Comments on: Whip Your Website Into Submission

By: Pedro from Art & Supplies

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 22:11:51 +0000

One tip:
to gain more traffic spend some time to research the keywords you will use for each page of your site, use the Wordtracker tool or similar for this. This is the KEY to have traffic. For example, If you create one page using the keyword “art portfolio” simply nobody will find you using the search engines.
Google does not care if your artwork is great or if your site design looks nice… the keywords are the ones that will generate organic traffic. I have failed to do this during many years until finally things changed for me. Create a website for two types of visitors: people (humans) and Google! if not your portfolio will be just lost in the big Internet ocean.

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By: Pat Mitchell

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 23:11:13 +0000

My biggest problem is impatience. I want my new site to go live before it’s done. I keep reining myself in and telling myself no.

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By: Alyson Stanfield

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:29:35 +0000

In reply to Phil Kendall.

Phil: I think those awards, etc. are usually for other artists to ogle over. I agree that they’re not very interesting, so I usually just don’t read them. I’d say it doesn’t hurt to have them, though.

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By: Alyson Stanfield

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:24:40 +0000

In reply to Lee Shiney.

I like that thought, Lee. You could get stuck in a time warp looking at all of the available themes.

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By: Alyson Stanfield

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 02:23:39 +0000

In reply to Elizabeth Yarnell.

E – I’m so happy to see your name here. I will look at StoryTurbo. HUGE fan of Evernote, but ST sounds a lot different. I was kind of looking forward to using up my bountiful supply of Post-Its.

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By: Lisa Mackin

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:07:09 +0000

A timely topic for me. I have several sites and all three are in a constant state somewhere between disrepair and almost there. Recently my LisaMackin site received a lot of visitors – sadly not due to my art but because I happened to pictured with hockey great Bobby Orr at an event. My name was listed so traffic was driven to my site. That was when I realized that I realized how many old hidden links I had and how my site was not at all giving off the impression I wanted. Several months ago I slapped it together with the intent to get back to it (them) and fix it and instead got caught with my virtual pants down. I am now going to try and follow your guidelines/timeline and whip all three back to submission!

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By: Elizabeth Yarnell

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:47:12 +0000

This post hit home for me as my site has expanded in more directions than an octopus and the design no longer makes sense in many ways. For the last decade or so I’ve used Dreamweaver to update the HTML code, but now my web designer is pushing me to move the whole site into WordPress. I like WordPress for my blog, but I’m having a hard time envisioning it as a platform for my enormous site that originally launched in the early 90s and has grown and morphed along with my business over the years. It’s overwhelming to think about the whole re-design that is needed, but I appreciate the idea of breaking the task into smaller chunks with sequential deadlines. I’ve found StoryTurbo.com to be a cool application for organizing content that might replace those sticky notes. Maybe I’ll start using it to inventory my site… You’ve inspired me!

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By: Lee Shiney

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:39:34 +0000

I really like WordPress, but the key to finding a theme is to not agonize over it. After searching for days, it seemed, I just stuck with twentyeleven and modified it somewhat to suit. If I can get it “70% there” I’m happy.

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By: Lee

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 12:32:25 +0000

Some good ideas and reminders. I really have to add a blog to my art site.

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By: Phil Kendall

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 11:02:38 +0000

My website is an ongoing work in progress. Each month one page is taken down edited and rewritten.
The gallery page always carries art that is young and fresh [not more than two years old]. Why would your callers be interested in seeing all those works of art that you produced since junior school?
Why do you list all your Awards? Shows? Exhibitions? Art Education? It only bores your visitor to the point of clicking away.
The about you/your art page? follow Alyson’s ‘Evergreen Content Principle’ And keep it freshly edited too.

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