(web help) I really really like you guys, but...

You seem to be the only ones who go to my website(s), and its driving me crazy! While I'm grateful to get some traffic, it would be nice if potential customers looked at them too.

I submitted the sites to bunches of search engines... use internal and external links... give my images names that would come up in searches... that googly webmaster thing where I put some code into my homepage (free site won't let it on other pages)... I kinda like my layout... moved the body stuff to another site...

And still, my traffic comes from here and folks searching a type of face (like "peacock face painting") which I imagine is face painters looking for reference.

What am I missing here? How do you get customers to your site (and then to book)? Any suggestions?

So I just Googled "Indianapolis Face Painter" and I'm on the first page! I'm so confused. Help!

That is good... that means when someone is looking for a painter in Indianapolis they will see your site link.

It takes time for the bots to move you up the rankings on the search engines.

How have you been publicizing your website? Do you have it on your business cards? Have you been advertising it at all? You need to get it out there so people know to look for it.

Have you listed on the free online directories? Like the Snazaroo one?

Is it easy for people to contact you from the info on the site?

I waited 7 minutes and your site still won't load for me. Have you considered getting an exclusive hosted URL? :::hugs:::

Well I just tried again and it loaded immediately, lol. Go figure, probably something on my end. Your work is gorgeous and your site is very clean and well done! I would add your phone number to every page and consider increasing the size of the navigation menu so it's more prominent.

Honestly as much work as I poured into my website, it's Facebook that is earning me business. Do you have a fb page? I run contests for "likes", volunteer at local fundraisers where I get my name and work out there as well as connect with other locals on fb, and "like" a lot of other local artsy businesses so we can support each other and create a good bit of community exposure. HTH!

Another thing that hurts you is your site is a sub domain. This means it can rank lower in search results or not be indexed at all.

The first link above never loaded- if it is a redirect, or the same site, that will hurt your results.

The second link loaded instantly. There is not enough text for a search bot to decide how relevant your site is to the search terms it is optimized for, and it looks like MOST of the search terms you have in your key words do not appear in the rext on the page, which they need to.

I should see your contact info on every page! On the second site above, in a casual look, I cannot even find it. On the first link above, it is only on the contact page...

Some thoughts

First page finally loaded, it is a bit better but might want to keep kids face painting and semi-nude body paint photo's seperate... depends on how open minded your area is.

The back ground makes reading your page VERY difficult.

Just some helpful advice.

Thanks so much for the tips!!!! I'll be doing some updating soon, and I appreciate the help.

I am surprised though that my text is difficult to read because of the background. Is anyone else having that experience? On my end, it looks like a fairly dark background with larger-than-average white text.

I didn't have trouble reading the text. I do agree about the contact info needing to be clear and bold, and moving the body art photos to a secondary page away from children's face painting.

As for hits... most of my hits are from other painters as well. I'm thankful for other painters though, since it does help my ranking out. We are in a specialty field so we can't really expect to get a whole lot of hits... it's a very small portion of the population who needs a face painter, lol. As long as you do come up in the search engines, and those hits are giving you jobs, I think it all works out great.

Totally agree, Angie. I don't mind at all the colleague traffic. It just feels like my web site is not generating much business. Most of my bookings come from word of mouth (which I am also grateful for). So, I guess I'm just worried that I'm not maximizing the potential. I'll definitely be putting suggestions into action.

JBax wrote:

I submitted the sites to bunches of search engines... use internal and external links... give my images names that would come up in searches... that googly webmaster thing where I put some code into my homepage (free site won't let it on other pages)...

What am I missing here? How do you get customers to your site (and then to book)? Any suggestions?

OK ... some comments and questions and answers:

1) What are you using to track visitors? How do you know that your traffic is competitors?
2) Do you know all the search terms all visitors use as well as the source?
3) It's important to 'optimize' your site for specific keywords. What are the keywords you have optimized for and do you get any traffic from these?
4) It's all very well doing all the stuff you list (and hopefully more things too) .... but these are of little use unless they are designed around your market and their keywords. I looked at Indianapolis Face Painter and you came up 8th ... but the displayed listing was really poor wording ... not the wording to get 'click throughs'.
5) Getting potential custmes (suspects and prospects) to your site is a massive question .... I could tell you 30 ways another time!
6) Once you get traffic there, getting them to book is called 'conversion' and another massive topic I could also deal with later.

Look forward to your response so I can help in more specific ways

John Gordon

I love your website. I am working on mine right now, and my husband is creating a new photography website. His web designer told him to imbed as many words in your website pertaining to how you want to be found. For instance, in a black area of my background, I am creating a black text box, and in teeny, little type, with black letters, I am typing stuff like: face paint Toronto facepainter Toronto special events face paint Toronto birthday party facepainter, etc. Since it is black type on a black background, nobody can actually read it, but the search engines can find me. I just found this out yesterday and felt I must pass it along to all my fellow painters on FacePaintForum.com
xoxo
Lisa
(fesspenter)

OMG DON'T DO THAT! (Hidden text)

Embedded text means using the key words in correct english sentences as often as reasonable on a given page. This causes the search engines to index you as being relavent for those words or phrases.

