This would be for logos, and t-shirt ideas, about conservation, being a “green” person and designer, and assorted other ideas. So I created the site, put the images up there, and waited. Well, 2 years later, it got minimal traffic and after much thought about why, I realized it wasn’t because the imagery wasn’t any good, it was because the site wasn’t content rich, and no one could find it.

This taught me a valuable lesson in not just naming pages or posts, which I’d already known about, since earlier this year, when I took a series of online webinars in SEO content and tagging, but how the pages need to be content rich, and have the right keywords or tags, and categories. The web is a big filing system and it not only files your content by the title of the page, and the tags it has, but the date it was published. So, when your searching for something, it’s going to show you the most current as well as closest match to your query. This is why blogs are usually more effective than regular websites. Most websites are built, but rarely maintained, and just sit there, getting older and more out of date, unless you’re an artist, of course, and updating your work often.

So, I dumped the old site, created a new custom designed, (of course) WordPress blog in it’s place, and started posting articles, galleries, and made sure everything was linked and tagged. I’ve posted almost 50 times already and have all sorts of galleries from gardens I visit while riding my bicycle, to going to the Yankee Parade in NYC.

I’m also quite good at publicity, so I’ve been pushing the blog’s address, articles and galleries through social media.

Well, I’m now going to report that the new blog, has surpassed what I imagined and now gets comments, has followers, and the traffic has improved by 1,000% or more.

When you put information out there that someone might find useful, it’ll always draw more more traffic than just showing off work. If they find the resource interesting, it may send them to your portfolio site as well. So, when you want to start a new website, consider carefully what the usage is, who’s coming to it and why, and maybe it should be a blog.