I recently received a message from another artist stating her frustrations about not receiving traffic to her artist website. She has had a portfolio website showcasing her paintings for two years now, but has received very few visits. She has worked long and hard trying to optimize her website for Google search, building backlinks, including image alt and title tags, etc. Basically, she has used all the recommended SEO tactics but still receiving very few visitors.
She also has a Facebook page, Twitter account, and spends 4 or 5 hours a day trying to promote her paintings, but still very few visits to her actual art website. I can understand her frustration when she exclaims “What am I doing wrong, and what’s the RIGHT way?” This statement can be echoed by many other frustrated artists on the web.
The fact is, there is no easy answer to this question. There could be one reason, or several contributing factors. So I will explore some of the possible reasons why an artist website gets little traffic, and how it can be fixed.
Why Art Portfolios Receive Little Traffic and How to Drive Traffic to Your Artist Website
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They do not know you have an artist website
This may sound ironic, but people who know you may not even know you have a portfolio displaying artworks. There may be lots of visitors to your Facebook page and Twitter accounts, but without a conspicuously displayed website link, how will they know about your art website? The fact is, most artists share artwork at their Facebook page, and miss the opportunity of sharing their art website. Include a link to your portfolio in the text box for every single post. Also, use your photo gallery to promote your website by including the link there.
Install the Addthis widget on your web browser, and begin sharing artworks from your art site instead of directly uploading them to Facebook. Each time you share, that image is directly linked to where the image appears at your art portfolio site. Consider including your website link onto the image itself, which will serve as a credit link in case your artwork is shared by others.
Shift your focus on promoting your artist website instead of individual artworks. Do this by using tips similar to already mentioned. Brand yourself and use your portfolio as the place where people will have to see the best images of your art, and fully learn what you are all about.
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They are not interested in viewing art
The fact is, most people visiting and commenting on your artworks will be other artists. Maybe they are not interested in your artwork enough to visit your website. But, there may be other things they may be interested in. Maybe you can have a page with some art resources, painting lessons, etc. Artists and collectors are more likely to visit your website if they know there is something there for them, be it a tutorial, useful links, inspirational quotes, or helpful advice.
Why would you want people who are not interested in buying art visiting your website? When people visit, they may like what they see enough to leave comment or share the page with their networks (ie Facebook and Twitter). Comments contribute to site content, something which will make your site appear active in the eyes of search engines. People who share your artwork may put it in front of art collectors, who may visit your website and buy from you.
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Search engines don’t know about your portfolio website
Search engines love constantly updating content. If your art website has been sitting there, but hasn’t been updated in weeks or months, it may be pushed lower in the rankings in favour of newer content. A stale website will get little to no visitors from search engines, especially if they are not even indexed.
To ensure your website is indexed by Google and other search engines, you may have to manually submit them. Do a search for free search engine submit. Find a website that allows you to submit to several search engines at once for free. It may take a while for some search engines to index your website, but they will eventually. Do this no more than once a month to ensure your website stays in search engines.
To ensure search engines always know about your portfolio, a blog is the popular choice. Blogs can be updated often, and will be indexed much faster than a static website. Create an art blog and write articles that attract visitors. Within every single article, include links to artworks at your actual portfolio. Google spiders will follow these, always ensuring your art website is properly indexed.
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The actual website portfolio is poorly designed
Imagine someone visiting your portfolio website for the first time. Does the design contribute to your art, and make the visitor want to see more? Or does it make them want to leave right away? There are some general guidelines that should be followed when designing a portfolio website. I will explore some of these in another article here at Artpromotivate. Subscribe now so this post will arrive straight your email inbox.
Until then, please read our previous posts on portfolio design:
Learning Artist Porfolio Design by Looking at Other Websites
Preparing Art for Internet Portfolio Display
What are your opinions? Do you have anything to include about why many artists do not get traffic to their art sites? Are you frustrated because of your lack of visitors?
Please let your voice be heard below.
Thank you! Will be implementing your ideas.
ReplyDeletethis is really helpful
ReplyDeleteLove your articles... They have helped me grow thus far... and you always have something I'm working on. As you know I have designed my own site :O) and it is a whole new world of learning. I just want to paint pretty pictures LOL I have to say this makes so much sense and was the furthest from my mind to throw the page or link to the new art instead of reloading to FB. and how many times have I clicked right to a website and browsed around. All I can say to myself is DUH!!! and to you of coarse Thank you! I will utilize these tools today. do my own little beta test. I have also noticed other things I want so I am glad I'm finding this out now having only had my website 2 weeks. Things like this box for comments is nicer than the ones I have seen thus far. Also how you have everything so organized and accessible page to page nav, and all these little buttons. which also i have been searching for. As well as you mentioning adding a link to the picture itself??? for me it's like taking a Kindergartner and throwing Her into High School and going "here kid get to to class".... my other downfall is as you( the public) notice more than I, is my grammar issues so i need to seek and editor. thanks so much I will def be browsing for more.
ReplyDelete@Joszie
ReplyDeleteThank-you Joszie! Congratulations on your new site!
Hey Guys,
ReplyDeleteThis is Michael Corbin of ArtBookGuy.com. I'm a super-passionate patron of contemporary art and artists. I'm also a collector, author and journalist.
I find that the big issue with many artists, even very gifted ones, is that they don't want to treat what they do as a BUSINESS. They want to leave the marketing and promotion sides to others like galleries or art websites. Needless to say, this can end with very sad results.
I interview gifted artists constantly for ArtBookGuy and I must say that most of the artists don't take full advantage of the opportunity to promote the end result which is always GREAT. Just as I'm clearly promoting Art BookGuy here, artists should be doing the same with their own work. I could go on, but I'll stop here. Visit my site ArtBookGuy.com and you'll see how serious I am about promoting gifted artists and art in general. Cheers, Michael
Thanks for the tips artboom Guy! I will check out your site in the meantime go to WWW.sophiabuddenhagen.com enjoy!
DeleteThank you ..this is very usefull
ReplyDeletewww.nellyartz.com
Great advice Graham, as usual. I have one thing to add, one thing I need to take my own advice of. That would be ask. Ask people to come to your site. Ask them on your FB, twitter, Linked In, etc. Ask/tell. People don't think they like to be told what to do, but simply adding... "hey, will you come visit my site" when you leave a comment... well you know the adage... ask and ye shall receive!
ReplyDeleteReally Helpful, thank you - davidmunroe.weebly.com
ReplyDeletethank you Graham - great advice as always!
ReplyDeleteI have found that sending out a monthly newsletter - every month - has really started to pay off, as stats to my website and blog really do increase each month .. it's a slow build up and sometimes you just have to be patient ... but it can be done!
and the fun bit - creating art - has to be coupled with 'running a business' too!
thank you for your articles - keep 'em coming!!
Alyson
www.a3art.co.uk
Thanks for the idea about submitting to search engines, I didn't know you could do that!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lauratuininga.com