Do you want to get your art noticed online? Of course you do! Get people on your website using search engine optimization (SEO). HubSpot describes SEO as “techniques that help your website rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs)”. Ranking higher brings in more traffic without the use of ads or referrals.
When a search engine understands your site and its content you’ll show up for relevant searches. You want people who are looking for what you offer to find your site, rather than wasting resources on people who aren’t interested. If someone searches “local bee farms” and KL Marketing comes up, they won’t pay my site any attention. If they search “marketing your art” then they are exactly the person I’m catering to and I want them to see me on the first results page!
This post gives an intro to the different kinds of SEO: On Page, Off Page, Technical, and General. I will go more in-depth in my August and September posts.
On Page SEO
This refers to techniques you can use to optimize your content. It includes using keywords to demonstrate the content of each page. For example, the keyword for this post is “get your art noticed online”. I use Google’s Keyword Planner to find ideas and see how many people search each term monthly. You do need a Google Ads account to use the planner, but it’s free.
I use the free Yoast plug-in on WordPress to help manage my on page SEO. I fill in the blanks and voilà, my title, description, and url are ready to go. Yoast will show green when the content is rated as “Good”. It gives lists of everything that’s right and corrections for what’s wrong.
Be sure to use headers, links, and calls-to-action (CTAs), on each page. Headers will tell search engines (and users) what each section of your page is about. Links demonstrate cohesion between your page and the page you’ve linked to. CTAs like “read more” and “buy tickets” will prompt users to complete an action.
While optimizing for search engines is important, your real target is the person who performed the search. You can use tools like Yoast or Readable to make sure that your content is easy to read. Readability is measured based on sentence length, overuse of keywords, under-use of transition words, etc.
Off Page SEO
This refers to techniques used to demonstrate trustworthiness to search engines. No one wants to end up on spammy sites. Show Google that you are trustworthy with backlinks: links from other sites that lead to yours.
You can get backlinks in many ways:
– your own social media
– writing blogs for other sites
– mentions in articles and videos
– referrals
– reviews
Domain Authority (DA) is a measurement based on the age, popularity, and size of a site. Collecting backlinks from high authority sites will show Google that you are legitimate.
Technical SEO
This refers to techniques you can use to a) ensure search engines see and understand your site, and b) provide a positive user experience.
Submitting your site and sitemap to Google Search Console tells Google to crawl your site. Using internal links in a strategic way demonstrates cohesion between your pages.
Optimize your site for both desktop and mobile devices. You can check the speed of your site on GTMetrix. KLMarketing’s homepage loads in 1.5 seconds. Anything longer than 3 seconds and users will give up and go elsewhere.
General SEO
Your DA affects your SERP ranking. It can be improved using the techniques mentioned above. Page Authority (PA) predicts how well each page will rank. The score ranges from 0-100, with higher scoring pages being more likely to rank high. You can use the Moz Toolbar to check the DA and PAs of your site as well as ones you may want to partner with.
Now you have an idea of what SEO is and how to make it work for you. Get out there and get your art noticed online!
