This morning I had a call from Elise Wagner that gave me good reason to celebrate. Elise is an artist who works mostly in encaustic and like me lives in Portland.  A mutual friend introduced us because she knew Elise had a problem and I had a solution.  Ahh if things were only that easy.You see Elise had a website but she wasn’t showing up for any searches except her own name.  Elise is not just an obscure artist, but Elise Wagner is also not yet a household name, so showing up just for her name wasn’t doing her much good.   The first problem was that her site was one SWF flash file. Among other things this meant that search engines could not read any text on her site.  Visual artists’ websites are already at a disadvantage a lot of times because they have a lot more pictures than text and when it is all contained in one swf file, well there’s no text for the search engines to grab.

Elise already wasn’t happy with her site it was dark browns and blacks and she wanted a more modern feel, so she was happy to get a new website.  She knew graphic artist who had a small company with a web designer, and she wanted to use this company.  I agreed to sit down with this company and talk over Elise’s needs.  My one big specification was that the site not be built in flash.  Needless to say when I was sent the site almost two months later and it was again one flash file, I couldn’t believe it. With Elise up against a gallery opening deadline I agreed to remake her site in htm and make it search engine friendly.

This morning Elise told me that her website is getting her found.  She had two specific and great examples.  One was that she had been found by a textbook publisher who wants to use a photo of one of her art pieces on the front cover of the textbook.  The other was that someone working on a move that Kate Hudson will be in had found her work online and wants to include a couple of her pieces of art in the movie.

That is the kind of success that good seo can have.  Of course, it doesn’t hurt when you’re backing up a great artist.  Way to go Elise!