A 2005 study of search engines confirms that you must be in one of Google’s top three spots for your niche.

These studies use a computerized tracking device to see where the average person looks when he or she glances at a webpage.

Here’s how often people actually looked at each search engine listing on one page. Remember, this is how often they looked… not whether they clicked on that link or not.

Rank 1 – 100%
Rank 2 – 100%
Rank 3 – 100%
Rank 4 – 85%
Rank 5 – 60%
Rank 6 – 50%
Rank 7 – 50%
Rank 8 – 30%
Rank 9 – 30%
Rank 10 – 20%

In other words, if your website is one of the top three on a particular search engine page, everyone who looks at that page will see your listing. If you’re in the fourth spot or lower, they may nor may not notice that you’re listed at all.

So, it’s important to find your niche and use that to focus your keywords. Use those same keywords in your content, so that your website is in one of those top three spots.

Keywords in your META tags, in your webpage Title, and in your content are what make a difference. Don’t overuse them, of course, but make sure that you repeat the important two or three words, once every 100 words or so.

Likewise, keep your webpages focused on those keywords. Links from your site to others’ should be related to those keywords, too. Keep your site cohesive and on a single theme, when you’re starting out.

See, there are programs that advertise that they’ll “drive thousands of visitors to your pages.” (TrafficHurricane.com is one. I tried it. It’s not only worthless, in my opinion, but it can land you on the “spammers” list at Google.)

What these programs do is to research keywords related to your website theme, and create thousands (I’m NOT kidding) of webpages that are nothing but links to sites that feature those keywords.

When you use a search engine and land at pages of links, that site probably used one of these programs. Annoying, isn’t it!

Short-term, they can move to the top of the Google lists. Long-term, Google (and others) are putting more attention on text v. links. Links pages like those won’t appear at search engines, and may even be banned… along with the people who own them.

So, while I talk about keywords right now–and they are important–it’s what you actually write about that will serve you well at the search engines, long term.

1. Choose a domain name. Then, get it hosted.

I recommend www.GoDaddy.com when you’re starting, but there are many inexpensive registrars and hosting services. For more information about this first step, see Website Basics for Artists.

2. Decide the theme or niche for your website.

Select a theme for your website… a specialty. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Do one thing well, and then expand from there. Focus on what you love!

3. Create at least five webpages related to your theme.

If you don’t know HTML, you can use a WYSIWYG program. (WYSIWYG = What You See Is What You Get) If you have Netscape or Mozilla browsers, they include a free WYSIWYG program, Composer. You may already have it on your computer, and not realize it!

I also recommend the free program, Nvu. (It’s pronounced “N-view.”)

Your webpages should include:

• An index.html. That’s your homepage… the main entry page for your website.
• A contact page, so that collectors, customers, galleries and agents can reach you.
• Three pages related to your art.One could be your CV (resume), one could feature your artist’s statement, and the third can be a mini-gallery with small photos of your art.Or, if you’re creating a website about your watercolor paintings, you might feature three pieces of your art–one each on a different page.Or, consider one page of your art, another to explain about your medium or style in general (and why your work is so great), and a third page that promotes a product that you give away (such as free online postcards).

4. Start a Yahoo or other group, to update people about your new art and webpages.

Yahoo Groups are free and easy to manage. Set yours to “announce only” (newsletter) and then let anyone and everyone join. Promote your Yahoo Group on your webpages, but don’t overdo it.

5. Link to others, but only quality sites.

Links can be the single most important factor in how well you’re listed at Google and other search engines. Link only to websites that are very good.

Above all, do not sign up for one of those “Links4All” link exchanges. Also, try not to link to people whom you consider competition.

After linking to others’ sites, you can ask them to link back to you. Only a small percentage will do this, but some will.

(Link to this website if you feel that my information has helped you. You can link to the main page, http://www.arts-careers.com/ or to any page at this site. Thanks!)

6. Sign up for Google AdSense and/or affiliate programs. [optional]

If AdSense or affiliate programs are part of your income strategy, sign up for them as soon as you can. I earn at least three figures each month, from Google’s AdSense ads on my websites. Use this button to sign up:

I also like (and make money with) LinkShare.com and CommissionJunction.com.I also do very well with AllPosters.com and try to illustrate with their posters when I can.

7. Submit your site to the search engines.

Submit the URL of your index.html page to the search engines. Start with Yahoo and Google. Some feel that DMOZ is important too, but it’s vital to have a competitive and robust site built before submitting to them.

Do NOT over-submit. Check the search engine’s rules. If you submit the same site to Google more than once a month, you risk being considered a spammer.

It can take search engines two weeks to six months to list you among their pages. (Yes, that’s frustrating. Try to be patient.) And, even once you’re listed, you may be in the “sandbox” (the nickname for the lowest listings at the search engine) for as long as eight months.

