You have a website – I hope! – but is it search engine friendly?
Websites are becoming needles in a very large haystack – how do you put your piece of hay on top of the pile? “Build it and they will come” worked for Kevin Kostner in Field of Dreams but won’t cut it in today’s world wide web. You need a few key ingredients – good content, good design and good SEO – Search Engine Optimization.
According to Business Insider’s March 8, 2012 article: How Many Web Sites Are There?
(…) there isn’t a definite answer. However, right now there are 644 million active websites on the Internet according to Netcraft.
Netcraft’s March 2012 website survey discovered 644,275,754 active websites, to be precise.
Half a billion is a lot. But when we’re talking about the Internet, sounds kind of small.
It won’t be small for long. The Internet is still growing by leaps and bounds. The March numbers were up by 31.4 million (5.1%) over last month.
Plus, nearly six million domain names were added to the Internet in the fourth quarter of 2011, bringing the total to 225 million domain names worldwide, says VeriSign. Each domain name can designate a single website or it can host lots of them.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I LOVE WordPress for websites! All but one of my sites is a WordPress website (don’t ask – it would take an army to move the other and I haven’t found the army, time or inclination to make it happen yet!). It is flexible, there are tons and tons of things you can do with a WordPress site… I could go on and on.
But today I just want to tell you this: WordPress websites are great for SEO.
The people who created WordPress knew what they were doing. They knew that the number of websites would continue to increase exponentially and it would become more and more important for people to have tools to make their website stand out. They designed the platform to make it easy.
The folks at All in One SEO Pack created a fabulous plug-in that makes it really easy too. Simply go here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/all-in-one-seo-pack/ and get the plug-in. Install and activate it on your website.
Once the plugin is active, a box will appear at the bottom of every page or every blog post where you can add information that search engines like. Add a title, a description, keywords and more. Here’s a screenshot of what you will have at the bottom of each post and page and what I filled out for the blog page of this website…
I use this on every page of every website to help my sites stand out. With a name like “Tara Reed” I can assure you it was hard to get on page 1 of Google. Even now, 9 years after I got online, Google will ask me “Did you mean Tara Reid”? – that’s how the actress spells her name. (I hear jokes about it daily…) You will see that I still get to see lovely photos of her in my search, in spite of the name spelling differences, but most of page 1 is related to me. Yeah to SEO – she used to be the whole first page no matter how you spelled REED…
SO – if you use WordPress for your website, make sure you use this or another plug-in to help you get the attention your website deserves!
Learn more about WordPress for Artists by getting a free copy of the Ask Call with Kim Beasley – head to www.AskAboutWordPressForArtists.com
Learn more about SEO for artists by getting a free copy of the Ask Call with Daniel Tardent – head to www.AskAboutSEOforArtists.com
Heck, get them both!
Here’s to your creative – and highly ranked – success!
– Tara Reed
P.S. You want to see that Field of Dreams scene don’t you??? Here it is…
When is the last time you reviewed your website?
If you are like a lot of people, you put a lot of time and effort into creating your website – when you created it. When was that? Last month? Last year? Five, ten years ago?
Regardless of when you created your website, when is the last time you looked at it to make sure it was all that it could be?
I like to review my art website 2-3 times a year. I always go through it with a critical eye in February – a few months before SURTEX to make sure what manufacturers will see before, during and after the show is as good as it can be. Then one or two other times a year I go through and make sure things are good.
Here is a quick checklist of what I look at:
- Home page – is the look of the page giving a good first impression? Can people tell what I do quickly? Is the text as strong as it can be from a marketing standpoint and is it relevant – or can it be changed to be even better?
- Visuals – are the visuals on my site up to date and do they represent my best work? Do they appear current or are there some that look dated and should be changed out?
- About page – is this up to date and does it give people a better sense of me as an artist and of my business?
- Speed – is my website loading quickly enough and if not, what can I fix or change to make it better?
