Search engine optimization of your web site

[Jeff Fuchs]

This was split off from a thread regarding searches engines spidering forum posts. Jeff's response below is to Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco.

I see that your website mentions your name only once. That murders your google hits. You need to have it in the title of every page (the title appears on the title bar, not the page itself), and you need to have it on every page. Don't use a jpg image of your name. That doesn't count.

As a webmaster I can tell you that your website is not google friendly.

UPDATE: I googled a couple of the more active users here, and they don't have the same problem. Type their name and you get their site as the first on the results list. Learn about SEO (search engine optimization). Google barely knows you exist if you don't tell them.

[Michele Rushworth]

Jeff, your experience on how to make a website more searchable would be VERY helpful to Forum members. Can you tell us more?

[Jeff Fuchs]

There's a lot to be said about search engine optimization, and I'm no expert, but I can tell you that it's very important to make ample use of keywords. In other words, think of what search phrases someone might use if they were looking for an artist such as yourself. Make ample use of those words, without letting it get too awkward. For instance, on the description of an image, calling it

"Greg 18"x24""

is less likely to get hits than

"Portrait of Greg. Oil on Canvas by Jeff Fuchs 18"x24".

The second one contains words you'd use in google when looking for artists. Do this for each image.

Google also looks at the title bar, and assumes that it is a good description of the subject matter on the page. Many Titles, such as Ilaria's, just say "Home". That tells Google nothing about what the page is about, and loses it within a billion other pages named "home". To change the title, look at the page's html code for a tag that says <title>Home</title>. Remove the "Home" text and replace it with "ILARIA ROSSELLI DEL TURCO: Portrait Artist" (notice that the page you're reading says "Portrait Artist Forum" in the title bar, as it does throughout the website).

Use your name often. Look at major sites like Amazon.com. Try to find a page on their site that doesn't say "Amazon.com" on it. They know what they're doing.

Look at your signature here on SOG and other forums. I hate to pick on Ilaria, but it's her thread. Instead of a signature that says www .ilardt. com, try using ILARIA ROSSELLI DEL TURCO. This helps Google associate the link to the context of your name. This has been used for propaganda purposes by poltical activists. Before the last election, one side had their followers post a link on their websites across the country that said "colossal failure" (or something like that). The link led to their opponent's website. Then, when anybody googled the words colossal failure, they got his website, even though his site does not contain those words.

There's a lot more to it, like getting other sites to link to you. Be sure to ask other artists to link to you. Ask your galleries, your friends, anybody with a website. Try to get them to use your name as the link text, not your domain name. The more links you have, the more important Google thinks you are (actually, the quality of the links comes into play. If CNN links to you, it carries more weight than joe blow's site.)

Hope this helps.

Jeff

[Michele Rushworth]

Thanks, Jeff. This is very helpful. Any more information on this topic that you can think of would be greatly appreciated too, I'm sure!

[Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco]

Thanks to all for the contribution!

Jeff, I'll sit down and try to follow your suggestions, thank you very much for taking the time to explain.

I have recently changed my website so that I could work on it from my apple laptop, and I have to figure up how to do it.

Ilaria

[Jeff Fuchs]

Originally Posted by Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco

Thanks to all for the contribution!

Jeff, I'll sit down and try to follow your suggestions, thank you very much for taking the time to explain.

I have recently changed my website so that I could work on it from my apple laptop, and I have to figure up how to do it.

Ilaria

Ilaria, I see that you eliminated your url from your signature. That's not what I meant. You need to link your name to your site. Look at my post again. I didn't just type your name, I linked it to your website. This is how Google associates your name with your site.

Here's the code...

<a href=http://www.ilardt.com/> Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco</a>

[Jeff Fuchs]

BTW: Be sure to verify your links. I just noticed that one of the senior members here on SOG has a bad link on her SOG signature. Don't just put your link on a page, confirm that it really works.

[Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco]

Thank you Jeff!
I have one more question for you: I changed the name of my homepage as you suggested, but the browser would not accept file names that contain spaces.
I am very grateful for your help!

Ilaria

[Cindy Procious]

Originally Posted by Jeff Fuchs

BTW: Be sure to verify your links. I just noticed that one of the senior members here on SOG has a bad link on her SOG signature. Don't just put your link on a page, confirm that it really works.

Shoot - I've been meaning to tell her that for a while. Sharon K - it's you. Check your link.

[Jeff Fuchs]

Originally Posted by Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco

Thank you Jeff!
I have one more question for you: I changed the name of my homepage as you suggested, but the browser would not accept file names that contain spaces.
I am very grateful for your help!

Ilaria

Your site seems to forward to a subdirectory in your server. You need to edit the title tag of the page that it lands on (/ilaria_rosselli_del_turco/home.html)

Warning: If you don't know how to edit html, see if you have a friend or family member who knows how to do it. You can make a mess of things pretty easily. Absolutely don't do anything until you create a full backup of all your files. Don't work from the backup files. Keep them separate in case you need to restore them.

On your main page, the title tag has not been changed. It still is <title>Home</title>. Just replace the word Home with the title of your choice. If you edit your files on your computer, be sure to save and upload them, using the same file names and addresses as the original. If you can edit them online, be sure the files are writable first. When you finish editing, make them un-writable again, to protect them from hackers.

Looking at your page sources, it seems you used a web authoring program of some kind. It's likely that you can change the settings in the software so that it autoamatically enters your chosen title in all of the pages.