Are off-page the same as backlinks? There seems to be a lot of different ways cropping up on the web to get more backlinks.

This all seems like a complicated dance one plays with the search engines. Painting and networking seems like a better use of time than figuring out how to work the off-page SEO factors. Thanks for your insight Clint.

Charlotte - I agree - in our own polling email newsletters were pretty high up too - I agree that other activities are much higher payoff than SEO - it's a low return activity for most artists (it is a *high* return activity for some other types of websites though - just not most artists).

Thanks Judy - Ironically we've spent a lot of time adding a bunch of SEO features to our sites - mainly because people constantly focus on it (when they shoudn't) and because adding a lot of the on-page stuff was easy for us to do in a way that doesn't require a lot of time from the artists - the off page stuff gets harder though because getting backlinks does take some effort from the site owner

Clint, Thank you for all your incites regarding search engines. They are completely independent and can't be manipulated. We are all at their feet and need to be mindful of our internet positions affected by them.

Helen - sort of correct - search engines are independent but they can be manipulated to an extent - that's sort of the whole premise of "SEO" - the problem is that serious SEO is difficult, time consuming and expensive - thus....not a good payoff for most artists. I would say the increasing amount of high-ranking crap/spam sites would indicate that some manipulation is taking place though.

Helen - Well it depends - one could argue that setting up URLs, begging for links and changing your title tags is a form of manipulation - however, if you use manipulations that the search engines have "banned" then you are correct.....sort of......you'll get banned if you're a little guy - but the "big" manipulators sometimes get away with it (mahalo.com, ehow.com, demand media backed sites) - but those are of little concern to most artists. The truth of it is that Google allows some manipulation through because they make 90 percent of their revenue via adwords - and adword driven sites tend to be some of the worst spam/manipulation out there. I wish I had a version of google that returned all the same search results EXCEPT any site with adsense on it - that would solve a lot of the spam, but of course that's not realistic since that would leave them with zero revenue.

Helen - Maybe not *completely* susceptible; however, Mahalo is breaking all kinds of rules that should have gotten them banned long ago - but they are generating millions for Google, so....I'm wondering....why haven't they been banned? I'm left with only one conclusion - revenue....The big search engines have a lot of people and servers to pay for so they are businesses concerned with revenue unlike their early days - I'm not saying they're "evil" - but not totally just devoted to philanthropic service either. Just something to be aware of, not something that will affect most artists most likely.

Clint, I am not at all familiar with Mahalo; I can't comment on this or how Google may be involved but, I do know google has been very helpful to me and my website and would not guestion their interest in the internet.Clint, as an internet invester, you would know that there have to be rewards to keep investing in the internet.As a very successful online fineart investor you know the value of your customers as does google. I am very thankful for both of you

This is why I'm with YOU! Thank you Clint for unraveling some of this mysterious world for us. Your creative talent and understanding of the cyber-world take a lot of weight off of this artist for sure!

Hi Clint,
Thank you! I'll stick with your disclaimer. For me, the best part of this article, and people's comments, is help with prioritizing. I recently attended a Social Media Workshop for Artists by Pat and Melinda of Convivial Design in Abiquiu, and at the top of the TO DO list was...strategize. Help like this with understanding the time investment and likely results help tremendously with deciding where to invest precious time, and how best to connect my art with the people it's meant for.

Thank you again!

Stede

Clint,
what the heck is #4. what do you mean by "copied from somewhere else"?


I create stuff in wordpad and copy and past into my blog or other things.

Or are you referring "copied" as plagerism?

??????????????

This was a great discussion with lots of good info and insight. Good one, Clint.

Donations of artwork is always easily passed off as being...only paper. What about all the money and time we artist put into it, that must count for something, I like the idea of donating money for tax purposes and keeping the painting. Or better yet, posting the painting with a price and donate a share of the income with the group.

Karen,

good for you for holding out for what is best. I'm sure it also worked out better for the auction since the charity had some skin in the game and knew what the worth of your work was!

Michael

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