How to promote your art blog or website for better search engine rankings and traffic

By: Micah R. Condon ( View Profile - Contact )

How to promote your art blog or website for better search engine rankings and traffic

Overview - Content Organization - Optimizing Your Blog or Website - Linking - Email Marketing - Search Engines - Other Resources

Help! I need to attract visitors to my website!

It's a problem that has plagued new website owners (or bloggers) from day one: how do I get people to find my website? I don't show up on google, nobody links to my site, and nobody visits my site. How do I tell the world about my site? The internet has always been full of misinformation and scams promising quick fixes that sound promising to a beginning webmaster or blogger. So, the first most important tip I have to offer is this: don't give away your hard earned money. Nobody is going to promote your website as well as you can do it yourself, and you can do it mostly for free. Learn the basics, and work on them regularly, and you will have a successful website.

This lesson is written mostly for those who are new to online promotion, but even experienced marketers may find details they've overlooked. And, the resources at the end of the article are helpful to everybody, especially more advanced marketers.

The basics, and the players 

The basic concepts of website or blog promotion are simple: get search engines to notice and link to your site, get other website and blog owners to notice and link to your site, and once you have visitors,  keep them coming back for more. Before we get started on the technical details of promotion, let's review who the players are in this website promotion game, and what our responsibilities and expectations are. If you build a website that meets the needs of all the online players, you will find promotion to be much easier.

You: As a blogger or website owner, your primary responsibility is to build a site that's full of engaging, unique content that's updated frequently, and is very well organized and user friendly. Your content must be useful to visitors, useful to other bloggers who may want to link to you, and easy for search engines to understand.

Other webmasters and bloggers: Other webmasters and bloggers will be your allies in building traffic to your site. Just as you're trying to maintain a site full of interesting and useful content, so are they. If you build a site worth linking to, then other people with related blogs and websites will be happy to link to you

Search Engines: these are the great gatekeepers of the internet. Most internet traffic starts from a search one one of these sites, like google.com. Search engines work day and night to determine which sites are about what, so visitors can find what they're looking for. If you build a well organized site, the search engines will love you (and so will their visitors), Try to trick them, or build a site that's confusing to them, and you're just wasting your time.

Visitors:  These elusive visitors are just like you and me - chances are, they're looking for something specific online. If you've done your job right - built a website full of quality content, and worked well with other webmasters and with search engines - interested visitors will find your site and they will stay and look around and eventually become repeat visitors and subscribers. 

Content and Organization - Reviewing and Planning

The most important way to promote your website is to start by building a website worth promoting. It sounds simple, but millions of websites overlook this fact. Think about the websites you visit regularly, the ones you've bookmarked, the email lists you've subscribed to, and your favorite search engine or directory page.  Each of these sites had something you were looking for. Whether you were trying to solve a specific problem, reading up on your favorite hobby, or just wasting time, you found some sites that were worth reading and re-reading, and some that weren't. Some were well organized with lots of content that was updated frequently by somebody who was an expert and who was passionate about the topic, and some were a couple sloppy pages put together without much thought.

So, before worrying about links or search engines, let's review your website's content and organization, and decide on an overall theme and keywords for your site. 

Step one: Review your blog or website

Are you special? As an artist, or any other type of business marketing online, these are key questions: What is your "unique selling proposition"? What differentiates you as an artist from all the other artists online? This is often a difficult question to answer, but it's critical for your marketing. There are millions of artists online, painting their own little pretty pictures and talking about them on their blogs. What's different about your artwork, or your blogging? What do you have to offer, in your artwork and your blog content, that nobody else does? What can your site do for visitors that nobody else can?

Review your site: Review your blog or website. Imagine you were writing a book or a term paper. What is my website really about? Does your site organization and content convey your unique message? What are the main topics and headings? What's the unique/ helpful / interesting content, and what's just the fluff? Why should anybody visit my site? Why should anybody link to it? Why should search engines rank it highly?

Step two: Organize your blog or website content

Before making any changes to your actual blog or website, start by making an outline on paper. What are your main topics and subtopics? How are they related? Outline how you would ideally organize your website content based on topic heirarchy, regardless of how its actually organized at the moment. Imagine your website as a book - if I picked it up off the shelf, how would I know what it's about, and where to find what I'm looking for? What would be in each section? Just as books and magazines have conventions to organize a large volume of content, so should your website. Ideally you should end up with one or more main topics, a few subcategories under each, and then specific content-rich pages under that. Obviously the physical organization is different on a blog vs a standard website, but the concept is similar

This is also a good time to make note of missing content or future content opportunities: pages/titles/headers that need to be rewritten to match your outline, pages or sections that you might expect to find on a site about this topic, but that your site doesn't have yet.