HIDDEN text like you are describing will cause google to black list or block your site, and once it is blocked they may never release the domain. Also, if it is on a sub domain, they may just yank the entire site.

Don't take my word for it, check google and look for "Keyword Stuffing" and "invisble text" These were old tricks (That worked 15 years ago) used by the porn industry to get people to their sites... but all search engines have long since been aware of and blocking sites that make use of hidden text, tiny text and so on.

The Infotainer wrote:
OK ... some comments and questions and answers:

1) What are you using to track visitors? How do you know that your traffic is competitors?
2) Do you know all the search terms all visitors use as well as the source?
3) It's important to 'optimize' your site for specific keywords. What are the keywords you have optimized for and do you get any traffic from these?
4) It's all very well doing all the stuff you list (and hopefully more things too) .... but these are of little use unless they are designed around your market and their keywords. I looked at Indianapolis Face Painter and you came up 8th ... but the displayed listing was really poor wording ... not the wording to get 'click throughs'.
5) Getting potential custmes (suspects and prospects) to your site is a massive question .... I could tell you 30 ways another time!
6) Once you get traffic there, getting them to book is called 'conversion' and another massive topic I could also deal with later.

Look forward to your response so I can help in more specific ways

John Gordon

Freewebs tracks site statistics, so I get to look at the links folks are using to get to me (lots and lots from here ), the search phrases used, and where on the planet they were coming from but not the search engine they used. I'm not quite ready to pay for my site yet, and so far, I've been really happy with my free one.

As far as keywords, Indianapolis Face Painter is what I'm going for (and you're right about it not appearing enough in my text), I also used prenatal belly painting, body painting, Children's entertainer, and a few others. And by "optimized for," I'm not sure what exactly you mean, but that is what I listed on Keywords in my site settings.

I went and looked up what you were saying about the wording in the listing, and I see what you mean. Now I have to remember where I wrote that so I can fix it!

And yes, numbers 5 and 6 require a workshop!

New question: I do want to reference/link to my body painting site. I can remove the pics, but do y'all think I should keep the blurb on the homepage, or just keep it in the section in my services page?

I am so glad I asked, you all are so helpful!

Jennifer

There's no need for you to pay for web hosting - it appears that your current host is able to give you access to essential tools where you can get valuable visitor info.

If you are "going for" particular keywords and key phrases ... there's several places they MUST appear in your site for Search Engines to KNOW that this is your 'theme'. These include the Page Title Tag, Page Headline and Subheads, Opening Text, Mid Text and near End of Test ... as well as pic titles, image tags, captions, internal page links etc etc etc. This is because ...if it really was your main thrust, your main selling point ... it would really be in all these places - so Google et al want to see it there!

This is Optimizing. It's not enough (by miles) to just put these in the Tags (Site Description etc) - Google and Yahoo no longer take notice of these sas it's WAY too easy for sites to lie - when their site is not really about these. You need CONTENT and congruency around your keywords.

SO ..... if you also have others.... these will dilute the thrust (called your 'theme') ofany page ...so EACH PAGE should have a different theme ..... then you may get listed several times in the SERPS (Search Engine Results pages).

As far as the wording that displays in the SERPS (see above!) .... there's two ways to deal with this (as different search engines get these words from differen places). Some use your Description Tags ... so word these carefully ... and others use the opening words of you home page text .... so carefull word these too so that your message is COMPELLING and makes surfers click through.

ASk me any questions about numbers 5 and 6 ...... it's what I doi and glad to help!

I'll write again about your new question!

John

New question: I do want to reference/link to my body painting site. I can remove the pics, but do y'all think I should keep the blurb on the homepage, or just keep it in the section in my services page?

I'm not sure I understand your problem ...... but here goes!

It's often a danger to apper to be doing everything ... and giving customers too many choices. It can lead to indecision and people click away for an easier option. On the other hand .... if you are attracting a broad market to your main site you don't want to miss opportunities. SO the answer depends upon just how targeted and aggressive your marketing is for driving specific niche traffic to each site. That's the BEST way ... but you may not yet be doing this.

I think that I'd minimise the content on your site but put a strong image and headline and link to your specialised site.Then you'llcreate more space for more content on your main theme .... which you need anyway.

John

Thanks!!!!!!!

WOW! Lots of specific and technical info here. Gotta be honest, my head is spinning a little! Can I jump on the bandwagon here and ask you guys to check my site also? I got the bit about having contact info on each page, as far as each photo, should I list the business name for the caption on each one??

