I recently attended a course in Aberystwyth run by Super Fast  Wales.  It’s social media marketing but with analytics on steroids. So, what has that got to do with art? Well, thanks to the internet I don’t have to live and work in the major cities. I can enjoy life in the rural mountains of Wales where there is little footfall. Yet, thanks to Super Fast Wales, I am able to target the London and New York art market. Traditional galleries are struggling. Online markets and art fairs are becoming the new norm.

image by jeff cooper

Getting on Page 1

More than 95% of consumers and businesses search the internet before buying a new product or service. They type in their keywords for a particular search. They receive a list of relevant websites. Folks tend
to visit the sites that appear on page 1, because they seem to be relevant to their search.

However, for businesses trying to compete for a piece of the pie,  most will find their competitors at the top of these lists. Research proves, that your website needs to be at the top of these if you want to stand a chance of selling. Otherwise, you’ll never reach your customers online.

Why do your competitors rank is better than yours? It’s due to a marketing technique called SEO. SEO refers to search engine optimization. Thanks to Super Fast Wales, a business initiative, courses are there to train you to become an SEO expert.

This intensive technique helps to rank your site above the millions of other sites in response to certain
keywords. When a term is searched online, the search engine will crawl and collect information about each and every page on the web. It can help people find exactly what they’re searching for.

So, when your site achieves higher rankings, it enables others to locate you. In order to get higher
rankings your website should have all the attributes that search engines are crawling for.

SEO

This is where SEO steps in. SEO looks for all the text contents, including hyperlinks. It searches page
titles as well as other pieces of relevant information that are contained within the HTML code
on your website. So, when someone searches for a keyword the search engine will narrow the results to show pages that contain the words searched for.

In order to get more business, your site has to get onto the first page of all the major search engines for those particular keywords. Without SEO, your site will never be found by potential customers. It important to realise this. I am thankful to Super Fast Wales and the opportunity they offered with SEO training.

Become your own expert

In today’s competitive market you definitely require solid SEO techniques in order to get your site to
the top of the search results. You have to become a specialist in SEO so you are more visible on the internet. Yes, you can pay someone to do it for you. But even then there are no guarantees. I have invested hours of my own time. But, it has paid off as now my page ranks on page 1 of the search engines.

As the night draws to a close, I find myself sat here still working on my site. I have been anchored to this seat for almost ten hours. I am putting into practice the techniques I learned from Super Fast Wales. Just as well it rained for most of that time!