Before you do any actual promotion, you'll need to reorganize your blog or website to match the outline you just made. First, though, we'll need to decide on some keywords to describe your website content. 

Step three: Keyword research

 What is a keyword? A keyword is simply a word or phrase that you would use to search for, or to describe, some website content. So, ask yourself these questions:

1. What words would I use if I was searching for a site/page/blog like mine? Obviously your site may be art related, but chances are if you're looking for paintings of parrots, you're going to search for things like 'parrot paintings', 'parrot art', 'watercolor parrots' etc. If you search for just 'art' or 'paintings', you're never going to find these lovely parrot paintings you've been longing for
2. If you were a librarian trying to categorize this site or page, what words would you use? What broad category does it fall under? What specific subcategories does it fall under? What similar sites would you categorize it with
3. brainstorm some variations, synonyms, and related words, to expand your keyword list

Hopefully, you should end up with a list of words that somewhat broadly describe your site, and also words that describe your site in more specific detail. Your goal is to come up with several two to three word "keyword phrases" that accurately describe the different pages and sections of your site. A couple of these should be your main keywords that are applicable to your entire site, and others will be relevant only to certain sections or pages of your site/blog. 

Keyword Relevance Research: Now, let's figure out if these keywords are actually going to produce some related results in search engines. Go to google.com, type in some of your keyword phrases, and see what type of results come up. If you see search results that are not at all related to what you were hoping to find - off topic, overly general, etc., then you need to refine your keywords a bit. 

Competitive Analysis: Now that you have some promising keywords, let's see who else is competing on these keywords. Search for one of your phrases on google. You'll see that each website in the results is listed with a title, description, and a url. Each time one of your keywords appears in the title or description or url, that word is highlighted in bold.

Take a look through the first page or two of search engine results. If most of the results have most of they keywords in your phrase highlighted in the title, description, and url, then you have chosen a highly competitive keyword phrase, and you need to refine it a bit more. Also, if most of the sites in the top ten search results are significantly larger than yours, does it look like they probably have more money or resources dedicated to website creation and promotion than you do? If so, keep working to refine your keyword phrases to find a niche where you can compete. .

For example: search for 'paintings'. Chances are, most of the top results are sites that have 'Paintings' in the page title, and in the url, and they're all big sites that you wouldn't want to compete head to head with. And, 'paintings' doesn't return results that are specific enough to be useful to most users. Now, search for 'ostrich paintings' - most of these sites probably don't have the term 'Ostrich Paintings' in the title, url, and description - they have some of them, but not all of them, and they're all sites about individual artists or paintings. So, you could probably get a reasonable search engine result for a page about 'ostrich paintings'.

At first, it might seem that something like 'ostrich paintings' might be too specific. After all, there are millions of searches every month for more general art related terms, but probably only a couple hundred for such a narrowly focused keyword. But, those who do search on more specific keywords like these are better qualified. They're not just browsing the internet to see some paintings in some undefined genre, they're looking specifically for what you have, so they're more likely to become subscribers, repeat visitors, or customers. If you can come up with a few of these keyword phrases that describe your site and your artwork in general, plus some more specific ones for your individual paintings or subcategories, you've got a good chance of competing against the big sites when somebody searches for a painting in a certain style or subject matter. 

Keyword Expansion:  if you can add a couple more words to each keyword phrase, that will bring in even more search engine traffic. For instance, your section about 'ostrich paintings' could be expanded to 'colorful ostrich and emu paintings in oil', and now you've covered a few variations somebody might search for to find ostrich artwork.

Your Name: for most artists, name recognition is just as important as any other search keyword. So, don't forget to add your name to the list of keywords 

Step Four: Keyword Integration

Now, go back and look at the outline you wrote. How can you rename some of your main sections, subsections, and individual pages/posts to incorporate some of your most important keyword phrases? Of course you want all your section and page names to be logical and not sound overly-contrived, but the more places you can incorporate relevant keywords, the better. Do this for your main sections and subsections, and for your individual pages. Your goal is to make this outline look like a very specific type of art website, not 'just another artist online'

If you've organized your outline well, anybody should be able to pick up your outline and recognize who you are, what type of content (artwork or other information) you offer on your website or blog, how you differ from other artists, etc. Show your outline to a friend, spouse, peer, or even a few strangers. Make sure it's as logical to everybody else as it is to you.

