Category Archives: Tips

Build a Better Portfolio

Feb 18
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build-a-better-portfolioIf you are an artist, of any type, looking to get hired, you must have a portfolio available to display the best of your previous work. Not just a thrown together group of images, you need a great, functional, easy to use portfolio of images. I work with many photographers so portfolios are something I deal with quite a bit, in addition to needing to put one together myself. Here are some tips I’ve put together to get you started in creating a great portfolio.

Ditch the Flash

Why are you still using flash? We are a mobile world now and flash just is not mobile friendly. I know, it looks great to you and there are templates that make it easy for you, but a portfolio is more about function and displaying your great work. You don’t need a flashy interface to detract from your quality. Flash is also slow to load, which brings me to my next point….

Speed Matters

This is one of those all around tips. A slow website will negatively affect your search engine rankings, but it will also cause people to back right out of your site. In today’s rush rush lifestyle, we just don’t have time, or desire, to wait. We want it and we want it now. Pay more for a great hosting service that isn’t overloading servers with websites.

Navigation is Necessary

I mention navigation a lot. I’m not referring to just portfolio navigation, but also whole site navigation. Your site visitors want to see your work, make it easy for them to find! Once you’ve done that, focus on the navigation within your portfolio. Make sure you have previous/next arrows or text. Navigating from one portfolio image to the next should be a nice flow.

Put Your Best Foot Forward

It’s better to show one great image as opposed to three mediocre images. Only release the best of your best. If you have the slightest doubt, don’t post it. An okay image will degrade the quality of your best image. I can’t count how many times I ask myself why an artist included a certain image, one that clearly isn’t their best. Your portfolio is a representation of you, only put your best self out there.

Badly Cropped Thumbnails

If your portfolio uses thumbnails, make sure they are cropped nicely. Sometimes the thumbnail is auto-cropped and beyond your control. But don’t settle until you’ve tried everything you can to get a good thumbnail crop. A non-cropped thumbnail would be far better than a badly cropped thumbnail.

Well Designed Site

You must have a well designed site. Simple is best for an artist, you want your work noticed, not your website. Don’t allow your website to detract from the work you produce. Your website should be clean, display properly and not look like it was put together in 1998. Let’s review your site and see what we can do to it!

Relax the Security

Just relax. Allow your images to be shared. What gets shared, gets noticed. Watermark those images (super important!!) and turn off the disabling of right-click. If you’ve properly watermarked, you shouldn’t worry about stealing. Let your site visitors share those images, either on facebook or by saving them to their own computer to share later. Every share, in any form, is beneficial to you, let it happen!

Easy Contact

Two things fall in here- get your name out there and be easy to contact. If you are operating under a business name or a username somewhere, that is perfectly fine, but put your real name out there. Be personable. Allow your soon-to-be clients to know and use your name when contacting you. Make it easy for them to reach you, get a contact form on your site and/or an email address. And, as stated, make it easy to find in your navigation!

Your portfolio is one of the first steps in getting hired, make it work for you instead of against you. Now, I’m going to go check on my own portfolio and see what I can improve. I know it’s not the portfolio I originally had in mind so I settled because clients come first!

5 SEO No-No’s for the New Year

Dec 29
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Everyone wants to get to the top of the list of the great Google. There are many things you could do to increase your chances of ranking on page one, but let’s look at 5 things you shouldn’t do. These thing will cause your ranking to drop so try best to avoid them.

1. Cloaking

Showing search engines one thing and site visitors another is known as cloaking. Using sneaky redirects or custom coding to trick the bots is not good practice. No one wants to click a search result expecting one thing and get redirected to something totally off topic.

2. Purchasing Links

Never buy links to your site. This does not refer to niche directories. Those would be considered quality links. Link farms, or sites just full of links to any and everything, should be avoided. You are judged by the company you keep, so make sure your links are coming from quality sites, not catch all link exchange sites.

3. Duplicate Content

Write your own, original content. If you run two websites, always change up your writing. Search engines want to know where the original, quality content came from. Don’t make it hard for them by duplicating your content.

4. Slow Server

You click a search result and the site doesn’t load. How disappointed are you?! No one wants that to happen. If your site is slow loading or experiencing outages, fix it! Ask to be moved to a new server or find a new hosting company.

5. Hidden Text

This also refers to microscopic text. Do not make your font color the same as your background color and stuff it with keywords. Do not make your font so small that human eyes can’t read it with a magnifying glass. Never put anything on your site solely for the search bots. All text should be readable and understandable to both bots and visitors. Make your content legible and visible and everyone will be happy.

SEO in 2013

Dec 24
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Imforza.com put together a nice infographic focusing on SEO predictions, data and tips for 2013. Some of these are things I’ve been pushing the past few months. Search engine ranking is an ongoing job, ever changing, ever evolving. It’s definitely not something you do once and forget about it. So, here’s a few things to focus on in the upcoming year:

SEO Predictions for 2013 - Infographic.

What’s YOUR color?

Sep 28
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Flowers are colorful right? You notice them against the green landscape. That’s because they pop. Something known as the Von Restorff effect- if it stands out, it gets noticed and remembered.

Your links are nothing if they aren’t being clicked. Color draws attention, especially when a color stands out. You need to draw attention to your links to make them actionable. Make those links pop! Don’t stop with only your text links, buttons should be taken into consideration as well. You want your user to hit the submit button, so make it pop.

Derek Halpern covers this nicely over at SocialTriggers.com in his video

On this blog, I don’t have a clear call-to-action color. I am revamping though and I think I might use teal or red. Over on my other fun site, BestDamnWebGirl.com, I’m using pink. You can clearly see what is clickable and what isn’t.  So, what’s your color? Comment below and let me know. If you don’t have an action color, contact me and let’s revise your website so your links will pop!

Think hard before changing that name!

Jun 19
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I often get clients coming to me that want to change their website completely, not only a new look, but a new url as well. I have no problem doing that, but it’s important to think about it first. How important is that new url you want to use?

If you have an existing site, it’s probably indexed in Google to some extent. Maybe you’ve been working hard at getting ranked at the top. That’s something you need to consider when you change your domain. You absolutely must put up a 301 redirect and you must expect that your ranking is going to drop, hopefully only slightly, for at least a short time.

Once you’re new url is in place, you should try to get all of your backlinks pointing to the new site. If you’ve joined a directory of some sort, have your website listed in your sig line of a forum, you’re email, a friend’s site that might be linking to yours, anywhere you can update the url, you must do that as soon as you can.

Just be patient and you’ll rebound.