Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Increase Your Site's Search Ranking
Tweaking your Keywords and Title Meta Tags:
Art sites are sometimes hard to find on the Internet because there is a mismatch between the the most commonly used search engine (Google) and sites with primarily visual, non-textual content. Google and other popular search engines are text-based, and consequently have difficulty finding sites with little textual content.
Just think of a robot who would be blind to pictures, trying to find things by words alone, looking over your site, and you will get the idea. You have to provide some words to get higher ranking in the search results.
Slide show galleries are wonderful, but they must be supplemented with some textual matter, either in the meta tags in the site head, or in the body of the site, or they will be missed by most searchers.
Some sites are heavily visual with jpgs or gifs, and offer little text for the search engine to read in the body of the site. More on this in a later post.
Meta tags in the site's head help the search engine interpret the site content. Some sites have no meta tags, or poorly written meta tags, a detail which lowers the site's placement in search results. If you have poorly written or missing meta tags, you can fix this in your html.
To tweak your site's meta tags, search online and find a site like yours, but one which shows up higher in the search results. You will probably be able to read the source code of the site to find suggestions for your own meta tags in your site's head section.
To reach the source code, right click on the page you want to analyze, and choose "View Page Source" or "View Source". Take a look at their meta tags labeled "title" and "keywords" found near the top between the commands "head" and "/head".
The "title" tag for any site shows at the very top of your browser, and is the wording which shows in the bookmark of your site. Besides reading the textual content of your site, search engines read these tags to decide what your site is about, and decide whether to include you in search results.
Simple changes in these tags in your site html can improve your ranking in search results. However, it is not nice to just copy some other site's meta tags. Your art is unique, why not make your meta tags unique, too?
Search online for "meta tags" and investigate which keywords and are more popular or common for the goods you sell. Ask yourself, do you want to use a niche description, and come up at the top of more specific search results, or go for a result a little further down in an extremely popular category? It's up to you.
Then redo your meta tags "title" and "keywords". It might make a real difference in your site's search results ranking.
More to come in later posts about some good words to use for the body of your site.
If you would like to find a selection of search engines to test your site's visibility, try some from the list at How to Choose a Search Engine or Directory from the site Internet Tutorials.
Monday, March 23, 2009
A Little History About the Truly Canadian Made Website
A little history about how the Truly Canadian Made website began.
I have two websites. Truly Canadian Made is the newer site, and at the moment, is a directory of the sites of artists and artisans based in Canada who offer their work for sale online. There are over 500 sites listed so far, just five months from start-up.
My older site I began just over four years ago. It is content-based. I am an English tutor, with a bachelor's degree in English language structure. I offer free materials for learning English, and writing help. Everything on the site is free. There are many portals available to list my site, and I have worked hard at finding the right keywords, and getting links all over the world. My older site pulls between 20,000 and 25,000 visitors a month, from many corners of the earth.
I have been making fibre art and textile art for years, and recently began to investigate where to sell it. To my surprise, I found there were few portals for my type of art (knitting, crocheting, and sewing). Where could I list a site I would build to sell my art? I was stumped.
At the same time, I was searching for places to buy art online in Canada. I kept getting searches which returned merchants who would ship to Canada, but who were not based here. I did not want to order from outside the country, I wanted to order from someone in Canada. But the search engines failed every time to find a good selection of various types of arts and crafts in Canada.
The art directories I found online were frequently full of dead links, and in one instance, viral attacks. They were usually geographically oriented, so a country-wide result was unavailable. They were also usually dynamic, and I am a person who likes a printed list of results, something not readily available with a database which finds listings one at a time.
So, I decided to begin an arts and crafts directory for artists and artisans who were based in Canada, because I thought other shoppers were probably having the same problems I was having.
Truly Canadian Made was born in November, 2008.
As I have contacted artists and artisans I have listed, and as they have proposed their sites for me to list, I have found a very enthusiastic response to an art directory listing the web shops of Canadian artists and artisans.
This blog will provide a few pointers to those who have a visually-related site and wish to raise their internet presence in search engine results. In plain English, I will offer suggestions which have worked well for my older site to get your web page closer to the top of the search results.
I have two websites. Truly Canadian Made is the newer site, and at the moment, is a directory of the sites of artists and artisans based in Canada who offer their work for sale online. There are over 500 sites listed so far, just five months from start-up.
My older site I began just over four years ago. It is content-based. I am an English tutor, with a bachelor's degree in English language structure. I offer free materials for learning English, and writing help. Everything on the site is free. There are many portals available to list my site, and I have worked hard at finding the right keywords, and getting links all over the world. My older site pulls between 20,000 and 25,000 visitors a month, from many corners of the earth.
I have been making fibre art and textile art for years, and recently began to investigate where to sell it. To my surprise, I found there were few portals for my type of art (knitting, crocheting, and sewing). Where could I list a site I would build to sell my art? I was stumped.
At the same time, I was searching for places to buy art online in Canada. I kept getting searches which returned merchants who would ship to Canada, but who were not based here. I did not want to order from outside the country, I wanted to order from someone in Canada. But the search engines failed every time to find a good selection of various types of arts and crafts in Canada.
The art directories I found online were frequently full of dead links, and in one instance, viral attacks. They were usually geographically oriented, so a country-wide result was unavailable. They were also usually dynamic, and I am a person who likes a printed list of results, something not readily available with a database which finds listings one at a time.
So, I decided to begin an arts and crafts directory for artists and artisans who were based in Canada, because I thought other shoppers were probably having the same problems I was having.
Truly Canadian Made was born in November, 2008.
As I have contacted artists and artisans I have listed, and as they have proposed their sites for me to list, I have found a very enthusiastic response to an art directory listing the web shops of Canadian artists and artisans.
This blog will provide a few pointers to those who have a visually-related site and wish to raise their internet presence in search engine results. In plain English, I will offer suggestions which have worked well for my older site to get your web page closer to the top of the search results.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Free Listing Service for Canada-Based Artists and Artisans
The website Truly Canadian Made offers a free listing service for artists and artisans who offer their work for sale online through their own websites and blogs. The artist or artisan must be based in Canada.
Hundreds or sites are already listed. To find out if your site qualifies for listing, click the link to Truly Canadian Made above and browse the site to see what is listed.
If you wish to submit a site for consideration, follow the "Link to Truly Canadian Made" link found at the bottom of any site page. Scroll down to find instructions about how to submit a site for consideration.
Happy shopping through the listings!
Hundreds or sites are already listed. To find out if your site qualifies for listing, click the link to Truly Canadian Made above and browse the site to see what is listed.
If you wish to submit a site for consideration, follow the "Link to Truly Canadian Made" link found at the bottom of any site page. Scroll down to find instructions about how to submit a site for consideration.
Happy shopping through the listings!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)