Now, if most people can instantly recognize what your site's all about, then all of the players in the online marketing game will be happy. Other webmasters will link to you confidently because you're a valuable resource. Search engines will rank your site for appropriate keywords because your content is clearly organized. And, visitors will find your site more useful than a similar site that has great art and content but is haphazardly organized. So, our next goal is to make your actual website content match this outline.

Content and Organization: Implementation

Now, we need to find a way to organize your actual blog or website content to match the idealized content model outline you just created. Our goal is to create a structure for your site that will be friendly to visitors and to search engines.

For simplicity's sake, I'll only refer to blog content in this section, but the same concepts apply to standard websites, except that standard websites have even more control over navigation links, folder names, etc. If you're creating your own website, or having one created for you, and you want to learn more specific details about how to structure your site's html to be search engine friendly, refer to the additional resources at the end of this page.

Let's look at the elements on most blogs, and how we would adjust these to integrate our keywords and content organization:

• Blog URL: this is your blog address, like mypaintings.blogspot.com. The blog url should contain a couple of your most important top-level keywords. Many artists use their name as their url, which is good for name recognition but not so helpful for linking and search engine optimization. Something like maryjonesbirdpaintings.blogspot.com is much more helpful than just maryjones.blogspot.com in this regard. If you can get your own domain name (maryjonesbirdpaintings.com instead of maryjonesbirdpaintings.blogspot.com) that would be even better. If you're just starting out, pick a domain name that includes some strong keywords and maybe your name. If you've already got a website or blog, consider moving it to a better domain name - if you already have links pointing to you from other sites, though, you'll need to know how to redirect them to your new domain name so you don't miss out on this traffic.
• Page Title: this is usually visible on the top of your web browser, and again somewhere on the top of your blog page. For many blogs, this title will be the same on all pages, which is not ideal. Make sure that the page title used on all of your blog pages contains a couple of your main keywords. If you have your own website, or if you know how to edit your blog template html code, make sure you have a unique title for every page on your site, preferably the same as the title of your blog post. If you don't know how to do this, don't worry about it for now, but add it to your to-do list for later.
• Blog name and Description: For most blogs, this same 'blog name and description' header appears on all pages. Make sure it contains your important keywords, and make sure it conveys your 'unique selling proposition'. This text is your first introduction to your site visitors, so use it wisely.
• Sidebar elements: Everything in your blog sidebar - your 'about me' profile, your email subscription bar, etc., is an opportunity to include more relevant keywords to tell visitors and search engines what your site is all about - fill these areas with rich meaningful text. 
• Blog post title: The title of each individual post is a key place to put important keywords that are related to your overall content outline and to this individual post. This is some of the first text visitors will see on most blog pages, and some of the first text search engines will see on your page, so it's critical to always use good descriptive keywords in your blog post titles. You'll also notice that these titles are used as links to your other pages under your 'blog archives' sidebar. Revise all of your old blog post titles as needed, and keep these rules in mind when creating new blog posts.
• Blog post content:  When writing your blog posts, include plenty of your main keywords and variations, especially in the opening and closing paragraphs. Don't stuff your post with irrelevant keywords, but do include as many relevant keywords as you can work in elegantly. Make sure your most critical keywords are repeated a couple times, but not excessively. Revise all of your old blog posts as needed, and keep your keywords in mind when creating new blog posts.
• Tags, Keywords, and Categories: If your blog includes any type of category or tag feature, use this to organize your content into related 'subcategories', as outlined in your content model - always use good keywords in these sections. 
• Links: any links on your blog, whether they're linking to other sections on your blog or to external websites, should contain relevant keywords. For instance, a link to 'My Ostrich Paintings' is more valuable than a link to 'My Portfolio'
• File names: If you're creating your own html file names, try to match them as closely as possible to your page titles. For instance, 'ostrich_emu_paintings_art.html' is much more valuable than 'page2.html'. If you have a blog, then all of the file naming is already done for you, and the good news is that your individual post pages will usually be saved with the same file name as the post title, which you already filled with important keywords. Make sure your blog is configured to save a separate file name for each post, in addition to your main index and archive pages. 
• Images: if you have control over your image file names, make sure they include some good keywords - like blue_ostrich_painting_012345.jpg instead of just myname012345.jpg. Some blogs will automatically rename your images, but some will let you use your own names. Also, enter "alt text" whenever possible for your images, with strong keywords

If you've integrated your relevant keywords in all of the places above, your blog should be a lot more friendly to the average visitor. A user can quickly see that you paint 'colorful whimsical ostriches, emus, and dodo birds in encaustic wax',for instance, rather than the more generic terms like contemporary artist, wildlife painter, etc. And, you've also made it easier for search engines and other webmasters and bloggers to link to your site.

