Art Palaver Artist Marketing Resource » Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization for Artists | Helping Your Fans Find You

Daryle Dickens — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:52:12 +0000

Simple and easy search engine optimization practices can help fans find you and your artist website.

Each week I host a free weekly webinar to help you sell more art. Each webinars contain about 20 minutes of content and end with a live Q&A session. If you can’t make the live event the audio recording and slides are available for free afterward.

The next webinar is on SEO practices for artists.

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and it basically means taking steps so that search engines can find your information when people search for it. Are you an oil painter that specializes in painting bumblebees? Would you come up in Google is I search for “bumblebee oil painting”? I would hope so.

I’ll talk about the small steps you can take to improve the SEO for your site so those people interested in your artistic niche will find you when the search the web. Usually it is just a matter of tweaking the things you are already doing. And a lot of what I teach is lessons I have learned the hard way. But since I started taking these small steps I watched my traffic quickly increase.

If you are investing in an online presence for you art then you want traffic. There are two basic ways to get traffic. 1)Pay for it with ads. 2)Optimize your site to be found my search engines. For most of us SEO is the cost effective way to go.

Please join me for the live event and bring you questions. And as always if you have issues you want me to address you can leave questions in the comment form of this post.

Below you will find the audio, video, and slides for this webinar.

SEO for Artists Webinar

SEO Basics for Artist Websites and Blogs

View more presentations from Daryle Dickens.

If you’ve never taken part of a webinar this is a great chance to give this effective learning tool a try. You can join either through your computer and the internet or you can call and listen in via phone. And that is all you have to do, listen in. As you listen your microphone or phone is muted so no else can hear you. Please let me know if you have any questions about the webinar format.

Search Engine Optimization for Artists | Helping Your Fans Find You is a post from: Art Palaver The Artist Marketing Resource.

Wordpress For Artists | Windows Live Writer

Daryle Dickens — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 11:30:33 +0000

Wordpress blog software is an ideal application for promoting and marketing your artwork online. It gives you all the tools you need to create a professional looking artist website and easily publish fresh content, keeping your search engine optimization… well optimal. And all this leads to more sales of your art. But WP is not perfect, far from it. (Though there are many people always working to improve it.) A common complaint I hear from artists who blog with WP is they have trouble getting their posts to look just the way they want them to. Configuring text, fonts, headlines, images, and video players within Wordpress’s built in post editor can sometimes be frustrating. There are plugins out there to improve the default editor but today I am here to talk about Windows Live Writer.

Live Writer is free blog editing software from Microsoft. It was created for the Windows Live community but it works with a number of blogging platforms like Wordpress, Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, SharePoint, and Community Server.

I’ve been using Live Writer for over 2 years now and it is how I manage this blog and all the other blogs I publish. Which brings up another useful aspect of Live Writer, it allows you to manage multiple blogs neatly in one program. And I know a few artists who manage multiple blogs. Writer formats its editing screen to look like the blog you are publishing to so that you are able to see what your post looks like before you publish the post. This also helps me keep my blogs straight.

I like using it because it allows me to work on my blog posts while I am offline. And for me that means less distractions. I also keep my working drafts stored within Writer. This means when I open Writer I get a list of posts I am working on listed to the right of the workspace. Writer also has many easy to use features that are better than the default WP post editor. You can easily adjust the font, text color, text size, numbered lists, and bullet points, just to name a few. The real benefit though comes when you want to add images, tables, maps, or videos. Live Writer makes placing these and adjusting these a breeze. You can also make simple edits to images like rounded corners (which I dig) or sepia tone (which I don’t dig).

Wordpress users are accustomed to using plugins to add function to their blog. Live Writer also has the option of plug-ins to add even more functions to the blog editor. These help a writer incorporate things like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, as well as further customize your posts. I personally do not use any plug-ins in Writer but they are an option.

If you decide to give Live Writer a try you’ll need to make a small adjustment in your Wordpress dashboard before you connect Live Writer to your blog. Under “settings” click on “writing” and look for “Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols.” and check the box, hit “save change” and you should be good to go.

Give Live Writer a try, it is free and makes publishing to your blog a little bit easier. Mac users can check out Blogo which is blog editing software designed for Mac.

Wordpress For Artists | Windows Live Writer is a post from: Art Palaver The Artist Marketing Resource.

Wordpress For Artists | Stopping Spam Comments On Your Art Blog

Daryle Dickens — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 11:30:00 +0000

If you publish a Wordpress self hosted blog eventually the comment spammers will find you. Comment from spammers is pretty easy to spot. The comments are brief, generic, and often off topic. Most will contain links to sites selling things that you don’t want to be a part of. The longer your blog is out there the more spammers will find you and the more fake comments will come in that you have to deal with. This can be quite time consuming. Thankfully Wordpress ships with spam protection built in with the plugin “Akismet.”

But I know many artists who use Wordpress never get around to activating Akismet because they get confused when it asks for a Wordpress.com API key.

What is a Wordpress.com API key and how do I get one?

Basically the API key allows your blog access to Akismet’s service to check if the comments appear to be spam or not. There are two simple ways to get your key. You can go to Wordpress.com and sign up for a username only account or you can go directly to Akismet’s site and have them email you a key.

Does not really matter which route you take, they are both very simple. But I highly recommend that you do take this step of getting that Akismet plugin activated. It will save you a lot of time by weeding out the real comments from the ugly comments.

