SEO for artists

Beginners Guide to SEO

As an artist or photographer, your website is a very valuable promotional and communication tool. But how do you make a website popular and more 'visible' in the search engines? This is a question we get asked a lot by our featured artists & photographers, so we asked our web designer to write this "Beginners Guide to SEO" (search engine optimisation).

In this article we'll be covering the following things (click the titles to skip to that content)…

Introduction and a few words of warning
Do it yourself
Build and site structure
Text and keywords
Naming conventions
Internal site links
External links and networking
Social networks
Sharing
Useful tools

Introduction and a few words of warning

SEO is a very complex subject. A lot of it involves trial & error, time and patience. There is no one answer or guaranteed solution(s), so be weary of anyone (or organisation) who tells you otherwise! Google are rightly very secretive about how they rank websites, if we all knew the 'tricks' there could be no hierarchy or accurate ranking. However, Google does leave us breadcrumbs to lead us in the right direction. The rest you learn through experience, which is all I can share with you here…

Firstly, a warning: In short, SEO is a con artists game! Beware of SEO companies or individuals claiming to be experts. Watch out for emails saying things like: "Your website is under performing in the search engines", or "We have looked at your site and…" - I assure you they haven't visited your website and they don't have your best interests at heart, they are trying to con you! The likeliest scenario is that they will ask you for thousands ($), then spend a small fraction of it on things like Google Adwords (or add your site to spam/list directory websites), which will send a short term burst of traffic to your website, creating the illusion that your website is more popular, which of course will drop off after the Adwords' budget/money expires. But this will have absolutely no long-term benefit, nor will it positively impact on your search engine rank whatsoever.

You've been warned…

Another important thing to mention is that Google Adwords has got nothing to do with SEO. This is a common misconception. If used well, it can be an effective way of generating targeted traffic to your website. But it will not improve your page rank or place you higher in the search results. It is an advertising/marketing tool, not an SEO solution.

Do it yourself

The good news is there are a number of things you can do yourself that will help. Please remember though, these aren't magic solutions. You won't shoot to the top of Google under any circumstances, you are literally competing with millions of websites. You can only help Google rank your website more effectively. And be patient! Success won't happen over night, it could take weeks/months.

There are five main factors in SEO:

1. The quality of the build (code) and site structure.
2. The text (keyword) content.
3. Naming conventions.
4. Internal (anchor) links.
5. External links and networking.

Build and site structure

First and foremost the quality of the code and the structure/markup of your website is very important. So invest in a good web developer (from the outset). This will cost you, but the quality will pay off in the long run.

I won't give too much away here, but think about what the most important parts of your page content are… If you turn off all styles and images, what does your website look like? Does it make any sense? …It should, as this is effectively what Google sees when it crawls your website. There are other accessibility considerations here also. Does your page start with loads of links to un-important content? Are there structured blocks of text content complete with titles/headings? How far down the page do you need to scroll before you get to any valuable keywords or text? Are there even any relevant keywords to the subject of your page/site? …All things to think about!

A simple way of testing this is… In Google, search for your websites' domain name (or a specific page). In the listings you'll notice every link has a "Cached" link… Click that… You'll then see your website with some information at the top… Now click the "Text-only version" link to the top-right of the screen.

The markup and (build) quality of your website is very important. This is the complicated part; so consult with your web designer/developer about this (if you have one)… A web page is essentially a plain text document (HTML). We apply styles (CSS) to this content to make it look and behave how we want. Think of the code that commands the CSS as obstacles for Google… The more complicated it is, the harder it is for Google to efficiently crawl your page content and find the important text and links. So 'old school' table-based websites are out (!), as these are littered with unnecessary code. You should look to build your websites using XHTML or HTML5, utilising external stylesheets (CSS) and other JavaScript, PHP and Ajax functionality… Again, speak to your web developer about this. But if you are using an 'off-the-shelf' service like WordPress (for example), this 'should' come as standard.

I can't emphasise the importance of the quality and structure of the build enough. For example: A new version of this website (Club Of The Waves) was launched back in September 2010, built in HTML5, and within the first few months it saw roughly a 30% rise in page impressions!

Text and keywords

To break it down, when Google crawls a website (visits/looks at)… It looks first at the domain name (including the file & folder names in the address)… Then at what's called the meta information (i.e. the title and description)… And then it looks at the hierarchy of titles/headings throughout the page and any corresponding paragraphs of text.

The trick is that all these elements need to work together to be effective! For example: If the domain name and/or title of your web page say that you are an artist, but all the headings and text on that page talk about how you love fishing (for example), then Google will determine that your website actually doesn't have anything to do with what you 'claim' it does (i.e. art), and thus will rank your website or web page lower.

So think about keywords… What do you want people to type into a search engine to find you? To be effective, try to narrow the list down to an important few keywords. You can't expect to focus a website on dozens of keywords. All you will end up doing is devaluing your content and thus lowering your page rank.

Be as descriptive as you can. Titles like "Welcome" are utterly useless on the home page of your website from an SEO point-of-view. As are titles/headers like "About me". So think about how you phrase things.

This is where experimentation, trial & error and time (patience) come into play. Try different setups, keywords and combinations. Then analyse their effect over time using tools like Google Analytics.

If you have an unusual name, then your name won't be as important in terms of keywords, as you have less to compete with. However, if you're name is Homer Simpson, then you have a got a fight on your hands! Are you an "artist", "photographer", "illustrator", or a "surf artist"? Do you specifically do "surf art" or "plein air"? Do you focus on "portrait photography", as opposed to "surf photography"? Is your location important? Do you want to rank higher for local searches (e.g. "Santa Cruz") or will "California" suffice?