Linking

Now that your site is well organized, it's time to start promoting it. One of the most important things you can do is start to build links to your blog. This will help to build traffic to your site directly from these links. And, it will help to build traffic from search engines - Google and other search engines usually give importance to links from other sites to yours. The more sites link to yours, and the more relevant those links are, the more important your site must be. As frequently as you can, try to find more ways to get links to your website - this is an ongoing process that you should do for as long as you have your site.

Keywords in links: Whenever you solicit links to your site, or when you link between your own sites, encourage people to use specific phrases or page titles that include your keyword phrases. A link from another high quality site, that says 'ostrich paintings' in the link text, is much more valuable to you than a link that just says 'joespaintings.com'. These keywords will help attract more relevant traffic to your site from search engines, and visitors are more likely to click on a link if they know what the site's about from the link title.

How to get links to your site: The first and easiest way to get links to your blog or website is from other blogs or websites that you own. So, take a few minutes to add links to and from any other related websites or blogs you have. Also, if you have any friends with related blogs or websites, try to get them to link to you also. Next, find some websites that are closely related to yours, and offer to exchange links - you place a nice keyword rich link to their site in your blog sidebar, and you ask that they do the same (and remind them of the specific text to use). Blog comments are also a great way to get a free link - post some useful comments on a few related blogs, including a link back to your blog, but make sure they're genuine comments and not just spam to get yourself a few links. And, make sure these blog comments and links contain useful keywords. 

See the two resources at the end of this article for more tips on link building.

Exchanging links: Link exchanges and outbound links on your site can be valuable, but make sure they're relevant. Don't link to every site that  offers to link to you, unless they're relevant to your site content. An ostrich painter's website should probably link to other sites related to ostrich painting, ostriches, bird/wildlife art, painting, etc., but not to joe's plumbing. Also, beware of link exchanges that don't offer you a high quality link in return - some website promotion companies will offer that if you link to their client 'joespaintsupplies.com', they'll link back to you from their page at 'search-engine-links.com/links/category?id=2', which of course is a page full of links but not full of content meaning nobody will ever see this link back to your site, and the search engine ranking programs also probably won't give you any credit for it or they may even penalize you.

Article marketing: submitting free articles to relevant websites, with links back to your website, is another easy way to build links to your site. This site, ArtExample.com, is a great place to do just that - you can post art related lessons for free, and create an artist portfolio with links back to your other websites. You can post up to 15 lessons for free, or even more for a small monthly fee. And, all of our site pages are search engine optimized to make sure your pages are seen. See the 'Help' or 'Submit Lesson' links at the top of this page for more details. 

Search Engines

If you've followed all the steps above, your site content structure should be easy for search engines to understand, and the links you've been building to your site will help search engines find your site. Of course there's no guarantee that your site will get a specific search engine ranking for a certain term, but we've tipped the odds in your favor.  

The most important search engines right now are Google (by far the biggest), Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL, and all of these will find you if you've already created some links to your site from other quality sites. If you want to be sure they index your site, visit their sites, and click on their 'add a url' or 'suggest a url' link to add your url to their list.

If you can, take a day to find as many other search engines and directories as you can and submit your site to them. Avoid any sites that charge you for a listing, unless you're just itching to spend some money - there are plenty of free options. You'll never  have time to list in every directory or search engine, but if you list in a few it will help the others to find you.

For most sites, most of your search engine traffic will come from google.com, with a little from other engines. But, it's important to not rely solely on google for your traffic - continue to build links from other websites, to ensure a well rounded traffic profile for your website. Someday, Google will no longer be number one search engine, and somebody else will be the top dog. But, if you've followed a solid content organization, keyword selection, and linking plan, this won't matter - the new engines will be able to find your site.

Email Marketing

One great way to keep subscribers coming back to your blog is to create an email signup form: visitors enter their email address to be automatically updated by email when you create a new blog post. 

There are a couple of free services that make blog email marketing easy, such as FeedBlitz.com, and FeedBurner.com

Other Resources 

 Though I've covered the basics here, I've only just scratched the surface. For more information on how to get more links to your site, how to optimize your website for search engine rankings, or other online promotion strategies, visit these links:

SEO Fast Start - If you're ready for a more in-depth guide, this free e-book is a must-have for planning your search engine optimization and website promotion strategy. Covers all the points I've listed above, but in much more depth. I've personally implemented some of the strategies in this book, and it was far more organized and immediately useful than any other guide I've seen.

101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website - some interesting link building ideas

	About The Artist
	Micah R. Condon ( View Profile - Contact ) ( 7 lessons, ) ArtExample.com Site Administrator