Thanks for the advice and no – it’s not telling me how to suck eggs. Although I do ‘know’ most of the stuff you’ve mentioned I’ve only just started really focussing on it. There are various reasons for that, some of them described on this blog. Anyhow, I think that though I ‘know’ it I haven’t yet come to own that knowledge, if you know what I mean. It’s not been internalised and fully understood because I haven’t put it into practice.

The advice you’ve given me, and that of everyone else is really helping me to get to grips with what needs to be done. I’m immensely grateful to you all.

With respect to my ‘frying pan article’ (which if you’ve not read it, wasn’t actually about fp’s), yes that’s given me some fun over the last few days. An awful lot of learning for me there – and an increase in swearing in the Leigh household!

Watch this space as I slowly but surely put all the brilliant advice into practice over the next few weeks.

Your help is very much appreciated Alastair & maybe I’ll see you at the Farmers’ market.

Andy

To get the people coming to your site that you want – you need to be looking at your content and write for the web. Identify what your key phrases and words are that identify the people you want to attract and work those words and phrases in to your content – that way search engines will pick up on those words and offer up your pages over someone else’s. Have a look at http://www.nickusborne.com/ also try out a product (for free) called Word Tracker (Google has something similar) where you type in a key word or yours and it offers alternatives to cover your bases.

On a general point you need to take advantage of your page title (the bit in the blue bar) “The Creative Instinct” and add to it – e.g. “The Creative Instinct – thoughts, advice, musings and inspiration for photographers, artists, etc….” as Google looks at this – so the more you can add to that that relates to the content of your site the better.

Finally – linking – encourage people to link to you (even do a link swap with other bloggers) – the more links that point at you the more Google will rank your page as being relevant to the appropriate search.

I hope this helps and that I haven’t been telling you how to suck eggs.

One thing to note on using Google Adwords – you might see that as a result of your “Frying Pan Article” your ads are now showing cookery products! Try Amazon Associates – you can build the ads as you see fit and if there is a specific book or product that you think fits with your site – build an advert for it via Amazon.

I hope you are well.

Take care,

Alastair

Great to hear from you and thanks for your feedback. Metadata – that’s something else I need to look at too. Strange, I’ve got that sorted on my coaching site but for some reason it’s passed my by on this blog.

I think this post has been great for me. It’s really helped focus my mind on what needs doing and I’m feeling much more energised to do it.

Onwards and upwards – Andy

Now you have probably already made up your mind to retain the Creative Instinct name and in my opinion that is entirely the right thing to do. It’s a cracking title as it is all encompassing and “speaks” to a wider audience than say – Artists Corner (which conjures up an image of a group of painters huddled together in a dark and smokey room!). It’s already been mentioned but you really only need to look at the SEO of the site and improve on your metadata and keywords as these are the things that search engines, well, search! You can pay someone to do this (google for ‘em) or do it yourself – play around on Google by inputting words you think may be appropriate to your sites content and see what comes up.

Keep writing and I promise to keep reading.

Laura

That’s really helped me. For some strange reason I’ve never thought of the term ‘creative development’. I love it! Thanks so much for offering it, and for the contextualisation too – very useful in helping me shape my thinking.

I clearly needed some other perspectives here, and your response, along with Victoria and Jerry has given me just what I was looking for.