The below content is an abbreviated
excerpt from the SEO chapter in my book Understanding Computer & Internet Essentials: A Visual
Guide to Basic Technology Skills for PC and MAC (INTRO-TEK Creative Guides) that
was written using Jill's group website for the Fine Art
Professionals of Northern Virginia.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
(SEO)
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The purpose of SEO is to
maximize some object’s “search” presence on the Internet. All SEO’d things are
some kind of website linking. That is,
whether it’s a business, personal site, recurring event, etc...one wants to
advertise, it will be done via a website.
Each thing has unique qualities
about it that when filtered reduce the search engine’s work down to a
few...hundred, possibly. So, doing SEO is an attempt to get that object, like a
website, viewable on the first search page.
As we saw in the Search Engine
chapter, being specific in search engines yield the best results. So, how do we
do that?
We will use the Fine Art
Professionals of Virginia website as an example. There are a few steps needed to get your presence noticed on
search engines and bumped up closer to the top:
1. Create a domain name that effectively
describes you. For example, say someone is looking for oil or watercolor art in
Virginia. They may search for fine, art, and Virginia. The Google search will
list the most closely matching and then the order popularity. Notice the listed
amount of possibly solutions at 57 million.
2. Create a list of keywords and ensure your
webpage(s) has keywords embedded in each page.
3. Link your page with as many relevant
resources as possible. This includes places like professional societies, peers,
local Chamber of Commerce, etc...
4. Identify all the search engines to submit
your URL to.
So, how did
www.fineartvirginia.com make it to the number 2 spot on this Google post (as of
this writing)? People may say the search criteria was the same as the name, but
that isn’t what got it to the number 2 spot. When it was originally listed, the
site was pages from the top.
It may have had the key words,
but there were several sites that had the same keywords, like museums, art
galleries, other artists.
So, using the list, let’s take a
look at this website: http://www.fineartvirginia.com
1. First, the name of the
organization is highly descriptive to include location. Additionally, the URL has the
same affect. Therefore, consider a descriptive URL and name for your website.
2. Next are the keywords. When
Search Engines index your website, they look for keywords. Many websites will index the page and pull
out words it sees as usable for its needs. Many of the website creation sites
out there include an option for customers to place all their keywords in a text
box. That box will be hidden from viewers but embedded in the programming code
used. These words are captured in a meta tag.
Back to the website, just
combing through this first page, there are several keywords I would use in the
meta tag. Obvious words from the beginning of the website’s homepage:
fine art, professional, Virginia, painters
Scrolling down the page are
words from a list of the members, their bios and a link to their website. Shown
above is the first artist in the list and three keywords:
Contemporary,
impressionist, and landscape
Continuing down the list of
artists I gathered the following words in the order I found them as only a
comma is typically needed between words and phrases:
oil, portraiture, till lifes,
awards, regional, national, competition, commission, intense, color, light, NWS, AWS, MFA,
watercolor, BWS, international, show, whimsical, signature membership, judge, exclusive, Hudson River School, sunlight, one
woman show, private collection, legacy, beautiful, meaningful, generations,
client, photo, narrative, gallery, values, create, award-winning, acclaimed,
masterful, expressionist, abstract, vibrant, published, florals, animals, WHS,
marine, museum, corporate, VWS, SWS, distinguished, achievement, American,
exhibit, watercolour, plein air, workshop, classes, bright, pallette, splash,
lively, composition, pets, acrylics, mixed media, painting, writer,
illustrator, author, worldwide, subject, environment, elegant, simplicity,
pigment, distinctive, reflect, solo, prestigious, pastel, abroad, drawing, Oil
Painters of America, streetscape, seascape, outdoor, studio, Pastel Society of America, PSA, American
Impressionists Society, AIS
Additionally, I took some of
the words and changed them to more common or effective terms:
National Watercolor Society
(Spelled out), American Watercolor Society (Spelled out), realism (change from
realist), expression (change from expressing), juried (added after seeing
judged), teach (change from taught), illustrator (change from illustrated).
