Helping Artists Succeed In A Connected World

It's not enough to put up a web site and hope it will be magically found by customers and search engines. It won't be! Regrettably, too many artists do just that and end up losing out on the opportunities the Internet offers.

All businesses, small to large, benefit from some level of Internet marketing. Even personal web sites and MySpace pages need marketing to bring visitors in. Here is a short list of web site marketing tips.

Some items, like the Title and Meta-Description tags, require working on the code of the web page. If you cannot edit the page code yourself you may need to ask your web site provider or developer if they will take care of these items.

Keywords The first thing to do is to develop a list of keywords relevant to your web site. These will be used in your Title and Meta-Description Tags. When possible it is also good to use these keywords in the content on your site pages.

• Think of phrases (not words) that people will use to find you on the web. Most users will use two or more words when they search.
• Use a thesaurus to look for keywords. A good one to use is the Roget's Thesaurus in book form which shows related concepts.
• With Google's keyword tool you can enter several keywords and it displays related keywords. Free to use. https://adwords.google.com/select/keywordsandbox

Title and Meta-Description Tags The Title Tag and Meta-Description Tag are located in the code at the top of a web page and contain words describing the content. The words used in these two tags should clearly describe the content and can contain keyword phrases to help improve search engine rankings. Title Tag

• The Title Tag may be used in the heading that appears in the search engine (this is what the user sees in the search engine results list).
• Search engines have a limit to the number of characters they use from the Title Tag. This varies according to the search engine, but in general, use no more than 50 characters (including spaces).

Meta-Description Tag

• Use your top two or three keywords and write a complete sentence.
• Put the keyword first, then the description, and finally the company name.
• Use up to 250 characters (including spaces). You can paste the text into Word and use Tools >> Word Count to count the number of characters.

Submit Your Site to DMOZ and Google DMOZ (the Open Directory Project) is edited and maintained by humans. If they think your entry is useful, they will add it to their directory. The DMOZ file is open source and any search engine can use it for free to create their list of web pages. This is a great way to get high-quality third party links to your site. Google states that they do not add all submitted URLs to their index, and they cannot make any guarantees about when or if a site will be listed. But it doesn't hurt to submit your site to them.

• To submit to DMOZ: dmoz.org/add.html. Submit as early as possible, it can take months to add your site to their list.
• To submit to Google: www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl

Encourage Other Web Sites to Link to Your Web Site Contact art related web sites that fit well with your work about providing a link to your site. The more links to your web site, related to art or your art form, the higher your site will rank on the search engines. Google ranks web sites according to their Page Rank value. Google assigns the Page Rank value by looking at the number of incoming related links to a web site. Other Ways to Promote Your Web Site

• If you have a web site with your own domain name use an email address with your domain name.
• Use an email signature file. A signature file is a few lines of text placed at the bottom of your email messages to identify you, provide your contact information (include your web site address) and describe your product or service.
• Put your web site address on everything you print, business cards, letterhead, promotional materials, etc.
• Participate in online Forums. Forums are a good way to boost your web site promotion as they are opinion builders. Join discussions and include your web site URL below your name.

Web site marketing is a huge subject. For those interested in learning more there is a large amount of information available in books and on the Internet.

-- Jo Ann