How to Market Your Portfolio Website
Sunday, November 8th, 2009Web designers and web developers can benefit greatly from having an outstanding portfolio site. The portfolio is often a primary method of finding new business (or maybe more accurately, letting new business find you). Additionally, it is the best way for potential clients to observe your work and see what you have to offer.
Although online portfolios are critical to the success of designers and developers, getting exposure for a portfolio site is difficult because there are simply so many of them. With so much competition it is critical that you consider how you will market your portfolio, rather than simply putting it up and waiting for people to come see it.
This article will cover some basic things that you can do to market your online portfolio and make a bigger impact on a higher number of potential clients.
1. Build a Search Engine-Friendly Site
SEO (search engine optimization) is a huge topic that could never be covered in one brief article. However, one of the basics of optimizing a site for search engines is to simply make it easy for the search engines to crawl the site so they can accurately determine what the site is about.
To make your site search friendly, use valid code that is clean and well-organized. This includes proper use of headings, and choosing not to do anything that will trick search engines or make it difficult for them to crawl your site.
2. Include Keywords and Phrases in Your Page Titles
One of the most important factors for search engine rankings is the page title, so give plenty of attention to the titles that you use. Think about what people will be searching for and what will help them to find you.
Since there are so many sites out there already that are about web design-related topics, it’s best to pick more specific phrases that can narrow down the amount of competition you have and increase your chances of ranking high.
A good strategy is to use specific keywords and phrases that will have less people searching for them, but also much less competition. You could use a phrase like “Drupal web development” and have a better chance to come up in the rankings for a specific search, and your site will be more relevant to those searchers.
3. Consider Localization
One method of significantly narrowing down the competition is to optimize your site for local searches. For example, if your page title is “Miami web design” you will have a much better chance of ranking high for similar searches, and the amount of competition will be far less than with a term like “web design.”
4. Build Links
Probably the single-most important factor for achieving great search engine rankings is getting links from other websites. Getting links is like getting votes from other sites. As more sites (and high-quality sites) link to you, the search engines will give more authority to your site and ranking well should not be a problem.
If you want to dominate the search engines you will need to focus your efforts on getting links from other websites. There are any number of approaches you could take for a portfolio site, but here are a few:
Add a blog - Blogging is a great way to attract links as bloggers often link out to other blogs. Of course, it will also take work to write the content.
Social media marketing - social media sites provide outstanding opportunities for exposure to large audiences and link building. Articles that “go viral” will draw a ton of in-bound links for your site.
Reciprocal links - You can exchange links with other websites, just don’t go overboard and do this with hundreds of sites or it will put up red flags for search engines.
Submit to galleries - If your site has a high-quality design you may be able to get a lot of traffic and links from web design and CSS galleries that showcase sites.
5. Design a Beautiful Site
One of the best things you can do to promote your site is to simply make it special. A great portfolio design will market itself quite well. Take your time and make something that is reflective of your best work.
6. Consider Giving Away Freebies
Giving to get is a popular method of promoting a website. People love free stuff, so if you can give something of quality that people will want, you will increase the number of people that come to your portfolio site. You could give away free website templates, code snippets, or anything else that will attract links and visitors.
Steven Snell is a web designer and freelance blogger. He maintains a gallery of the best portfolio websites and a gallery of e-commerce web design.
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