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This is not the usual tutorial. This won't tell you how to make a map but it will help you sell yours.
I'm gonna teach you literally everything I use to make my site show up in search engine results, for free. In that I'm giving it to you for free and all of these techniques are free. Woo everything is free. Okay, buckle up.
Humans of the Cartographer's Guild, whatever you make your link text say is what tells Google what content your site has.
I see a lot of people and they format their links like this. And that's great for human eyes, since it makes sense to click there, sure. But it's no good for search engine optimization unless you want to show up when people search for "like this".
Search Engine Optimization is more than just what you do on your personal site. It's also the links you make back to your portfolio externally. This is one such external site, but this also applies to any other public forums, linkbacks arranged on blogs, subReddits, anywhere that is publicly accessible and going to be scraped by search engine spiders.
If you make your website link text say something meaningless to a robot looking for key phrases, for example "here" or "portfolio" or even worse, just post your blank unformatted link, you aren't telling search engine spiders what your site is about. You want the robots to know that your portfolio contains, say, Tolkien style fantasy maps, hand drawn watercolor maps for children's books, modular town and street pieces, dungeon master hex grids, grimdark Lovecraftian fantasy and horror illustrations with a specialty in custom monsters for roleplaying games, whatever.
This is how you would do it (no spaces between the r and l in URL)
[ur l=yoursite.com]Robots are reading this part.[/ur l]
And the result, when you do it without spaces and with tailored text, will look something like this:
A collection of digital concept art and fantasy maps from Canadian artist Tiffany Munro.
Ah, excellent, now if a search engine reads this post it will now know who I am and what I do, so if someone searches my name, it will improve the chances of me beating out that Miss Universe Tiffany Munro and the film maker Tiffany Munro, none of whom are me. Though I still believe myself to be the dominant Tiffany Munro, that filmmaker does stand a shot at me if she gets better at SEO. Of course you will tailor it appropriately to your site, and ideally, be even less generic than what I just posted.
While you have to work a little harder than just linking it to a word in a conversationally natural sentence, now it's more valuable because it's linking me to a few different things I want people to be able to find in association with me. I get the sense a lot of people view the job postings here as an opportunity to show their art to the client who posted an offer so they tailor their text appropriately. It makes sense. I used to do that too. Just think of it this way. This method is improving the chances of future humans, not just that client, seeing your art.
If you have to change how you structure your pitch a bit to make the link flow naturally, or have several words be the link, it's cool. Don't feel bad about not realizing you could teach robots with your link text, just shift your habits and add it in there.
Next step is getting a few links from off-site with keywords. Of course not all sites welcome lite advertising, so take advantage of it where you can. It doesn't matter which sites you choose to affiliate your link off, though of course a site like the Cartographer's Guild has the advantage of attracting clients who want map related artwork. I've got links to my site from my signature on a webcomic site, which has actually brought me a customer, surprisingly enough! I also got a commission from an, ahem, adult oriented site because I met someone there who also runs D&D games. So you never know where you might find them. Whatever kind of forum that allows you to have a link to your own site in your signature, as long as you're okay with it being affiliated with you potentially in the future. Iiii don't plan on being a politician so yaknow I'm a bit more liberal with it. Anyway, using your portfolio in your signature is a great way to add a bit of search engine grabby bits across the web in a non-obtrusive fashion that requires no money and no negotiation.
Another method is to do link exchanges or guest posts. This, however, brings you into a territory of having to interact and work something out with a potential site. If that's your style, cool beans, but I'm trying to stick to the free of charge SEO options for this post.
Every time I post my link I am EXTREMELY specific, indeed overly specific for the human eyeballs who will be looking at the post. Now you understand my tactical reasoning. This is the reason I do that. The more external sites your site is linked from, in a link containing key phrases, the more search engines understand your site should be shown if someone punches in "how do I get a fantasy map for my novel?"
Ideally your site should also have links out to other sites. It makes you appear more "friendly" to the spiders, and so they like you more, I guess is the idea. So if you make a blog post, it's a good idea to try work in a link to an outside site. That could be to the Cartographer's Guild, or to a game, or a product. I often make my external links Amazon links to buy the book the map is associated with, though I admit I'm not the best at implementing this part of SEO I figured I'd share it in this rapidly expanding post. Seriously when I started, I was just going to write like one paragraph about being specific in your link text dangit and now I'm writing an entire Bible of everything I know about SEO.
Now the next thing you need to understand about SEO–people don't just drop in key words anymore, but they tend to ask questions or structure their searching in a sentence. For example, someone meaning to hire one of us might search, "Do I need a map for my novel?" "How to hire a cartographer" "What do you call a map artist?" "Is the Game of Thrones map based on Europe?" "How to find an artist for a board game?" "Examples of black and white lineart map" "Beautiful city watercolor map." I know I often use adjectives like 'beautiful' and 'amazing' when I search because I'm trying to reduce the pool of results I get. Or I might add in specific nouns, like 'dragon' 'moat' 'medieval compass'. If I'm looking for inspiration I don't just type "fantasy map", I'll add in several words.
You can roleplay as your potential customers to figure out what they might search to end up on an image or post like the one you want to be found. Or you can use sites designed to give you a helping hand with search engine optimization. I'm going to link the three tools I've used. All of these options show you different spreads of search engine data that will help you get a sense of what people search and how to tailor what you write on your blog to capture such results. I recommend using Google Trends to see what's worth using and the other two to get ideas for key phrases.
