To my way of thinking, "web-based marketing" refers to every marketing activity that makes use of the internet in its execution. The most important tool in your web-marketing toolbox is your website. But other tools not to be overlooked are conventionally mailed postcards and intelligently crafted email campaigns. This article will discuss the most basic tool: your website and specifically how (and if) it appears in search engines.

As a visual artist, your "product" is photography or illustration. Therefore, it makes complete sense that you present images on your website; after all, that is what your potential client is seeking, an artist that can satisfy his or her need for images. And it follows that your goal is probably to get as many potential clients to your website as possible. After all, the easier it is to find your website, or online portfolio, the more likely it is that your work will be looked at and, hopefully, the more you'll be hired.

Depending on which segment of the photography industry you work in, your website is an important piece of the marketing puzzle. If you are a photographer specializing in public relations, editorial, corporate, or annual report photography, then it is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Likewise, if you are an illustrator whose work appears in magazines, or is used in the fashion, medical or scientific industries, your web site is equally important.

I do primarily corporate and annual report photography and about 60-percent of my new clients (not revenue) each year come from my site having been found on a search engine. This means that if you decide that your web site is indeed important in your marketing plan, potential clients need to be able to find it, and that's where search engines come into the picture.

But First, Your Site's Contents

Before we get into the details of how search engines work and what you can do to help your site's visibility in them, we'll need to talk about your site and what it has to offer to potential visitors. It takes a lot of hard work (or money) to get your site onto page one of any search engine, and once you get it there, you have to have attractive content, intuitive content, and site features that will make a person want to stay in your site. According to web usability guru Jakob Nielson, if your web site visitor came to your site from a search engine, you have a maximum of eight seconds to engage her before she loses interest, clicks the 'back' button and goes to the next artist in the search engine results page (SERP).

Keep Navigation Intuitive

For this reason, intuitive navigation is generally regarded to be the most important site characteristic that leads to site 'stickiness'; what 'keeping the visitor' is referred to. If your site opens with, say for example, a photo of a beautiful woman, and only when you mouse over her eyes, the link for "People" appears, or when you mouse over her mouth "Places" appears, you're in trouble.

Links to other pages in your site should be very visible and easy to locate. Apple is credited with helping to make the 'across the top' navigation bar ubiquitous. Before that, site navigation was almost always found in a vertical column at the left of the page.

In addition to intuitive navigation, here are some other 'tips for success' that I've put together:

Intelligent Color Selection

It's hard to believe, but I've seen a photographer's web site that made use of blue type on a red background. It's impossible to focus on that combination! Communication Arts magazine annually publishes their color predictions for the coming year. You would be well served to take a look at it if you are starting from scratch. Of course, your site should also be in harmony with your brand. And when I say brand, I don't mean just your logo, I mean the 'look and feel' of all your marketing; it should all be cohesive. Consult a branding expert to assist you with this.

Working Links

Nothing is more frustrating for your visitor than clicking on a link, and receiving the dreaded "Page does not exist" message. For this reason, search engines will penalize your site if they encounter non-working links. This usually occurs when you have a link to an outside site and that site has undergone a site redesign. In the process, the URL's of many of their pages have likely changed, making the link to them on your site obsolete.

Be Wary of Template Sites

Chances are that if you like a template and are contemplating using it, there is another artist somewhere in the world that also likes that same template. The search engines have a high level of intolerance for similar content across two different web sites. If your site is not different enough from another artist's's site, the search engines may think you are putting up similar looking pages in an attempt to manipulate their SERPs. Instead of a template, consider my next tip.

Use a Designer!

We're photographers and illustrators, not designers. Spend some time and money using a designer to design your own web site template. All they really need to create for you is a home page and an inside page. Sure, they can create more templates for you for other types of content, but if you are on a budget (and who isn't these days!), then just start with the two page styles. You could even offer to barter for design work if you have a relationship with a design firm in your market.

Coming Next Month

For next month, we'll discuss in depth how search engines work, what criteria they use when deciding how to rank a site, and what you can do to help your site rank higher so that potential clients can find you easily.