8. Start learning about keywords and search engine optimization.

Keywords are the heart and soul of your success at search engines. Start learning about them, use them in the tags (META and Title areas) of your website, and focus your content on three or four keywords that fit your niche.

9. Add one new webpage each week.

Now that you know your niche and have chosen a few words for your site’s theme, add a new webpage to your site each week.

Every webpage should have valuable and interesting content. It should be at least 100 words long, but not more than 600 or so. (If it’s longer, consider breaking it up into two pages or more.)

Every webpage should include one or two links to other pages, and one of those pages should be another quality website.

Every page should link back to your home page (index.html) at the very least.

10. Tell people about your newest webpage.

Talk about your new page on your own Yahoo Groups list. Tell people in other groups, too, if their members might be very interested in your new page. (If many of them will be ho-hum, announce your pages every couple of weeks, or just put a link to your newest page below your signature, if the list rules say that’s okay.)

At some search engines, you can submit new webpages as you put them online. Check each search engine’s current rules to be certain.

Where to go from here? Explore website design, site navigation techniques, high-paying keywords if you’re using AdSense, and more.

But, for now, work with these ten points and learn about the rest, later.

This article was written early in 2005. It’s rather outdated, but I keep it online for info that may be useful to some artists. — 
Creating your first website? When artists are new to the Internet and website building, they often have problems with graphics at their websites.

Broken images at your website

When a graphic won’t load at all–a broken graphics symbol or red X–it almost always means that the person who wrote the HTML entered the file name incorrectly. Or, he or she forgot to upload the corresponding file to the hosting service. Re-check the file names, and see if this is the case.

When a graphic doesn’t fully load–it looks funky or only part of it shows up–it’s usually one of these problems, in order of likelihood:

1. The graphic was garbled in the file reduction process. You’ll usually see this at the server, but not on your computer when you’re doing the file reduction.
2. Your (or your server’s) FTP program stalled during the process. Some FTP programs just don’t handle large files well, which is why you can get download programs that pick up where the download stalled. For uploading, my best advice is to try again, and perhaps with a different FTP approach.
3. The server timed-out while opening the graphics. In the case of a free or cheap server, this is still fairly rare, but it can happen.
4. Your computer timed-out while opening the graphics. This is rare, but if your Preferences are set to limit image sizes (people paying by-the-minute for their connections sometimes insist on a fast download or they’ll skip the graphics, thank you), that can happen.

Large, slow-loading images

While we’re talking about graphics, here’s another lesson that I learned the hard way:

When you are creating a webpage, resizing your graphics in HTML will not reduce the load time if the original image–the one in your files–is large.

A 500K photo of your kids will still open as a 500K photo, even if you use HTML to make it look like a 100 x 100 pixel icon when it loads.

The only way to make load time shorter is by reducing the size of your graphics in a graphics program. If you don’t have a good graphics program that will do this, there are some online services. Search on Google and you’ll find several. Here are a couple of them: http://www.spinwave.com/, and http://www.jpegwizard.com/.

There’s a free program that can help, too. One is at http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/software/PhotoPlus/default.asp.

There are many others. Look for graphics programs and optimizers at TuCows.com and any other site that features freeware programs.

You also need to tell the browser what size the image is going to be when the page finishes loading. This should appear after the URL of the image, in your IMG SRC code. You’ll use height=”150″ and width=”250″ (or whatever the size actually is).

That tells the browser how much space to leave open so that people can read your webpage while the images load. Without that information, your images and text can jump around as your browser puts the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle.

If you don’t know how big your image is in pixels, your graphics program should tell you in “Image Size.” Otherwise, you can display the image and right-click on it, selecting “Properties.” That will tell you what the size is, in height and width.

(Bonus points if you also include a brief description of your image in the IMG SRC brackets, following the word “alt.” For example, if you’re showing a picture of your dog, the code might read: alt=”Photo of the cutest doggie in the world.”)

Keep your computer graphics small

Graphics pros at NetMechanic.com say that if your webpage doesn’t load in 8 seconds or less (on 56K connections, in early 2005), you’ll lose 1/3 of your visitors. They won’t wait.

If your page takes more than 30 seconds to load, expect to lose the vast majority of your visitors… over 95%, and that may be a conservative figure.

With art websites, you may be able to get away with larger images. As long as your visitors know that they’re waiting for some fabulous art, they’ll often surf in another window while your graphics load.

But, it’s still smart to show them a quick-loading version with clickable thumbnail images on an index-type page. Let your website visitors decide if they want to click to see the bigger versions.

Links to and from your site are a factor in how well you are ranked at search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, and so on.

LINKS TO YOUR SITE

If someone links to your website from theirs–even an obscure page–when Google “spiders” (searches deeply) all of their webpages, the spider will find a link to your website, and go search through your site, too.

Then, you’ll be listed at Google… but often you’ll be very near the bottom of their links in your categories. And that’s where you may stay for six to eight months, if the current reports are correct.