I'm gonna teach you literally everything I use to make my site show up in search engine results, for free. In that I'm giving it to you for free and all of these techniques are free. Woo everything is free. Okay, buckle up.
Humans of the Cartographer's Guild, whatever you make your link text say is what tells Google what content your site has.
I see a lot of people and they format their links like this. And that's great for human eyes, since it makes sense to click there, sure. But it's no good for search engine optimization unless you want to show up when people search for "like this".
Search Engine Optimization is more than just what you do on your personal site. It's also the links you make back to your portfolio externally. This is one such external site, but this also applies to any other public forums, linkbacks arranged on blogs, subReddits, anywhere that is publicly accessible and going to be scraped by search engine spiders.
If you make your website link text say something meaningless to a robot looking for key phrases, for example "here" or "portfolio" or even worse, just post your blank unformatted link, you aren't telling search engine spiders what your site is about. You want the robots to know that your portfolio contains, say, Tolkien style fantasy maps, hand drawn watercolor maps for children's books, modular town and street pieces, dungeon master hex grids, grimdark Lovecraftian fantasy and horror illustrations with a specialty in custom monsters for roleplaying games, whatever.
This is how you would do it (no spaces between the r and l in URL)
[ur l=yoursite.com]Robots are reading this part.[/ur l]
And the result, when you do it without spaces and with tailored text, will look something like this:
A collection of digital concept art and fantasy maps from Canadian artist Tiffany Munro.
Ah, excellent, now if a search engine reads this post it will now know who I am and what I do, so if someone searches my name, it will improve the chances of me beating out that Miss Universe Tiffany Munro and the film maker Tiffany Munro, none of whom are me. Though I still believe myself to be the dominant Tiffany Munro, that filmmaker does stand a shot at me if she gets better at SEO. Of course you will tailor it appropriately to your site, and ideally, be even less generic than what I just posted.
While you have to work a little harder than just linking it to a word in a conversationally natural sentence, now it's more valuable because it's linking me to a few different things I want people to be able to find in association with me. I get the sense a lot of people view the job postings here as an opportunity to show their art to the client who posted an offer so they tailor their text appropriately. It makes sense. I used to do that too. Just think of it this way. This method is improving the chances of future humans, not just that client, seeing your art.
If you have to change how you structure your pitch a bit to make the link flow naturally, or have several words be the link, it's cool. Don't feel bad about not realizing you could teach robots with your link text, just shift your habits and add it in there.
Next step is getting a few links from off-site with keywords. Of course not all sites welcome lite advertising, so take advantage of it where you can. It doesn't matter which sites you choose to affiliate your link off, though of course a site like the Cartographer's Guild has the advantage of attracting clients who want map related artwork. I've got links to my site from my signature on a webcomic site, which has actually brought me a customer, surprisingly enough! I also got a commission from an, ahem, adult oriented site because I met someone there who also runs D&D games. So you never know where you might find them. Whatever kind of forum that allows you to have a link to your own site in your signature, as long as you're okay with it being affiliated with you potentially in the future. Iiii don't plan on being a politician so yaknow I'm a bit more liberal with it. Anyway, using your portfolio in your signature is a great way to add a bit of search engine grabby bits across the web in a non-obtrusive fashion that requires no money and no negotiation.
Another method is to do link exchanges or guest posts. This, however, brings you into a territory of having to interact and work something out with a potential site. If that's your style, cool beans, but I'm trying to stick to the free of charge SEO options for this post.
Every time I post my link I am EXTREMELY specific, indeed overly specific for the human eyeballs who will be looking at the post. Now you understand my tactical reasoning. This is the reason I do that. The more external sites your site is linked from, in a link containing key phrases, the more search engines understand your site should be shown if someone punches in "how do I get a fantasy map for my novel?"
Ideally your site should also have links out to other sites. It makes you appear more "friendly" to the spiders, and so they like you more, I guess is the idea. So if you make a blog post, it's a good idea to try work in a link to an outside site. That could be to the Cartographer's Guild, or to a game, or a product. I often make my external links Amazon links to buy the book the map is associated with, though I admit I'm not the best at implementing this part of SEO I figured I'd share it in this rapidly expanding post. Seriously when I started, I was just going to write like one paragraph about being specific in your link text dangit and now I'm writing an entire Bible of everything I know about SEO.
Now the next thing you need to understand about SEO–people don't just drop in key words anymore, but they tend to ask questions or structure their searching in a sentence. For example, someone meaning to hire one of us might search, "Do I need a map for my novel?" "How to hire a cartographer" "What do you call a map artist?" "Is the Game of Thrones map based on Europe?" "How to find an artist for a board game?" "Examples of black and white lineart map" "Beautiful city watercolor map." I know I often use adjectives like 'beautiful' and 'amazing' when I search because I'm trying to reduce the pool of results I get. Or I might add in specific nouns, like 'dragon' 'moat' 'medieval compass'. If I'm looking for inspiration I don't just type "fantasy map", I'll add in several words.
You can roleplay as your potential customers to figure out what they might search to end up on an image or post like the one you want to be found. Or you can use sites designed to give you a helping hand with search engine optimization. I'm going to link the three tools I've used. All of these options show you different spreads of search engine data that will help you get a sense of what people search and how to tailor what you write on your blog to capture such results. I recommend using Google Trends to see what's worth using and the other two to get ideas for key phrases.