Sunday, December 9, 2012

FREE Backlink Opportunity for Artist

Attention All Artists... FREE Backlink Opportunity

A great SEO tactic is to work on increasing the number of backlinks you put out in the World Wide Web each day, so today I invite you to include a link back to your online storefront or artist website in the comments section of this post.  (This opportunity is for ARTISTS only and all other links will be deleted).

This should help you build your link portfolio and give the readers of my blog a list of artist’s websites to visit, so… link away!

I’ll start with my Original Perspective Zazzle Store which is home to my collection of artistic gift ideas for the holiday season!

Artistic gift ideas for the art lover in your life!

Be sure to post live links... There is another post on my blog about how to post links that explains how...
The Importance of Links and How They Work

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

The Importance of Links and How They Work

Generating Links Are SEO Tactic #1

When you search for something using Google, Bing, or any other online search engine, the results that appear are a direct result of a complex algorithm (or formula) comprised of many different factors, some weighing more heavily than others.  While each search engine’s formula is slightly different, the most constant of these factors (and more often than not, the most heavily weighted) is the number of links (or backlinks) on the internet that connect directly to each site.  Since most people who shop online primarily use search engines to do so, it is imperative that you build an extensive, and diverse, link portfolio.  In addition to eventually cultivating new customers from online search engines, each time you place a link somewhere that leads back to your online storefront is an additional opportunity to make a sale!

Because links are so vitally important for the success of your SEO (search engine optimization) efforts (resulting in the success of selling your art online), it’s important to understand how they work.  Like everything else you see online, links are rooted in an internet programming “language” called HTML.  Below you’ll find the basic HTML code regarding links that you’ll need to know in order to effectively use them in promoting your online storefront.

The basic layout for a link looks like this (the ***s and everything in between them are to be replaced with the actual information)…

<a href=”***URL***”>***anchor text***</a>

EXAMPLE

The URL (“universal resource locator” or internet address) for my online storefront is http://www.zazzle.com/originalperspective and I want my anchor text (what people will click on to get there) to read “Visit the Original Perspective Zazzle Store”, so my link will look like this…

<a href=”http://www.zazzle.com/originalperspective”>Visit the Original Perspective Zazzle Store</a>

And what people see as a result of that code would look like this…


Before you begin plastering your link all of the internet, it IS important to note that another factor in online search engine algorithms is anchor text matching keywords from the site it links back to.  For example, my online Zazzle store is called “Original Perspective” so I not only use that phrase repeatedly in my store’s title, description, and content but in the anchor text for all my links as well.