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.

Free Website Hosting

 In my previous post I wrote about Domain Registration.  If we have done our homework correctly we should now have a little bit less than $10 invested in our domain name so now it's time to look into web hosting.  Although it is possible to run your own internet server for the most part people at this level of the game use a web host.  Your data resides on their server and people communicate through that server to access your data.

Hosting packages like domain names offer a wide variety of choices (and you saw in the previous post how companies like to bundle domain registration and hosting together).  Since we are just a Dude and a Dog and we want to keep the Dog in biscuits and gravy train we are going to look for a free hosting package.

Most companies that offer free web hosting do so so that they can plaster ads all over your 'free' website.  Your content draws visitors, those visitors sometimes click on ads, those ads generate revenue.  These free websites range from the mildly obnoxious to the completely obnoxious.  Not exactly the atmosphere that you want to showcase yourself and your artwork.

There are two brilliant exceptions.  They allow you to redirect you domain name to their servers for free, they place no ads on your site (and in fact allow you to earn revenue should you decide to place ads on your site) and are completely free.  How do they do it?  Volume ;-)


Weebly is a San Francisco based company whose mission is to enable people put to their information online quickly and easily and without any specialized knowledge with a drag and drop style webpage editor. 

Google Sites  is Google's answer to putting content creation in the hands of content creators.  Create your own page or a group page simply and easily with no required knowledge of html or CSS.  Dozens of prebuilt templates that can also be customized.  Google sites is also integrated into the complete Google toolset enabling you to integrate such tools as Google Maps and Google Calendar easily into your website.  Although you probably won't want ads on your artist website but Google Adsense also integrates nicely into Google sites.

For you Apple users out there, check out iweb - a simple to use website editor that is well integrated with everything Apple.  You will have to find web hosting to use iweb but the ease of use might make it worth it for you.

Give it a try and see what you think.

Register Your Domain

Registering your own internet domain name is the foundation of your online identity.   There is nothing easier when you want somebody to look at your art to tell them to go to   www.YourNameHere.com. 

When it comes to domain registration, cheapest is the best.  A domain name  is nothing more than an entry in the database that cross references the domain name to an IP (internet protocol) address. 

 You will find a lot of offers for free or low cost domain names but there is often a catch.  Let's take one of the most expensive domain registrars, Network Solutions.  They are currently offering a special, "Get your Domain for $6.99 a Year*" which sounds good until you read the fine print "  That $6.99 price is only good if you sign up for one year of nshosting which costs $10.95/month so your total cost per year to register that domain with hosting is $140/year!

Here at Dude and a Dog enterprises we recommend  NameCheap.   The names says it all.  They have an easy interface and easy prices.

Another important aspect of choosing a name for your website is Search Engine Optimization which is how people find you when they don't have your full  website name (something about a dude or a dog) or randomly happen onto your site with related search terms (austin artist) .  Choosing a domain name that describes you makes it easier for people to find you.  FirstNameLastName.com is best, if that is unavailable FirstnameLastNameArt.com, etc.  Choose a name that makes sense for people to try and find you.

  There are some other services in the sidebar of this page that offer domain registration services - as always it pays to shop around.  Sometimes they run specials, etc. that might make them a better value than NameCheap.  Check them out before you commit. Here are some things to keep in mind when shopping for domain registration:

• Find out the cost and procedures for transferring your domain name to another domain name registrar in case you become dissatisfied or find a lower price. Registrars in general have a terrible reputation for holding names hostage. Some charge exorbitant fees or create delays to avoid losing business.

• Consider features, if you want them. Extra services offered by domain name registrars are generally oriented to domain name speculators or duplicative of what web hosting services provide. Those often include e-mail accounts, e-mail forwarding and domain forwarding.

• Consider support options.Registration should be simple, and a name is a name, which means most customers will never need tech support or other customer service.  Where you are most likely to need support is when moving your domain to a different host.

• Make sure the domain is registered to you, as opposed to your web host or registrar. Make sure that if you get a free or below-cost domain name, you own the domain name that way the registrar cannot control the name to make switching to a competitor difficult or impossible.

• Think twice about using an alternative top-level domain. Reviewers point out that a high percentage of site searches are conducted by guessing a domain name, as opposed to using a search engine. Alternatives to .com can be cheaper, especially .info, but they can make your site hard to find and difficult to remember. Although use of .org is unrestricted, it's inappropriate for anything other than a non-profit organization.