery::Landscapes

In addition to links Search Engines will rank your page based on the amount of hits you get. In the first post on the internet I discussed the difference between visitors and hits. This means that people are clicking on things and actually taking action. So to a Search Engine, if people are interacting with your site, it must be important! The art of hits is to link your pages carefully so that you will generate more of them without driving your viewer crazy. Again, clarity and simplicity really do matter in this.

You can spend time figuring this out with a Site Map or Site Index. Yet another important tool for Search Engines. This is a layout of all of the pages of your site, categorizing them by subject and importance. Take a moment to view this Site Map and you'll see what I'm talking about: http://www.metmuseum.org/information/site-index The search engine will go over this and decide where and how to place the pages on your website. It's also a wonderful organizational and planning tool for website layout and design. You can map it out page by page and how those pages are going to link to each other. In fact, I usually ask a client to do this when I'm designing a website for them.


Lastly, when you're finished with the website you will want to submit it to Search Engines formally. This will alert them that there is a website to be looked at and they will need to go over it and rank it. It may take 3 to 4 months for them to check out your website. This is probably for two reasons. 1. There are hundreds of thousands of new websites created daily and they can only do so much and 2. To keep people who try to fool the Search Engine Spiders from figuring out how they work. They keep changing the rules and the way they go about ranking pages for this reason. You don't have to worry about that, if you do the above suggested steps you will be covered.

Links to Sites for Researching Keywords:
Wordpot: http://www.wordpot.com/

WordTracker: https://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/


Links for Submitting Your Website
Google: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url?continue=http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue%3D/addurl&pli=1

Yahoo: http://www.search.yahoo.com/info/submit.html

Bing: https://ssl.bing.com/webmaster/submitsitepage.aspx

The Open Directory Project: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html