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Tips to Launch Your Portfolio

This is an important one, you know. How do you launch your portfolio and get it noticed? So that's what we're talking about today On this last segment. Now imagine you painted most beautiful painting in the world. You know something that rival day Monet or a ah, you know Picasso are, ah, whoever else side that you admire. But you look, it's ah, it's just like that. You know, you can spend hours on your craft, but if it's tucked underneath your bed, then no one really knows about it. So we've got to get out of bed and put it out into a pretty little gallery and ah, place with a lot of foot traffic. That's essentially what we're going to do. Okay, so a quick brief recap instead, one we've worked through your personal analysis to identify our core brand identity, embraced our own personal story and mind. You seen it as a good thing. That point of difference is a huge asset and to find out purpose as a designer, we've also specified our end goal whilst diminishing any obstacles that may ha...

ve arisen in Step two, we were able to use that personal analysis and pinpoint who we truly wanted to speak to are ideal employer who that person is, where the organization is, how it looks like we could then map out that customer journey and define what portfolio platform is most effective to use. And we really deluded that to an online portfolio. It's quick. It's fast, immediate, easy for them and hopefully easy for you to get in the door. In Step three, we brought your portfolio toe life in a physical state in terms of giving you guys tools, the approaches and the ah assets of how to really bring that into a way that tells your story gives depth all those things on your design work is organized. Hopefully now half their all the questions that have bombarded you with ah in a way that's presented and placed in context through a functional, inappropriate user interface and user experience. All right, so this is where we are, but we're not there yet. Of course, we now need people to know about it as I mentioned, and you've got a look at yourself as a business and that you're open for business. So the key lessons in this segment are the following. The first is we need to test on common browsers and devices. Okay, the second years we're going to go through basic seo tips, which essentially search engine optimization. What are the things that the Internet picks up? All right? Number three is implement free social media marketing strategies that are used and that many people use. And it's also worth noting that this segment is actually great not only for designers, but for anyone that has a website. Bloggers especially, and a lot of the tools that I'll be sharing is how I got my blood known. How did I get it at that speed Teoh go from You know, the four people that we're looking at it too. Now, you know, over millions of people I've been I've been doing it. Uh, then we're going to go through to why you should have a blawg and how to integrate one in your portfolio website. And at that point, we are going to stand and Concha Uh and, uh, really, we're gonna be ready to tackle all the other pieces that require getting a job. So first test uncommon browsers and devices. Now, this is going to be ultra simple, but it's really as it says. You can let some of the issues the big, you know, the small ones like NK that that's kind of bit off. When I look at it on this browser versus this, it kind of cuts off a little bit too close. Okay, when on the mobile, it doesn't look right. But it's still there. It's alleged. All the components are there. There are gonna be instances where it's not going to be 100%. You can let the little ones go fix them later on, but they're gonna be some big ones that will work perfect on a certain device on a certain browser and not even load on another one. You gotta find those those loopholes. And it's a simple case as, ah observing it and trying it out on everything, because by testing it early, you can catch the problems and fixing on and fix it before you damage any first impressions. You know you want to go. Okay, I've just uploaded my last pace time to take a nap on my interview tomorrow or whatever it is. And it doesn't even work us half of its cut off, but as a bargains like, it won't let me scroll What's going on? So you wanna test it on everything? Simply put the bare minimum for Apple computers should be on safari, Google crime and five bucks. Most of us use all of these or have used these before. And, uh, safari is the native browse off full apple. Most of us are on Google Chrome now, though. And of course, there is also benefits for using Firefox. So literally go and get an apple computer, borrow one and test a website on that. If you if you don't have one yourself and really go through it, they go out. Loads. Yes, that's amazing. Go through it. Go through every single project. Click the form that on your contact page email yourself. Do you get an email? What does it say? Who comes up with a bunch of numbers? We gotta fix that fix. It goes through