Are you having a difficult time selling art online? In order for you to be successful in selling fine art online, you need to focus on building an audience. You need to be able to build brand awareness and drive traffic to your site. After reading this post you will be able to answer the question, “Is SEO important for artists selling art online?”
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Is SEO Important For Artists Selling Art Online
The concept of marketing is simple. All you have to do is make people aware of the products and services you offer.
If you are a painter, you want to make people aware of your paintings.
If you are a graphite artist, you want to make people aware of your drawings.
You can not sell a piece of art if no one knows it exists.
It sounds simple, doesn’t it?
If it is so simple why are there so many artists struggling with online sales?
Most artists struggle because they do not know how to make an online presence. They do not understand how to attract and drive their target audience to their site.
If you want to be successful in selling art online you will want to take some time to learn about online marketing. Start with the basics like how to find your target audience, how to generate traffic to your site and search engine optimization.
Every day you will hear about the new and best ways to be noticed online. The problem is if you do not have the basics in place you will not see any results from the “new hacks”.
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Is SEO Important For Artists
If you want to sell your art online the answer is yes.
If you want your art to be seen online, the answer is yes.
If you want more people to visit your local events, the answer is yes.
SEO is not just for large businesses that have e-commerce sites. It is for anyone who has a website or blog.
Let me ask you this, “Do you think you would sell more art in a month if ten people visited your site or if a thousand people visited your site?”
It is safe to say that you will have more sales if your site received a thousand visits.
SEO will help your target audience find you online. Your target audience is the people interested in your artistic style. The people who will be making a purchase from you.
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What Is SEO
Search Engine Land describes SEO as:
“SEO stands for “Search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.”
The bottom line, if you have an artist website or an artist blog and you want people to find you, you will need to understand how SEO works.
To put SEO in simple terms, it is how your site communicates to search engines like Google. It makes it easy for Google to understand what your artist website or art blog is about. Once Google understands what your site has to offer, it will be able to refer your site to the right people. Think of SEO as Google’s language.
SEO can be very complicated but the good news is, you will only need to focus on the basics to see your organic traffic increase.
Start by working on the basics and build a solid foundation.
After you have a solid understanding of the basics and your site is optimized for search, then you can focus on the more complicated tactics.
Here is something I want you to remember, you do not have to be the best at SEO to rank high in the search results, you only have to be better than your competition.
How Does SEO Help PageRank?
First, we need to understand what “PageRank” is.
Wikipedia defines PageRank (PR) as:
“An algorithm used by Google Search to rank websites in their search engine results. PageRank was named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages.”
Google and other search engines (I will be referring to Google because Google is the largest search engine.) crawls pages and websites every day to find the best content to refer to search queries. The best content and best-optimized pages for SEO win the race. They will be found on the first page of Google’s search. The page that is ranked number one will generate the most organic traffic.
If your goal is to drive traffic to your art website, you will want to focus on writing great content that is optimized for Google’s search.
Think about how much traffic your artist website will receive if you can increase your search ranking.
I wrote a post a few months ago that will help you optimize your website and blog.
Visit SEO Checklist for Artists Selling Art Online for more information on how to optimize your site.
The post covers:
All of these areas are important for ranking higher in the search. Visit the post and start working on each section today.
Each section has a more detailed post to help you get the most out of your efforts. Start with basic SEO then go to On-Page SEO, Optimizing Content then Keywords.
SEO For The Long Run
This might seem like a lot of work, and I am not going to lie, it is. You will be working on optimizing your WordPress website for as long as you have it active.
Generating organic traffic and ranking higher in the search engine page results will take some time. It takes the average website about two years to see some real results.
If you start working on your SEO today, two years will be here quicker than you think. You will be able to enjoy all of the traffic that is going to your site. Everything you do today will affect your rankings in the future. If you can dedicate yourself to working on optimizing your site for fifteen minutes a day you will see tremendous results in a year or two.
I often hear artists ask something like, “Why do I have to work on SEO when I can get thirty or forty likes on my art posts on Facebook?”
When I hear this type of questions I will reply,” Did you land a sale?”
In most cases, the answer is “no.”
It is great to have instant gratification and positive feedback from your art, but is that going to pay your bills?
Are you showing your art to receive “likes” or are you interested in generating sales?
The objective of any art business is to generate income. Driving more traffic to your site should be a top priority for your art marketing plan.
What is the benefit of generating more organic traffic?
You increase the chance of landing more sales. The more sales you generate, the more money you will make. It is a win-win situation and everything that you will be doing to optimize your site is free. It will not cost you a penny. The only thing it will cost you is your time. What you will get in return will be well worth the time invested.
What If I Just Focus On Social Media Sites
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great tools to help build brand awareness and relationships.
But it will not drive the most traffic to your art website.
According to Search Engine Land organic search drives the most traffic at 38.98% while social is fourth with 3.91% to shopping websites.
This includes artist websites that are selling art.
I receive an average of 40%-45% of my traffic from search engines. Direct search is second and social is third.
Every website will have different statistics based on several key factors, but you will notice in time your site will receive most of its traffic from search engines.
I am not saying social media is not important for a digital marketing strategy. It is very important for building relationships with your audience.
Social media is also a great way to jump-start your site’s traffic in the beginning as well.
Like I said earlier, it will take some time for you to see results from your SEO efforts. Add links to your social media posts that direct your following to your website.
Do I Need To Be Ranked Number One In Search
You do not need to be ranked number one in Google’s search results to land a sale. However, the sites that are ranked in the top three will generate the most traffic.
According to Advanced Web Ranking, sites that link that rank number one in the search results receive 28.9% CTR (Click Through Rate). Links that rank number two receive 15.02 % CTR and links that rank number 3 receive 10.9% CTR.
You can now understand why so many people are fighting to be ranked number one.
If the target the keyword phrase “Horse Paintings” receives 100,000 searches a month and you rank number one, you will receive about 28,000 visits a month. These numbers will vary but you get the picture. SEO and ranking number one could greatly affect your art sales.
Conclusion:
In my opinion, SEO is more important than ever. With the amount of competition and the new algorithms for social media platforms, it is becoming more and more difficult for working artists to be seen.
Is SEO Important for Artists? The answer is yes.
Visit SEO Checklist for Artists Selling Art Online for more information on how to optimize your site.
You might also be interested in:
- How to Sell on Pinterest Tips for Artists
- Digital Content Marketing – What Artists Need to Know
- How to Write an Artist Business Plan That Works
- 7 Art Blog Tips That Increase Online Art Sales
- 7 Essential Tips on How to Sell Paintings Online
- How to Be More Productive Marketing Art Online
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