In order to gain an edge over your art competitors and to keep your name and your art exposed to your target audience, I suggest that all artists apply to and get on as many artist registries’ as you can.

Just what is an artist registry and what can it do for an artist? An artist registry is an effective, low cost (in most cases “no cost”) tool that helps an artist to expose their artwork to art collectors, gallery owners/directors, art buyers and general art lovers.

Many large cities, states, and other art organizations offer and run artist registries. Think of an artist registry as a way for an art organization to expose and promote it’s registered artists to the world. In a way, the creators and administrators of the registry are acting as an advocate for their registered artists.

Besides listing the artist by name, in most cases, the artist is able to upload some of their art to their profile, provide a small biography and other pertinent information about the artist, their education and their experience in the art field.

One of the best features of being listed in an artist registry is that you will be able to create a backlink to your art website. Besides the exposure, this will help in your page ranking with Google. Google and the other large search engines base a certain percentage of their page ranking of your website on the amount and the quality of the backlinks that your website contains. Artist registries are a quality link and if you can get on as many of these as possible it will eventually help your page ranking when it comes to searching for your art.

How can you find artist registries? It is fairly simple. Go Google, Bing or Yahoo and type in the search feature “artist registry” or “art registry”. In order to locate registries for a certain location, use the above terms with a + sign and the location. For example, use the search term “artist registry + Chicago” or “art registry + Texas” and see what comes up, then research each site, as to whether or not it fits your needs.

In addition, try the search term “slide registry” too. It is an old fashion term for the same thing. Artists should take advantage of being registered and placed on artist registries, not only for their marketing exposure but for the backlinks that they create as well.