There are a number of factors to consider. But once you have a list, look to build all these keywords into your page titles, headings and paragraphs of text throughout your site, but do it sensibly (i.e. so it's grammatically correct). Don't just list keywords, as this will do more harm than good. Google is very clever! It's encountered every trick and shortcut there is.

Remember that search engines only see text… Images, videos and Flash are invisible to them! So text (keywords & links) are gold! A lot of (in particular) photographers have Flash portfolio websites. These can be simple and cheap/free to setup, but hold almost no worth in the search engines, effectively taking you 'out of the race' all together!

Naming conventions

One final point on keywords: The way you name your web pages, blog posts, folders and images is also important. Ideally the web page address (what appears in the address bar of your web browser) should relate to the titles, headers and text content of your page.

On this website the portfolio of surf photographer Clark Little's web address is:
/surf-photographer/clark-little.php

A blog post titled "Photos from a golden era of surfing" is named:
/blog/photos-from-a-golden-era-of-surfing/

Similarly, to help services like Google Images catalogue your site images better, try being (short and) descriptive in the file name like so:
pipeline-wave-hawaii-by-clark-little.jpg

Internal site links

Now that your text and structure is sound… Linking up your web pages, via site navigation, filters and what's known as 'anchor' or 'internal' links are all very important.

When Google crawls your website, it scans web pages, following links, both internally (to other pages within your site) and externally (to other websites you link to). It's common sense that the more efficient your links (and site structure) are, the better it is (both) for user experience (i.e. helping the user find what they are looking for) and for SEO.

Your keywords (again) come into effect where links are concerned. So for example: If you have a web page, section or blog post specifically about "portrait photography", then link similar (relevant) keywords to this page.

It's actually a very simple concept: The more times Google is directed back to a specific page the better, so long as the keywords linking through to that page relate to the content of that page. Google can then determine that web pages are both popular and relevant to a specific set of keywords. No one page of your site can conquer all your target keywords, so help Google to find specific (targeted) pages and rank them accordingly.

External links and networking

Something that never ceases to amaze me is how people/companies expect to simply upload a website, and for it to instantly become popular, rank highly and get lots of traffic! It's true that all the things I've covered so far give your website the best possible chance to succeed… But now it's over to you to make your website as 'visible' as possible!

When I say 'visible', I mean the frequency in which your website appears or is linked to throughout the World Wide Web. As mentioned before, Google follows links… This includes other websites linking to your website. Of course this helps from a 'human' perspective too (i.e. people see and click links, perhaps stumbling upon your website for the first time).

So every time Google follows a link from a website to your website, that's another time it will 'crawl' your site. It sounds obvious, but this really helps. And helps Google to determine how popular/important your site is (to a particular set of keywords), thus ranking it higher.

So look to market your site… Get incoming links to your website on websites relevant to the content of your own site, even if it's just local directory sites, or blogs (blogrolls), forums, in the body of articles (and comments on articles), links pages etc… But be careful not to go over the top. Don't spam websites! You will make no friends this way! It could even gain you a reputation as a spammer, or worse, adversely affect your page rank!

Consider setting up a dedicated links page on your website so you can offer link exchanges with other websites… There is nothing more annoying than websites requesting you link to them when they have no means (or intention) to reciprocate your link!

Remember though… Only 'quality' websites relevant to the subject of your site will help your page rank. So for example: If Google sees that a number of popular "surf art" websites link to your "surf art" portfolio/website, then it validates your websites' claim that it is to do with "surf art"… Otherwise Google has no way of knowing. Think about it: Google isn't a person; it's all automated. You could write anything on your website, it doesn't mean it's true.

It's a grey area how effective social networks like Twitter & Facebook are in terms of SEO, as many of these have what's called a "no follow" on their links, effectively taking them 'out of contention' for search engine rankings (linking to your website). However, individual 'tweets' (mentioning your website) are picked up by Google searches, so it can't hurt! But either way, it's not all about search engines, it's about user (human) engagement too!

Consider utilising social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace, even geo-location services like foursquare and Gowalla (depending on the nature of your business). This way you can grow your network via a fan base, sharing links back to your site, post updates, special offers, sneak peeks, new work, upcoming events/shows/exhibits etc…).

There are dozens of creative communities out there too like Dribbble, Behance (even Flickr) and other more targeted artistic community websites (like Club Of The Waves).

Blogs are an invaluable tool and make it easy for you to share news (and internal links). Consider services like WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr or Posterous.

To compliment your blogs and/or written content & marketing, it can be effective to engage your audience. Make it easy for them to share content on your website (all more links back to your site). This is easy to do using 'off-the-shelf' plugins (snippets of code) like Twitter's "Tweet button", a Facebook Like Button or a service like AddThis. Consider letting users comment on your articles or blog posts too (although this can be risky and requires moderation). Tools like Disqus and Facebook Comments Box make it easy for you to include comments functionality on your site.

Useful tools

Google Webmaster Tools

Using your Google account, add your website and create/upload an XML sitemap. This helps Google to crawl and catalogue all the important pages within your website, whilst providing you with a dashboard of information from diagnostics, to search statistics, keywords, links and more.

Google Analytics

Again, using your Google account, you simply add your website, then copy & paste a few lines of code into every page of your website. You then get a comprehensive dashboard of statistics from unique & page views, referring sites, popular keywords & pages and much more! Analysing this information helps you to see how your website performs, and identify areas you could potentially improve.

Facebook Social Plugins

An official set of Facebook plugins, making it easy for users to engage with your website using their Facebook accounts. This can be really effective, given that when someone interacts with your site in this way, their activity is streamed back into their Facebook profiles, so their friends see they have 'liked' something on your website, extending your network reach!