Search Engine Optimization

 You are going to have two types of visitors to your website, direct traffic and search engine traffic.  Direct traffic is just what it sounds like - you tell somebody (directly, through a business card, etc. - hey check out my website www.mywebsite.com.  Search engine traffic is when somebody types in a set of keywords (YourName artist austin watercolor, etc.) and your website is returned in the search results.  Search Engine Optimization is the process of tuning your website so that it is more likely to be returned in the top results of a search term.

A search engine's credibility is based on the neutrality of its results.  When you search for something on the internets you want organic, honest, unbiased information.  If the only results returned are those of people who paid the search engine fees you would rapidly switch to another search engine that would provide you honest not sponsored results.   When you look at Google search results for instance you will see the "sponsored links" are separated from the organic seach results.  SEO focuses on the organic search results.

All of the Search Engine Providers use robots, crawlers, spiders and scutters to scour the internet for data.  These little programs copy your data to the search providers to be processed into an index.  Every search engine has different methods of indexing but essentially key words from your website are distilled so that the search engine has to parse much less data to provide results.  Your content provides the key words so you want to make sure that your content contains key words that people might enter while trying to find you and your art.

Companies spend millions of dollars on SEO but fortunately even if you are just a dude and a dog with the goal of people finding your website there is a lot you can accomplish for free.

Our goal here is fairly simple: we want people to find your website so that they can see your art and contact information.  Your first big advantage in our SEO quest is your name.  Most of the contacts to your website will already know your name.  If you have an unique name (e.g. Xochi Solis) your job will be fairly simple.  If you have a more common name (e.g. John Smith) your task will be a little bit more challenging.  Using a unique middle name can help here (John Friggin Smith).  Even so, Firstname Lastname is a fairly unique criteria to work so when it comes to SEO as an artist you have a head start. 

What are your KeyWords?

If you were trying to find you on the internet what would you search for?  Firstname Lastname, then what?
Anything that you can think of as an identifier is fair game.  John Smith is generic.  John Smith Austin Texas localizes it (in case there is a John Smith in Austin MN!).  John Smith Austin Texas Artist will separate you out from all of the John Smith's in Austin, TX and finally John Smith Austin Texas Artist Sculptor will put you above all of the other John Smith artists in Austin.  You get the picture.  You need to embed the words that people might use to try and find you with a search engine into your website content.  

For an artist's website this is fairly straightforward and simple - your text will mainly be found in your opening page and your artists statement.  You can also attach alternate text to your images (for instance info about a piece in your gallery, e.g. "untitled, 18x24 gouache on paper, private collector Austin, TX is a great way to embed keywords into your content).

Besides your content other portions of your website figure into SEO.  The Title of your website, domain name, meta keywords, site description are all components of your website that are also indexed and used to assign value to your website based on certain key words.  We can go into this in greater depth down the road if there is interest.