Back in February I was interviewed by the lovely Tara Reed for her monthly Ask Teleclass. The topic was Ask About SEO For Artists and it was a valuable call (if I do say so myself!). Tara has a real talent for bringing out the golden threads in these classes and the result was some very straightforward guidance for artists to improve their search engine rankings.
If you weren’t on the call and haven’t listened to the replay I highly recommend you do so. If you think I’m kidding about how valuable this is, here are a couple of testimonials from that call…
From Shawna Erback…
Thanks to your tele-seminar with Tara Reed, I am now in first place and first page when I search for “licensing studio”, “art licensing studio”, “artist licensing” and “artist licensing studio”. Before I listened to your ask call my website looked pretty on the outside but was a mess on the inside and thanks to you I now have seo optimization! I listened to that call more than once taking notes and will listen to it again and again to keep things fresh. Thank you Thank you!!
From Sue Allemand…
SUPER SUPER SUPER! That’s all I can say! I never expected to get this much out of Daniel’s call! I understood EVERY WORD! He makes it so simple to understand! And to think — I spent hundreds on supposed “promotion” companies who claimed to submit you to X amount of search engines – numerous times over a certain amount of time, fix your meta tags, get you X amount of reciprocal links, etc… and NONE of what they CLAIMED I needed (and what I paid for) was in Daniel’s top 3 for SEO!! Unbelievable!
I confess that I’m not normally one to self-promote as outrageously as I have above! I’m an Aussie by birth and we are trained to be somewhat self-effacing. When I landed in California 15 years ago I had to learn self-promotion 101 very fast otherwise I would have been eaten alive!
But seriously, the reason I am pushing this whole SEO topic strongly is because it is SO IMPORTANT for you as an artist and there isn’t a lot of comprehensive SEO guidance available focused on the art community. This interview with Tara was exactly that – SEO For Artists.
So, why is SEO so important? Many artists and even some art coaches think it’s not relevant to art because art is somehow “different”. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you sell art that is business – and SEO is a major force for business success online. Let me give a hypothetical example of how it might work for an artist…
How Search Engines Help Artists – An Example
Susan is an oil painter who lives in Northern New Mexico and paints landscapes, many of which are focused close to the town of Abiquiu. (Note: If you haven’t had the opportunity to visit this town you should mark it on your list of places to go – it is right near Ghost Ranch and Georgia O’keeffe’s desert home – just gorgeous landscape!)
Susan has a website which she has optimized for search engines. During that process she discovered that many people google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” and so she optimized her artist website to rank highly for those phrases.
Susan has opened the door to several big potential opportunities:
- A gallery director scouting for new work of Susan’s style and subject matter may very likely google “Abiquiu Paintings” and “Ghost Ranch Paintings” as part of their search strategy. When Susan’s website ranks on Page 1, it means they can find her and look at her work. This is priceless attraction-marketing for free!
- Similarly, an art licensing company may be looking for work similar to Susan’s for a new line of home decorations at Target Stores. Search engines would be part of their strategy.
- Finally, tourists who have visited the area and fallen in love with it often get home and realize that they really want a piece of art to remind them of their experience at Ghost Ranch. What do you think might be one strategy they might use? Search engines – of course!
Now, in all honesty, search engines are only one method used by businesses and individuals to find what they want. But they are very powerful – so why would you want to miss out on the potential business with a website that doesn’t rank highly for the phrases that are heavily searched? Why would you risk missing out on possibly 50% or more of your potential new visitors?
You wouldn’t right? That would be plain crazy! But that is exactly what MOST artists are doing with their websites! And the most insane part of this is that SEO is not really that difficult to master, IF you know what to do.
A lot of powerful people think that search engines are important for your business. Here is what Qi Lu, President of Microsoft’s Online Services Division said recently…
Search Engine Advertising is the most powerful economic force on the internet.
Those are important words and as an artist I would certainly want the most powerful economic force on the internet working for my art career! So, if your website doesn’t already rank highly for search terms that actually bring customers here is what I would suggest:
Start by listening to the recording of Tara’s SEO For Artists Teleclass. It’s free, and as you can see from the testimonials above you could actually learn some useful info. This is really required knowledge for any serious art marketer.
If you are really serious about selling more art via high search engine rankings on your artist website, consider buying our Artist SEO Success System. It is a complete 21 day program to comprehensively optimize your website for search engines – and it is 100% focused on artists. At $97, it is not cheap but it is tremendous value when you think of the potential market you can open your website to (learn more). And yes – we have many great testimonials about this product too! Here is one that just came in this week…
I’m going through the workbook and doing a lot of the exercises which are really great. As an creater of educational materials and online courses (in my day job, I have a Masters in Instructional Design) I am totally impressed with the guide and workbook. It is so well written and thought out and CLEAR! I can tell you guys did a ton of work… Bravo! …. Kristen Hoard
As art marketers and artist website developers, our job is to give you the tools to create business success with your art. I’m handing you this one on a silver platter – so please make use of it and go sell some art. I can’t wait to open the champagne and toast your success!
Note: This article was originally published as a guest post on Tara Reed’s Art Licensing Blog
