by Guest Blogger, Katie Brenneman - An online portfolio is an artist’s bread and butter in this digital age. Maybe you’ve already put a lot of time and effort into building a beautiful portfolio or website showcasing your work.
However, it’s not exactly effective if no one is looking at it.
Unfortunately, you’re facing an uphill battle. Search engine algorithms will automatically skew toward more established artists. So, it’s time to step into the world of branding and marketing.
Thankfully, you don’t have to have a lot of experience in the advertising industry to make your portfolio stand out. Let’s cover a few quick tips on how you can boost your portfolio’s presence and get your work the attention it deserves.
If you already have an online portfolio, one of the easiest ways to get more visitors is to master the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You’ve likely heard of keyword searches and how important they are to getting noticed. However, there are also things you can do to optimize your site internally, including
By making your portfolio a priority, you’ll naturally boost SEO. But, if you’re still struggling to attract visitors, take the time to learn the basics when it comes to keywords and what people are searching for, and you’ll see an even bigger boost in your digital audience.
Even if you’re not a marketing pro, almost everyone is familiar with at least one social media platform. Use that to your advantage to market your portfolio.
For example, Instagram is an ideal platform for sharing photos and artwork. It’s a great place to share pieces of your work and inspire people to head to your website or portfolio for more. It’s easy to use, but make sure you’re always optimizing your photos and sharing the right sizes, or they could end up looking blurry and unprofessional.
You can also use Instagram and other social media platforms to connect with potential fans and followers. It’s a great way to spark conversation and boost word-of-mouth interest in your portfolio.
While it’s true that everything seems digital these days and you should absolutely have an online portfolio, there’s still something to be said for print media. People still like tangible things, and something as simple as a flyer with a QR code that leads back to your portfolio can be impactful and interesting. Consider leaving flyers or brochures in places like
You can also choose to work with an existing publication that caters to art lovers or even other artists. Doing so will help you hone in on your target audience and can bring your brand and portfolio to life in a way that digital can’t always capture.
Whether you’re a budding artist trying to get your name out there or you’ve enjoyed a long career but need a marketing boost, use these ideas to boost the presence of your online portfolio, and engage with those who want to support you and your work.
Katie Brenneman is a passionate writer specializing in lifestyle, mental health, education, and fitness-related content. When she isn't writing, you can find her with her nose buried in a book or hiking with her dog, Charlie. To connect with Katie, you can follow her on Twitter.
We have all done it. In our rush to post our art to our art websites, we upload the image of our art without optimizing that image, in order to help search engines to find and index that art. Why is this important to an artist? If you want to attract more visitors to your art website, it is essential that your art images be optimized for any of the most important search engines such as Google, Bing, and AOL.
How can an artist optimize their images for search engines? First, an artist should always label their image file names with a keyword rich title. Let us assume that we love to paint different trees. Our website contains images of trees and we want the world to discover our website and our paintings of trees. How can we upload and label our image files properly in order to be found by the search engines? An image file name should be as descriptive of the image as possible. A file name of DSC_00254 will be ignored when indexed but the file name Watercolor-Florida-Palm-Tree will be indexed, as it contains descriptive searchable keywords.
In addition to the file name being searchable, all images should also have searchable titles. A searchable title would contain a short description and incorporate using keywords in the title. An example would be Oak-Tree-Leaves, rather than Tree-DSC_00254.
Any uploaded images should also contain a description of the image or what is known as “Alt Attribute” or “Alt Text”. Since a search engine cannot “see” an image they need a reference device which describes to them exactly what the image is. This is known as an Alt Text or Alt Attribute and it provides to the search engines with important information when they crawl your website and index that image. Therefore, an Alt Attribute should be crafted with care, be brief and contain a keyword rich title and description of the image. For example, an alt attribute of Tree is better than DSC_00254. An alt attribute of Maple-Tree is better than Tree. An alt attribute of Old-Maple-Tree is better than Maple-Tree.
Other things that you should be aware of and which will enhance your chances of having your image indexed, is that any of the text on the page that the image appears should be related to that image. It is extremely helpful if the text also has some of the same keywords that the image title and image description contains. Any links on that page should also be related in some form to the image as well.
Finally, if possible, if the actual image contains a link to another page related to that image then the rank for that image will be much higher than a non-linked image.
Try the above suggestions and when taken together and incorporated when posting images to your art website, the chances of your art being discovered increases dramatically. Also, if images that are already posted on your website are not described, named and titled properly, go back and take some time to bring your images up to date. By accomplishing this, you are doing one more thing that most artists are not doing when it comes to marketing their art and increasing the number of visitors to their website.
