If you are an artist, struggling to get noticed online, your position in the search engines such as google is VITAL to your success. The higher you rank, the more hits you get, the more interest you generate in your art and the more sales you make.
One great way to boast your galleries position
in the search engines is to swap links with other related sites and
galleries. Finding link partners can be very time consuming and
difficult, but google particularly rates pages on the number, and more
importantly, the quality of links pointing to them.
To make finding link partners easier for you we have created a special
partner search facility on apob. The results shown are from companies
who are actively trying to promote themselves and are also highly
ranked in the search engines.
How do I do this?
1. Go to our partner search page.
http://www.apob.co.uk/partnersearch.php
2. Enter a keyword which describes your website, or a search term you
would like your website to appear under. I.e. british art, fine art,
original art, art
3. Browse the search results and click on any links which appear to
show good quality websites. I.e. there's not much point clicking on
the ebay links, as you are very unlikely to even get a response if you
email ebay about link swapping. The best sites to go for are smaller,
niche websites where the webmaster will be more interested in actively
swapping links with other small quality galleries.
4. Browse their website and contact the website owner requesting a
reciprocal link swap. I have composed a sample email which you can use
if you like (included at the bottom of this page). Its always best to keep your emails friendly and
personalised to the site you are visiting. Imagine you are receiving
the email from a stranger and how you would react upon reading it.
5. Add the website you've found to your gallery in the 'link partners'
section, which should be available to you on your gallery page once
you are logged into your account.
That's about it, hopefully they will add a link to your
website/gallery, google will notice, and push your site up in the
rankings accordingly.
Please don't expect immediate results, it will take time, but this is
the number 1 way of improving your ranking in the search engines and
should greatly improve your exposure and number of sales over time.
If you have any comments or suggestions of other ways artists can
boost their sales, please do drop me a line and share it with the
other members, its a hard world out there and few people can claim to
be great artists as well as great marketeers. Those that are can will definately benefit hugely!
Resources
Partner Search - Tool for locating good partners to swap links with.
Sample Link Swap Email