In addition to these basics, I also do a quick SEO (Search Engine Optimization) review. Checking keywords and descriptions for each page. I look at Google Analytics to see what keywords they see as most relevant to my website and see if I agree…
I just reviewed my site and dusted off my copy of SEO for Artists* by Daniel Tardent. You might remember him from the Ask About SEO for Artists call we did over a year and a half ago. It was a great reminder of the basics and I used some new tips that I hadn’t implemented the first go round.
If you don’t have it already, I recommend you go to www.AskAboutSEOforArtists.com and register to get the free mp3 replay of the call I did with Daniel. It is full of great information – he answered questions submitted by artists like you so chances are, you have some of these questions too.
If you are serious about optimizing your website, I also encourage you to consider his eBook – SEO for Artists*.
Here’s a video I did before the call that is still relevant today – and now closed captioned! – How SEO for Artists is Like making a Google Field Goal. Enjoy!
Here’s to your creative website’s success!
– Tara Reed
How SEO for Artists is like kicking a "Google Field Goal"
I’m not a big sports person and I can tell you I was THRILLED to discover that my birthday does not coincide with the SuperBowl – would have really bummed me out! (Condolences to my friend Sue, whose does.) However, while wandering through a local Party Depot a few weeks ago, I was inspired by some Football Field Goal head gear. It got my brain going into full analogy mode and I realized the field goal posts were the perfect way to explain SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.
According to a study in October 2008 by Netcraft, there are more than 182 million websites on the internet. Sit with that a minute… a little overwhelming isn’t it? So how on earth will anyone find you, even if they are looking?
Well how do you find websites? You go to a search engine like Google or Yahoo or Bing… Many are also now turning to YouTube as a search engine – especially if you want to learn how to do something. A quick search of the topic will often find you free video content to help you out. Cool!
Still thinking about your own search habits, when you search a term, you might notice that Google comes up with pages and pages and pages of answers for you – how many pages do you look through before heading off to find the info? Which websites do you assume will be the most likely to give you what you need? Google found 5,250,000 results in .2 seconds for a pretty narrow search term “SEO for Artists”…
That is a bit overwhelming! Who has time to look at all those choices? If you are like the average searcher, you will look at 1-3 pages of results and choose a few of those website suggestions. That is why learning how to optimize your website so you are on those pages when someone searches a relevant term in so important. (That’s also why it’s called Search Engine Optimization or SEO.)
“But wait!” you say. “I don’t want to become a high-tech web designer, I want a website and then to focus on my art!”
Well you can have your SEO and painting time too! With some basic tips and techniques, you can learn how to move your website towards the goal of first page Google page rank without paying anyone thousands of dollars.
When you make your site, you put text and descriptions and keywords (I hope). Those are some of the things Google and other search engines use to evaluate your website and decide if you are inside or outside of the field goal posts when giving results on a search.
Daniel Tardent, an art marketer and artist website designer has created an eBook called, “SEO for Artists”. I bought a copy and have tweaked my websites to improve my SEO results – and I was doing pretty well already! He boils the technical topic down into understandable pieces and action items – explaining how to get the best results using art and artists as examples. Awesome! In fact, using these techniques I managed to get the February Ask Call website, www.AskAboutSEOforArtists.com on the first page of Google already.
This, in a nutshell (well, a large nutshell!) is why I think you should submit your questions and tune in to the February 17, 2010 Art Licensing Monthly Ask Call. Daniel has graciously agreed to give us an hour of his expertise so you can learn more about the process and decide if the eBook is something you want to invest in. (I’m glad I did!) If you can’t make the live call, the audio replay will be available for free after the call as well. But these calls are made great by questions from you – you create the content.
So I ask you – what do you want to know? Go to www.AskAboutSEOforArtists.com and submit your question today. We’ll talk to you soon! In the meantime, here’s a video telling you more about it…
– Tara
P.S. Don’t forget about the Art Licensing Story video contest – enter by 2/14 and the winner will be announced on the call. There is a $100 coupon or free hour of coaching to be won if you create a video to post at www.ArtLicensingInfo.com/stories.html – not to mention the sharing and inspiring so start recording!
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