Your ranking improves as more people link to you. (I mean quality websites, not “Links4All” kinds of sites, which can actually cost you points at Google, etc.) And, when people click at Google to visit your site, that can help too.

I suspect that it doesn’t hurt to include Google AdSense on some of your webpages, too. But, that may backfire if Google goes out of its way to look impartial regarding AdSense pages. I often use AdSense ads because the links are generally helpful to my readers, and because it’s a good income source. (As of early 2008, the usefulness of the links is a better reason that income.)

It’s not easy to get links from others’ sites, especially well-ranked sites. Most people don’t link to many sites now. I mean, logically, why on earth would you want to send one of your visitors to someone ELSE’s website…?A link from someone’s index.html is excellent. A link from a secondary page is also ideal. However, when you’re starting out, your site link can be buried deep within any popular site and Google will find it.

LINK TO OTHERS’ QUALITY WEBSITES

You can also get a higher rank by linking from your site to really good, highly-ranked sites in your own field or related fields. So–and this is NOT a hint–if you link to my site, http://www.aisling.net/ from yours, it may help just a little.

Or, if you found this page and others at this site helpful, you might link to http://www.arts-careers.com/.

In fact, a page of quality links can sometimes move your site–or at least that links page–to a good spot at some search engines. And, once people arrive at your links page, they may stay and read more at your website.

ALSO USE KEYWORDS

Keywords are vital… starting with what you call your webpage. That is, the words in the Title line… are they what people are likely to type in, when they’re searching for a site like yours at Google?

In other words, “Welcome to my site” isn’t a great title for a webpage, but “How to fix widgets and discover the meaning of life” might get you a pretty good position at Google.

If you follow this advice and have a good, content-rich website, you have a far better chance at getting a good spot in search engines.

Get links to your site, even if you post your link in a forum that you visit. Link to others’ quality websites, too. And last but not least, make sure that you name your webpages with the kinds of words that people use when they’re looking for a site like yours at Yahoo, Google, and so on.

For more information about a successful website, be sure to read my other pages in this section.

Could you improve your website’s popularity?

The following article was edited from my online journal entry of 13 Mar 05. The numbers relate to that date, when Aisling.net was my only art-related website.

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Yesterday morning, I did website popularity research before continuing to work on my websites. Alexa.com is fabulous for this.I had the idea that if I had a couple of successful books, I’d get a lot more visitors to Aisling.net. But, as part of my research yesterday, I checked websites that attract a similar audience to mine.

Claudine Hellmuth’s website is the top-ranked site in the field of Collage Art. With a URL of collageartist.com and her recent very successful books, plus her heavy teaching schedule and a quality website… Well, she should be at the top. She has more than earned it.

But… her numbers were only very slightly better than mine.

And, drawing from a slightly different audience, I outrank Artitude zine, which also has ample reasons to draw tremendous numbers. They publish a great zine and their website features some fabulous resources.

With Alexa.com, I can also see how many pages the average visitor sees. A visitor who looks at just a couple of pages and leaves… that’s a site that needs a redesign, or deeper webpages. Or something.

For example, Ghosts of the Prairie may outrank the HollowHill.com “ghost hunting” website–which I have contributed to–by a wide margin, but people stay at Ghosts of the Prairie for 1 or 2 pages at the most, and then go elsewhere. (Alexa.com tells me this, too.)

In other words, Ghosts of the Prairie is doing a good job with keywords and links in… but they can’t keep visitors.

I can learn from what they’re doing right… and wrong.

Do you know this kind of information about your own website and your competitors’?

If you’re trying to make a living–or supplement your income–with your website/s, this kind of study is important at least every three months or so. Trends change, and so do the audience and the competition.

It’s also vital to know if there even is a larger audience that you can attract in your current field. In the case of Aisling.net, I needed to make some big changes… so I did.

To use Alexa.com (while it’s in beta test mode):

Go to Alexa.com. Enter the domain name that you want to learn more about in the “Search the Web” box. (That searches the Alexa files. It doesn’t take you to a regular search engine.)

See how that site is ranked, if it is ranked at all. If it isn’t, search on subjects related to your site, and see what your competitors are doing right.

Overview tells you rank, site speed, and a few other details

Related links lists your competition.

Sites Linking in lists the major websites that people are using to find your site.

Traffic Detail tells you more detailed numbers about people who visit you, how your traffic is doing (general trends), and how many webpages people visit when they arrive at your website.

Be sure to check your competitors. Who links to them? How many pages do people visit at their websites? Who are the top five in your field (use Subject searches for this)?

Website success is vital today. Alexa.com is one of many helpful tools to study what’s working for you and what isn’t, and what you can learn from others.

One final note: Some people are concerned about online privacy. Almost any toolbar–including Alexa’s–that you download and use will track which sites you visit. However, it’s not necessary to download the Alexa toolbar to use their free (as of 3/05) site ranking and review services.