SEO - Help Customers Find Your Artworks.
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Are you taking advantage of SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It helps the visibility of a web page on the internet and helps drive more quality traffic to your artwork pages.
There are a number of search engines. Among most popular of those are Google, Yahoo and Bing.
What a lot of artists fail to realize is how big of an impact SEO can make for bringing traffic to their artwork pages and thus increasing their chances of making artwork sales. People constantly search for images about anything and everything with those search engines.
It's also worth mentioning that optimized web pages don't magically appear higher in search engine results the next day. It takes time.
For this reason, you should not delete your images and then upload other artworks just so you can bypass the 30 artwork limitation of the basic plan. It takes time for your artwork pages to build up their rank in search engines such as Google.
When you delete artworks and replace them with other ones, then your artwork pages loose all the rankings they've built up so far.
Ok. One last note before we dive in into the details.
The term "indexing your files" or "indexing your artwork pages" mean that a search engine records it for future reference. When you search for something in let's say Google, it doesn't go search the whole internet... NO. it uses it's internal records for reference and displays the results.
So the lesson here is that you need to help the search engines "record" your artwork pages correctly.
You've taken the basic steps of uploading your artwork images, but what good is it if people can't find them?
Here are a number of scenarios of how someone can find your artwork.
| Scenario #1 |
Scenario #2 |
Scenario #3 |
A shopper searches one of the said search engines (let's say Google) for "Angel Poster". Will your artwork page be listed in the search result?
So what if the image of your artwork displays an angel? Google can't "Look" at your image and decide.... hmm this looks like an angel. I'll make sure to display it when someone searches for it. |
A shopper uses the search feature within GotArtwork.com to search for "Angel". If you've specified the tag "Angel' in your artwork tags, then your artwork will be displayed as one of the search results. |
A shopper keeps browsing our artwork pages, going from page to page until ... LO AND BEHOLD ... they see your artwork and fall in love. If you're a romantic at heart, it may suit you just fine. But it has the least chances of bringing traffic to your artwork pages. |
What can you do to make your artworks easy to find?
- Name your artwork files before uploading - If you're a photographer, your camera may name your files like DSC1001.jpg, DSC1002.jpg etc. Search engines such as Google will index your artwork files based on the filename. Although there may be concerns about others copying your artwork images, we believe the benefits outweigh the potential risks. Your artwork images will be indexed regardless of how you name them, but properly naming your artwork files before an upload can help others find your artwork. The original version of your uploaded images will never be available, even to search engines. Only low resolution previews used in your artwork pages will be indexable by search engines. You can watermark your artworks for additional security. Also consider putting the artist name as part of the file.
For example: "Photograph of a Lion Pride in African Safari by John Doe.jpg"
- Write unique and meaningful Artwork Titles - GotArtwork.com will try to derive the title from the image metadata and then the file name automatically. It's important not to rely on this. Write your own
unique artwork titles instead. Don't name your artworks "watercolor 123" or "abstract 123"
or "untitled". Those are generic names and say nothing about the artworks. It can be especially hard to name abstract works. But consider deriving the name from the description of the work.
For example: You can name an abstract work like "Abstract with green lines and red bubbles". It's short, but at the same time gives a hint about the type of the abstract work during search engine results. Also, if you're a bird photographer, don't name ALL your artworks "bird".
Having the same title for several artworks will cause
search engines to penalize your web page rank. Unique titles also help customers appreciate what they're about to buy. Be more descriptive and help them find specific artworks instead of trying to frustrate them.
- Tag your artworks - The internal search engine of GotArtwork.com uses the tags of your artworks to display them during search results. It's important to properly tag your artworks. If your artwork image contains a lion, for example, then appropriate tags can be "big cat", "wild cat", "lion", "lions" plus any other tags that you think your artwork represents. If the picture was taken at the zoo, then the tag "zoo" might also be appropriate. It depends on how clear it is that it's an artwork of a lion in a zoo. Don't clutter. 10 to 15 tags is more than enough for each artwork.
- Describe your artworks - 1) Write unique description for each
artwork (duplicate or near-duplicate descriptoins can cause search engines to
penalize your pages, just like in case of titles). Write meaningful descriptions
(don't just say "this is an artwork" ). 2) As we mentioned earlier, search engines such as Google can't decide what's inside the image itself (maybe they can, but that's not the point). When Google indexes your artwork pages, it uses the TEXT inside those pages. This is why it's absolutely crucial to have a paragraph or two of description text about the artwork. Describe it as you'd describe it to a potential customer and assume they haven't seen the artwork yet. The first couple of sentences are especially important. You want to get your message across early and then you can go into more details.
- Spell Check - You might be in a hurry to post your artworks while jumping up and down with excitement about the possibility of making sales. All of that positive thinking is great, but you'll be shooting yourself on the foot by making common spelling mistakes. It's basically like scramming "I'm eager to make a buck, but I don't really care enough for my art to put a few minutes of effort and spell check". If you've made the effort to appear professional, then a customer may be less hesitant to purchase your art.
- Links - If you operate a separate website or a blog, then putting links pointing to your profile or artwork pages can also help search engines find and index your pages. If you have friends, you can ask them to do you a solid and put a link somewhere on their site as well.
What you should not do!!!
- When Writing Artwork Titles - Do not rely on GotArtwork.com to pre-fill your artwork title correctly. DO NOT leave the artist name in the title box (in case we derived it from the file name). We'll append it to your page title automatically. So avoid the echo in the page title and only write the artwork title, without the artist name.
Do not use the same artwork title for more than one artwork.
- When Tagging Your Artworks - Never and we mean NEVER add un-related tags to your artworks.
For Example: If your artwork displays a "lion", then you should NOT tag it "jaguar".
Spare customers the frustration of not being able to find what they're looking for. Imagine if everyone puts unrelated tags in hopes that their artworks will come out in as many search results as possible. Then we're back to square one and no one gets to make a sale. We may randomly go over published artworks and remove any unrelated tags. So please be nice and spare us the effort. If we're not cleaning up after you, then we'll have more time to improve the website and concentrate on helping you and your fellow artists.
Also avoid generic tags like, "abstract" or "artwork". We have a growing list of different types of artworks. Imagine if we have thousands of artworks tagged "abstract". It's not specific to your artwork and you're not really helping the customer find it. You can, instead, choose the "abstract" subject as well as add tags. This way, when a customer is looking for abstract artworks, they can choose the subject "abstract" and then search for specific tags. Divide and Conquer!!!
- When Writing Artwork Descriptions - DO write the description in
a speech like manner. Do not write meaningless descriptions like "this is
a painting". Do not write duplicate or near-duplicate descriptions. Make sure each
artwork has unique description (we
know this can be a bit tedious, but the downside is that your web page can get
penalized). Don't cram it with keywords. If you overdo it by cramming it
with keywords then search engines might actually penalize the ranking of your
artwork pages. A well written artwork description can also help your potential customers appreciate and feel a connection to your artworks.
We hope you've taken some important notes on how to optimize your artwork pages for search engines. If you think we missed a point or two, please feel free to leave your comments below. We'll be happy to hear from our members and update this article accordingly.
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