How can you make your website stand out on the web? In a recent feature for Computer Arts Projects magazine, I compiled 20 SEO and site promotion tips to help designers get noticed online.
With billions of blogs and websites vying for eyeballs on the Internet, how can you make yours stand out from the crowd? It’s no good putting up a portfolio website and hoping that people will just find you. You’ve got to market yourself.
This process starts with having a good, easy-to-navigate website and strong content. But it’s also about getting out there on the web – interacting, chatting, commenting, advertising, Twittering, Flickring and Facebooking…
The key thing to remember is that there is no magic bullet in terms of site promotion. Instead, boosting your web profile (and ultimately your visitor numbers) is a combination of several tactics that can have long-term benefits.
In short: you need to optimise your site so it can be found easily by search engines; you need to tell people where your site is; and you need to provide something good for visitors to read once they get there. What follows are 20 tips designed to help you get your site noticed.
1. Know your keywords
Most websites get their traffic through search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Windows Live. So what are the search keywords that you need to tap into? What might people type into Google to find your site or an article you’ve written? You can test out search terms by using tools such as Wordtracker and the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.
Type ‘illustrator’ into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool and you’ll be able to see an estimate of how many searches the term gets, along with related searches such as ‘illustration’, ‘illustrators’, ‘book illustration’ and ‘fashion illustration’. Type ‘graphic design’ into the same tool and you’ll see that the phrase ‘graphic design’ has a higher search volume than ‘graphic designer’.
2. Use your keywords effectively
Optimising your site by embedding relevant keywords in your content is an easy way to make it more visible to the search engines. At the very least, your site’s
tag should include those keywords that best describe your skills – ‘illustrator’, ‘graphic designer’, ‘animator’, etc. </p> <p>Take a look at www.bentheillustrator.com, for example. Not only has the site owner used the word ‘illustrator’ in the web URL, but the site’s <title> tag reads: “Ben The Illustrator! Illustration, Landscapes, Sunshine.” In addition to using keywords in your website’s <title> tag, you should also work them into your categories, URLs, post titles and subheadings where appropriate. Don’t overdo it, though. Search engines will penalise your site if you stuff it to the brim with keywords. Keep a natural balance.</p></blockquote> <p>For the remaining 18 SEO tips (including blogging, linkbaiting and site promotion), you’ll need to pick up a copy of Computer Arts Projects. </p> <p>[There's currently no link to this article. But you can find issues of Computer Arts Projects at myfavouritemagazines.co.uk. Want to know more? 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