Website Basics for your Art Group
Many organizations put a lot of time and effort into their websites, only to miss some basics. The following tips are things you can do right away to improve the effectiveness of your website.
- Include your group name, type of group, and geographical location on your home page as text (not just in an image). Search enginess will index this information so that people can find your group. (For the webmaster / techies among you, this info should be in the KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION metatags as well.)
- Include a short description of your organization and what it does (2-3 sentences). Put this near the top of your home page, and search engines will typically show it in the search results.
- If you have a physical location (gallery, studio, meeting place), include the complete address of the location, plus directions or a link to one of the online mapping services like Expedia, MapQuest or Yahoo Maps. Be sure to include the hours you are open!
- Include a complete mailing address with ZIP / Postal Code! (People still use snail-mail to communicate.)
- Include a contact phone number, if possible. Some groups use a messaging service like onebox.com; it costs less than $10 per month.
- Include a contact e-mail address. If you don't want to list an e-mail address (which can be "harvested" by spammers), provide a contact "form" that will generate an e-mail message (like the Contact form that we use). Your webmaster or hosting provider can advise you on how to set this up.
- Submit your site to search engines and various listing services. Almost all web traffic comes from just a few search engines; it's important to submit to Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Note that directories such as Yahoo have started to charge for listings, but still offer a free listing for non-profit groups.
- Ask other groups if they will link to you. This will, over time, increase your rank in search engines.
- Make sure you keep your site up to date! Studies have shown that about a third of the links on internet are out of date. A site with broken links and out-of-date information creates a very poor impression of your organization.
- Include your website address on everything that your group prints or publishes.
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