There were a number of
locations in here, as well, so I pulled them out to review for relevance:
Loudoun County, Tysons Corner,
Ritz Carlton, Provence, Great Falls, Yorkshire, Cambridge University,
Baltimore, Alexandria, VA, MD, DE, WV, OH, PA, China, Paris, Mid-Atlantic,
Lastly, I pulled out all the
artists names as they may be searchable:
Trisha Adams, Jill Banks, Simon
Bland, Vicki Vidal Blum, Gwendolyn Bragg, Chica Brunsvold, Mary Champion,
Tricia Cherrington-Ratliff, Donna Clark, Elaine Elinsky, Carolyn Grosse
Gawarecki, Jean K. Gill, Catherine Hillis, Linda Hendrickson, Margaret Huddy,
Dell Keathley, Susan La Mont, Christine Lashley, Jonathan Linton, Jill E. Poyerd,
Libby Stevens, Dana B.Thompson, Robert Thoren, David Williams, Daniel Wise
Now, this is A LOT of text
and there may be limitations in size as to what can be entered but it is better
to have more than less.
The INTRO-TEK Creative Guide on Creating a
Free Website Using WEEBLY.COM shows how that website creation
site does it.
I’d recommend keeping your list
as you may need to come back from time to time.
3. The third item on the list
involved linking your site with others. It is a good thing to be linked to
other relevant sites as it broadens your presence not only for search engines
to index but provides exposure to a wider audience. For example, an artist
listed in many portraiture gallery sites may be found by a potential customer.
For www.fineartvirginia.com, all the artists are linked to this page. Did you see it on the homepage for the first
artist listed?
4. Identify and submit your
URL to Search Engines. This is not the first thing you want to do as you
need to get all your keywords and links established. Once you are
satisfied then submit.
Although it is preferred to have
your own domain name, it is not a show-stopper to use a free name that is part
of the web creation site. For www.fineartvirginia.com, they used Weebly.com as
the free website creation tool but then bought their own domain name. If they
didn’t, they would have had fineartvirginia.weebly.com
which still has the key terms in the name.
If a free name is used and you
decide to get a domain name later, just resubmit your URL to the search
engines. This is easy since you kept that keyword file.
5. Finding the Search Engines
and submitting the URLs
Submitting your website (URL) is
pretty straight-forward. There are websites that offer to submit websites to
several search engines. It may work, but it may not be as effective as taking
the time to do it yourself. One main reason is that you can’t guarantee that
they’ll do a good enough job. If intrigued, research them and determine if you
feel they are credible enough.
So, one way to look up search
engines to how we did it in the Search Engine chapter. Determine which search
engines you wish to do. The default answer would be all of them; however, focus
on getting in the top ones first as most of the world uses them too.
In my opinion, get on Google and Yahoo/Bing.
There are several out there, but
these are the most used. Additionally, other search engines do link crawling. LINK CRAWLING is a way of following other
links and indexing the sites along the way. A top search engine in the UK
called BLEKKO.COM uses that. The only other search engine I would note is an
Asian one called BAIDU.COM. I believe you can link to it; however, it also
crawls and indexes. The take-away for this, share your website links
with as many relevant and reputable other sites.
How to actually link a site?
Let’s go to Google.com and type in “submit URL bing.” It will bring up the
following link. NOTE: remember to check the URL and make sure it is a
reputable source. Many paid advertisers may try to sneak in ahead of bing.com
to get business.
In this case, we are fine. When you click on the link the
submit page for Bing.com opens. Simply type in the URL you wish to get searched and in many cases,
there will be a challenge word that needs to be typed in to verify this is not
some kind of automated tool.
That completes the steps. Again,
DO NOT SUBMIT your URL until you have created your keywords and inserted
them into the website. As you make changes to the website, it is okay to go
back and resubmit the URL to update.
Check the different search
engines periodically to see if your site is coming up on your keywords. If
not, re-evaluate your keywords and ensure you are sharing links well enough.
Remember, popular website will be higher up on the search results.
This completes this chapter.
This is more the essential means into SEO. There are many other things to do;
however, these might be the more important steps to get worldwide visibility.
The paid advertisement options by search engines may not be cost-effective for
small businesses. See how the free submissions work first.
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