To be found online means that you're easily visible in the major Internet search engines. Ideally, when someone types in your name, links to you appear near the top of the search results. Being invisible online is a marketing disaster and should be avoided at all costs.

The reason good search engine management is such a challenge is that so much is beyond the direct and immediate control of the search engine manager. The major problem is that the top six search engines that matter most change their rules on a regular basis. As a result, search engine managers are constantly chasing a moving target.

Since 95% of all Internet searches use these six major search engines ( Google, Yahoo, Yahoo Directory, Open Directory Project, AskJeeves / Teoma and LookSmart) , great care must be taken to understand and work within their constantly changing rules. Even more important, it's critical not offend them to the point of having your web pages banned. In other words, a good search engine manager has to deal with several difficult and evasive targets and exercise good judgment in the process.

In addition to the issue of ever-changing search engine rules, there's the not-so-small matter of luck. As an individual artist, you must face the fact that hundreds or even thousands of people around the country could share your first and last name. For example, if someone is trying to find an artist named Jane Smith, it helps if there's not a more famous person with the same name, like a famous scientist or a well-known author.

The person seeking the artist but not the scientist or author can narrow down the search by typing in “Jane Smith artist,” instead of “Jane Smith,” but you can't count on that happening. In nearly every case the more famous person with the same name will rank higher, simply because they've been established for a longer period of time and have more online references.

The best the search engine manager can do is to have the artist appear right after the scientist or author, which is far from a bad result. Searchers know they're looking for Jane Smith, the artist, and not Jane Smith the scientist or author, and will most likely scroll down until they find the artist.

To summarize… we have a two-part challenge: 1) Keep current with the constantly changing rules of the major search engines; and 2) deal with any same-name issues.

And when we say “experts” we mean experts . Most web gurus – those who may be quite capable of building any number of great websites – fall far short of being able to deliver consistently-good search engine results. Why? First of all you have to stay current with the search engines rules and most “web gurus” are so busy building web sites they don't have the time or the resources to stay current. Secondly, you have to continuously design a workable solution to the ever changing landscape of search engines and that takes research, study, and a lot of work. Simply “submitting your web pages to all the search engines,” a phrase commonly heard in the business, won't do the job. It's far more complicated than that. With so many claiming to get you to the top of the search engine hierarchy, it's difficult to imagine that it's even possible, or everyone would be there. It just doesn't make sense.

Now you are asking, “Okay, what do you guys do that's different? How come you know these “insider secrets” that no one else knows?” The problem isn't that everyone else is trying to get to the top. You have to look at it from a different viewpoint. The most formidable adversaries in this process are the search engines themselves, not the other “web masters.”

Search engines know that web masters are constantly attempting to get their sites on top. In order to keep themselves from being exploited or tricked into giving a less-relevant website an inappropriately high ranking, they must constantly change the rules governing their own ranking process. And, each search engine has evolved its own set of rules, so there are multiple moving targets in the ongoing battle of search engine placement. Separate strategies for submitting and resubmitting web pages to each search engine must be developed, tested, and maintained on a continuous basis.

On the theory that the best customer is an educated customer, we'll list just a few of the issues involved in achieving good search engine ranking. Luckily, you don't need to remember any of this stuff, but this information will give you an appreciation of the scale of the task. To keep it brief, we'll keep it down to one paragraph, so, here goes…

The three most important elements of good search engine results are Link Popularity, Page Reputation and Page Importance. Associated with these main areas are sub- techniques related to such things as domain name selection, keyword selection, keyword strategies, keyword relevancy, keyword density, invisible and semi-invisible text, information pages, redirect pages, comment lines, meta tags, text order, image management, phantom pixels, hidden tags, hidden links, site map strategies, cascading style sheets… it goes on and on.

The search engines constantly change the rules governing each and every one these things, so you can see there's no such thing as a silver-bullet solution. In fact, it's just the opposite. Ranking well in the search engines is a matter of doing many little things just right. As each of the many targets moves, all these little things need to be adjusted. And, making these subtle changes and adjustments makes a huge difference in the results. That means an ongoing program of testing and development by a staff of highly trained experts dedicated to just this one task – getting you as close to the top as possible.

By far, the most efficient approach for you, an individual artist, is to piggyback on a dedicated art website – one whose staff is well-trained in the skill of making you easily found on the Internet. Within the dedicated art website are hundreds of content owners who collectively support the significant cost of the effort required. By spreading this cost of maintaining this process over many artist members, a website like the Catalog of American Artists can keep its fees very low, while delivering good search engine results to each and every one of its members.

When we promote the Catalog to the major search engines, each individual listing is promoted right along with it. When our extensive research, testing and development reveals a new technique, every one of our customers is instantly plugged in. Using our example again, if someone wants to find Jane Smith and they type “Jane Smith” in, say, a Google search box, her name will appear in the search results with a link to her listing in the Catalog of American Artists. When the user clicks on the link, he or she is taken directly to Jane's listing, not to the home page of the Catalog. This is what we mean by a piggyback strategy. It's the least expensive, easiest and most efficient way for an individual artist like you to be found on the Internet.

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