Spiralcat Blog about Search Engine Optimisation
Site Promotion Ideas
23 July 2008
The internet and the websites on it are the future. At least I think they are the future for infotainment sites like spiralcat (my site). It frees us and the information we post to our websites from geographical limits. I am a freelance artist specialising in illustration and animation and I also, along with my girlfriend, do translations. Both freelance illustration and translation jobs can be done purely over the internet with the aid of a website without having to have face to face contact with the client. SEO (search engine optimisation) is required and can provide a subsiduary income from google adds, but getting a site up and running isn't the main problem as a site can be optained at little or no cost. This site is provided free of charge by Microsoft for example, it has limitations but these are far outweighed for me by the cost considerations right now. The real question is how to promote the website and get it seen by the maximum number of people. I have been reading about SEO and promoting this site for a couple of years now and I have seen real progress, not as great progress as I would like, but progress.
After two years most visitors are now coming to my site from Google, but it was certainly not that way in the beginning. In the beginning Google was sending me something like 4 visitors a week, and they only came after months of SEO (some of it counterproductive as it turns out, such as repeating key words too often in the page tags) and a lot of work promoting my site in places Google was likely to find it. Mainly on the www.gumtree.com small add site. Depending on the subject of the page I advertised Gumtree could send anything from 0 to 30 visitors my sites way and more importantly it is a very high traffic site where the spiders are likely to find my link.
While Gumtree is a great site, one that I find even better for SEO is Deviant Art. I am an illustrator and just searching and answering the job forum on the site serves the triple site optimisation function of sending people to my site, leaving my link on high traffic pages and possibly getting me freelance work directly. I have done a couple of illustration jobs and designed some logos for clients I found advertising jobs on Deviant Art, but more importantly for me it brings a lot of targeted traffic my way.
For me with my particular interests and creative style the best place for leaving links for people to click on and Google et al to find and send to my optimised site has been forums. I never really got on with social networking sites like Facebook, Digg, Library Thing or Youtube but of course you might be entirely different. The thing to do is keep trying and find what works for you.