Wordpress For Artists | Stopping Spam Comments On Your Art Blog is a post from: Art Palaver The Artist Marketing Resource.

Wordpress For Artists | Ten Essential Plugins For Your Art Blog

Daryle Dickens — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 20:22:09 +0000

I recommend using Wordpress.org to any artist who is looking to create their own site and be in control of their internet presence. I call this your online headquarters. And since I recommend Wordpress I thought it would be a good idea to offer regular tips and advice for getting the most out of Wordpress.

Welcome to Wordpress Wednesday!

Plugins are tools that you use to add function to your Wordpress blog or site. Think of them as upgrades. There are hundreds of them and most of them are free. The following list is what I consider a good foundation for any Wordpress based website.

1. Wordpress Database Backup – This plugin simplifies and automates the back up of your site’s database. The database is where most of your site’s information is stored. Having regular automatic back ups can really save you when things go wrong.

2. Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Every time you post to your blog this little guy will look at your past posts for ones that relate and add links to them after the post. This helps your visitors to keep reading and stay on your site longer. That is a good thing.

3. All in One SEO Pack – SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and good SEO helps people find your site and you through organic cost free searches. This plugin boosts the SEO of your whole site and blog posts. If you do use this one I suggest checking out the plugin’s site to learn how to really get the most out of it.

4. SEO Friendly Images – Properly handling the images you post to your site can really increase traffic to your site. (As previously mentioned.) This plugin does some pretty geeky stuff to improve your images in the eyes of Google.

5. SEO Slugs – If you can’t tell already SEO is important and you want to do all you can to improve it. This plugin removes common words like ‘a’, ‘the’, ‘in’ from post slugs. Trust me the last thing you want is an ‘a’ in your post slugs.

6. Google XML Sitemaps – One more to help search engines find you. This plugin creates a file that makes for easy reading if your a search engine robot.

7. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade – Wordpress is great but there is always room for improvement. Which is why every so often new versions will come out that contain bug fixes and feature upgrades. This plugin does all the heavy lifting for you when it comes to keeping your site up to date.

8. RSS Footer – Many people will be reading your blog via RSS. That means they will rarely visit your blog. This plugin allows you to include a signature in every post that you can use to brand your posts or to market something specific. If you’re reading this post via RSS you’ll see what I mean below. If you’re not reading this post via RSS you can subscribe (For Free!) by clicking here.

9. What Would Seth Godin Do – Funny name but a great plugin. This one allows you to give a specific “hello” to new visitors who have never been to your site before. A great way to grab their attention and encourage them to subscribe to your content.

10. Gurken Subscribe to Comments – Pretty self explanatory. After someone comments they can get an email when there are follow up comments. Help encourage dialogue between you and your fans.

This list is by no means an end all be all list, just a foundation. Like I said there are many plugins out there that do a wide range of things. I am always on the look out for new ones so let me know of any you’d put on a list like this.

Wordpress For Artists | Ten Essential Plugins For Your Art Blog is a post from: Art Palaver The Artist Marketing Resource.

Posting Photos To Your Website Or Blog

Daryle Dickens — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:20:02 +0000

Recently I have been working on a series of webinars and today’s is about Search Engine Optimization. Since it is on my mind I thought I’d share one of the most important SEO tips for artists I know, SEO for images.

For most artists photographs and images are an important part of promoting themselves and their work online. I know many artists rely heavily on images in their blogs because they do not like to write much text. But I’ve noticed that many artists do not know that by taking one simple step their images become much more search engine friendly which makes them easier to find by people searching for art.

It is the file name for your images. You probably do not realize that this is the most important aspect of an image you post online. I am guessing you feel that what is in the image is more important. Keep in mind that the search engines do not know what the image is unless you tell them. A search engine can not visually look at your images (not yet anyways). I often notice images on artist sites that have files like, “IMG_627856327.jpg” or “small_portrait.jpg” and “flowers.jpg.” If you are guilty of this don’t worry, we’ll get you taken care of.

Let me give you some better examples of image names, “colorado-aspen-oil-on-canvas-your-name.jpg” or “photograph-old-truck-field.jpg” maybe even “claude-monet-inspired-sunrise.jpg.” Do you see the difference? The better examples are titles of words and terms people might be searching for. No one is going to put “IMG_627856327” into a search field on Google. I will agree that someone might enter “small portrait” or “flowers” in a search box but there is going to be too much competition for your file to show up on that search. Those words are way too common, an image search for “flowers” brings up almost 50,000,000 results. A search for “a photograph of an old truck in a field” (quotes included) produced zero results for an image with that specific name. But it is a well used search term so if you do have a photo of an old truck in a field, and you name your image file that, you have a much better chance of showing up when someone who is in the market for an image of an old truck in a field photograph searches for one.

The easiest way to say it is name your images with a description of the image. Doing this one small thing will really help people find you on the web. I get a lot of traffic to this site and other artist sites that I manage because of this one step I take with images.

Need some help with this? Google has you covered with the Google Image Labeler. Give it a try, it is kind of like a game you play with another random person online.

And if you are a Wordpress.org user try out the SEO Friendly Images plugin for an automatic boost.

Photo credit goes to:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ryanwick/ / CC BY 2.0

Posting Photos To Your Website Or Blog is a post from: Art Palaver The Artist Marketing Resource.