How does your website fare with Google, MSN, or Yahoo? This is province of your SEO, and your web-designer.

This is where items like meta-tags, keyword density, and performance come into play. Your website should be optimized for your location, content, type of art/media. When a web search is run on a topic relevant to you, your website should come up in these searches. If you’re a political artist then you should be getting hits for “political art”, in my case “Toronto filmmakers” or anything specific to your art/media content.

How an SEO can work for you, is that with your search engine optimization company will be able to tailor make your keywords, and meta-tags; so that closer search terms are to what you do, more likely you will get a visitor on your site.

The more visitors you get on your site, more likely you are to sell your product. This brings you closer to becoming an independent artist who doesn’t need deal with large publishers that don’t have your best interests in mind. Ultimately what an effective self-driven online marketing campaign will do for you is that it will allow you to sell your product at your price, and for minimal monthly fees you won’t have to sign over publishing rights or licensing, because all fees, minus operating fees come directly to you.

SEO and online marketing campaigns are available at minimal investment, so if you’re serious about launching your art career, then an affordable advertising campaign may be what you’re looking for.

Simply by improving your site ranking, you attract more visitors. Every visitor is a potential buyer... If we want to use a retail analogy, more people visit your store, more stuff you’ll sell.

All it really takes is for someone to see your site when doing a web- search; this will bring you clients and contacts. A very small investment could bring you artistic freedom you want and deserve.

Not all sites want to link to other sites, so you will have to do some research when you are looking for possible linking partners. Google is an excellent starting place for your search. Make sure you enter keywords that you think quality customers will also enter to find your own site. Remember, your criteria are quality, highly ranked, non-competing websites that have a links or resources page. Go to these sites and objectively assess them. Look at quality of product, graphics, and ease of use. Then check out other sites they are linked to, and determine if your own site would fit in with crowd.

When you decide you have found a good prospect, you must set out to woo them. The first thing to do is to add a link on your own links page to their site. This is an essential first step; it shows good faith, and ups your chances significantly of their reciprocity. After you have added their link, you must contact webmaster of their site. Since this is almost always done by email, you want to make sure it is immediately clear that your message is not junk mail. This requires that you tell them right off bat that you have added a link to their page on your site. A hook like this almost always insures reader will read on.

Next, be sure to be flattering and let them know how much you appreciate their website. Make sure you emphasize that you have actually visited their site, and that their site is not just a random pick. Give them address of your links page, and ask them to check out link for themselves. It's a good idea to mention that they will not only benefit from increased traffic your website will direct their way, but you will also increase their link popularity. Briefly, explain why link popularity is so essential, but do this in a sentence or two so you don't sound like a professor! Finally, tell them you would greatly appreciate if they would reciprocally add a link on their own links page to your website.

Go through this process with as many appropriate sites as you can find, bearing in mind criteria of quality and non-competitiveness. After you have emailed all relevant sites, be sure to check these website frequently to see if they have added a link to your page. Give it about a month, and if no link appears, try another charming email. Then give it another month, and if your site is still absent from their links page, it's time to remove their link from your own links page. The only time you want to pursue a link further than this is if you believe a site is crucial to your link popularity and your business needs. Just remember to keep all your communications complimentary and cordial.

Then set up a schedule to check your ranking in search engines frequently to see if your link popularity has improved. This is not achievable in blink of an eye. It will take some time and a good deal of work. There is no way around labor-intensive quality of improving your link popularity, which is why search engines regard it with such importance.

By way - make sure you have a beautiful, streamlined site or you will never persuade anyone to link up to you. Be prepared to keep plugging away at this process, as long as it takes, until you achieve link popularity stardom!

Brought to by Larry Strawson author of many articles and ebooks on search engine placement.