I'm also wondering if I should remove the 'gallery' page and just use the slideshow/thumbnails as the gallery or keep both?

http://www.MysticalRainbowCreations.com

I JUST discovered why it wasn't coming up when I searched local for instance 'Livonia, MI face paint' on google...as I hadn't listed in 'google places', so for all the newbies trying to attract more business, well and not newbies too, make sure you take the time to do that. It's FREE.

Would adding my web link to my signature here help at all? I also added it to my email signature. Any and all FREE listing sites you guys can name off would be great! I will check snazaroo which someone mentioned.

I heard that having your website link on other sites helps, which is partially why I have added the 'recommended links' section, that way I can post friends or related sites and they can post mine, etc.

Obviously I'm looking to bump myself up in searches/views as much as possible, but NOT interested in paid advertising at this time. Any advise welcome, but I'm pretty new to this world of marketing so talk...slow...lol


and THANK YOU!!

And Jennifer, I think your site looks great, I love your explanations and write ups. Wasn't hard to see/read the writing at all. I would agree with the suggestion of maybe increasing the size of the tabs/font for your menu navigation to make them easier to spot, but most people using the web these days know how/where to look for navigation tabs, so not that big of a deal. Your pics look WONDERFUL! but OMG that Alice in Wonderland 'twiddle dee (or dum?)' FREAKS me right out! I can't believe that is only face paint, it looks like a mask or computer graphic or prosthetic! In fact, a lot of your work has a very surreal quality to it! I bet you could break into the special effects field if you wanted to! Best wishes with the business, looks like things are going great from the site! The masquerade ball looks like a blast! What a great gig!

I would keep your gallery as well, Kaci - that way people can browse in a way they're most comfortable with.

I like your website and the assortment of photos (Something I'm waiting to improve) but feel like the info is sparce...

if you don't wish to put your rates on the site, maybe another page with more about you or your experience/s or ------?

Some great ideas here, Jbax - I hope they help!

I'm gonna try them too, John (thank you!)

I've found that when browsing with Mozilla firefox I come up first for face painters Collingwood, Ontario (my town) but when browsing using some other search engines, I'm no where in sight... I had no idea that could happen either - do you find that makes a difference, Jbax? Maybe you are ahead of some people in your area depending on what search engine they're using?

I agree with you Helena, I will be adding more as time goes on, having just started a few months ago. On the agenda, Craft area and other services, as well as a Letters of Recommendation, customer comments type section. I also would like to add logos of events I have attended etc, but so far there are only a few so not really worth pointing out yet. I may have a pricing section eventually as well. I appreciate the feedback! I tend to get very wordy so I tried my best to keep it visual and simple, basically an electronic business card. I wonder if having the pricing up front helps to get more business in the long run??

helena wrote:Some great ideas here, Jbax - I hope they help!

I'm gonna try them too, John (thank you!)

I've found that when browsing with Mozilla firefox I come up first for face painters Collingwood, Ontario (my town) but when browsing using some other search engines, I'm no where in sight... I had no idea that could happen either - do you find that makes a difference, Jbax? Maybe you are ahead of some people in your area depending on what search engine they're using?

There's something wrong with the info here .... so just wanted to straighten this out so people aren't misled.

Firefox is a browser ... and whilst it has an effect on how webpages are viewed, displayed ... has nothing to do with Search Engine results at all.

Yes ... different Search Engines will give different results because they use differnt 'rules' (algorithms) to make their searches and display the 'best' results for their clients. This is why web pages MUST be 'optimized' for all the different things the robots / spiders look for ... otherwise you may be missing out on being seen by key potential customers.

Of course the most popular ones are Google, Yahoo! and Bing ... but others like Cuil, AltaVista, AOL, Ask, Alexa, Live Search, All The Web and so on are all important and may display results differently (even though they use Google or Yahoo! technology).

A useful tip here is to look at sites that show above your site and analyze them (their Meta Tags, their incoming links, onsite links, their content etc) and then adjust yours accordingly. However .... a major key to success common to them all is content! If you want to be seen as THE answer to search queries, then look like the expert, the authority, the answer to the keywords you are optimizing for! This will take fresh content and links to achieve ..... simple as that.

John

Wow! Great info. I'm still trying to digest it all. I was blessed that I unwittingly did a lot of what you said John & had no clue I was doing it. I now list around 3rd or 4th for my area. It took reading posts like this to figure out whay I was listing so high

As an update....

I put some of the suggestions into place (the template I use won't let me adjust the size of the font on the tabs... bummer), as well as working through the Google Webmaster help, and I'm showing on the first page, but even better.... I've gotten more painting inquiries!!! Whoo Hoo! I've got to do the same for the bodypainting page, but I'm way happy. Thanks for the help!

Kaci... Thanks! The tweedle was a contest entry. Feel free to check it out... https://youtu.be/rYFh5zCTcBs