Aside from providing a directory and advertising for our community, here are some ways that we help that you may not be aware of.

Internet Recognition For You

The internet is the number one resource people use to find information.  The following information defines some terms and outlines some of the ways that our focus on search engine results can help our community.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of developing websites using certain guidelines that help the web pages achieve top search engine results for certain search words or phrases.  There are scores of criteria that the search engines use to determine which web pages are more relevant to a search term.  Two of the most important criteria are backlinks and relevant, unique website content.

Obviously, relevant web page content has to do with how much of the written content on a web page relates to the topic of the search term.  So, if you search for “sarasota rock and roll”, you are less likely to get pages discussing furniture in Bangalore.  A page, say….. from a music directory is more likely to get better search engine placement.

Unique content is …. well …. just that: content that is not found anywhere else on the Internet.  The search engines index as much information as possible.  If the search engines see identical content on two disparate sites, they conclude that one site is plagiarizing the other, or that someone is trying to dupe the system.  So, if you were to submit an entry to our directory using identical biography information that is posted on your own site or your myspace page, you could be hurting both sites.  Now, on to backlinks.

Backlinks refer to links TO your website FROM another website.  There are three primary characteristics to quality back-links.  The first is that the link must be on a website that is relavent to the content of your website.  If, for example, you are an artist that specializes in bellybutton lint sculptures, you do not want a backlink from a site that sells car engines.  You want a link from a site dealing with art, perhaps a gallery or other sculpture website.  Perhaps, an artist’s directory where you have a page dedicated to your craft.  Maybe….. srqscene.com?

The second characteristic to quality backlinks is the popularity of the website linking to you.  Let’s say the search term “bellybutton lint sculpture” is searched 100 times a day on Google, and www.srqscene.com shows up on page 1 for that search term.  Having a link to your site from www.srqscene.com will have more impact than a site that shows up on page 15 for the same search term.

Finally, the link to your site should appear on a page with few backlinks to other sites.  The fewer the better.  So, if the bellybutton lint sculpture artist had a page dedicated to his/her biography, on a site that was showing up on page 1 of google search results, and they had the only backlink on that page, they would be doing themselves a great SEO service.

Why is all of this important?  It is important because the Internet is one of the best marketing tools artists have, and we want you to understand how we can help our artistic community thrive.  We believe that the success of a website such as our own is built with small contributions from many participants.  By taking these small contributions, combining them with our knowledge of the Internet, we aim to return the success, tenfold, that you help build.