it as if you are the employer. Yes, question. Say, uh, like the square space. If you're not necessarily doing they fix that or do you You sure you're okay for they should. I highly doubt that you'll have any bugs with Squarespace because they've crafted this Ferrari off a template, and that's half the reason why you're paying for it. If you do encounter that, you will most likely encounter that a couple things on WordPress. Okay, if you do, then first thing I would do is just email the WordPress developer that created that template. Usually, he or she will direct you to the solution, or it might be a case of ah, that's actually an old version. We've actually already updated that bug. Get that conversation going in. That in that direction. Ah, worst case scenario. There's been instances where actually wanted to customize my own, uh, areas off the website. Um, hire a developer or coder to fix that one little problem. If it's a big issue, it's always worth doing that they might fix it in half an hour. To go with you might just be one code that's off, you know? So good question there. Um, if it does happen on squarespace bore ah, crop or any other, um, paid, uh, template portfolio website. Then I suggest that you email them because that shouldn't happen on PCs. Of course, they are different all together, so check it out on on Internet Explorer Google Chrome as well. Five folks and some using opera. There's just Web browsers, guys, so just go through it, take the time and really test it out. All right, then we go to handheld devices. Naturally, they are changing at a rapid rate. Um, ipads. Different sizes of life has now. In fact, there are not only ipads. There are other touch devices of other brands. It's worth testing it out. Smartphones. Same thing if you contested on the main ones. Of course. You know, your Samsung Galaxy is your Apple IPhones, your Google phones all that, uh, it's important because responsiveness is ingrained into her. Our experiences. Ah, in 2014 it was only just last year Google released analytics that, uh, mobile Internet surpassed desktop Internet usage. So everyone's on the phone. It's your walking computer that that is attached to your hip, and you feel so naked if you don't have it next year or, you know if it's not attached to you. So ah, a lot of the times your portfolio will be seen one of my boss, and that's the first impression that they're gonna get you know the employees might be catching a train ride home or might be at lunch going. Okay, I've got to check out a couple portfolios because we go to hire someone soon they go through their phone so tested out. A lot of my websites have not worked on Mobile and I've had to fix them. Ah, and I've had to hire some developers to fix it. Eso really tested out on those devices. Okay, so let's get to some basic Seo tips S e o. Basically, if you don't know what it means, it's just search engine optimization. And what that's about is giving your website the best chance of ranking highly on Google and being search results. You don't really need to know what that means, but it's simply the Internet. So we want it to be known by the World Wide Web, and we want your start to be search engine optimization friendly so that you can get plenty of traffic to your online portfolio. That simply means that it's part of the reason why I also encourage you to find that perfect template for your goals and for your user experience, because a lot of the times. When you go through these, whether it's squarespace, whether it's a WordPress site, you don't have to write a line of code. Okay, it's it's done for you, and this will be instances where you can customize it. You know, if you need to add another tab easy built into that feature, you can add another tub. You can have three times you can have 13 times are highly recommend. You don't have 13 times, but if you wanted to, then go for it. Um, but, like I said, Seo friendly, you know, when I showed you the icons of crop dot com, for example, they had that icon. Why you don't have to worry about that stuff. It's built, ready to be crawled and gathered by the incident. The full point here on seo tips is we want search engines to crawl through your Internet and index your Web site. So have you ever wanted you like home? You know, I created my website three weeks ago. It's not showing up or, you know, I don't have typed in my entire name and all the things that are on there, and it's not showing up. Well, that's a huge problem because it's not. It's not being built to be sdo friendly, so Ah, one of the things that I'm gonna go through will allow you to do that. The first thing you gotta do is you need to pinpoint your current ranking. Ah, I've used these websites constantly with any website that I release. Use Alexa dot com That's a good resource. Now there is no payment for some very basic data that you can get from Alexa dot com. You can find your ranking from Alexa dot com. Okay, so ah, there are other, uh dot up with regards to your rankings and you'll your demographics. Where are these people coming from? My website? Who? I have a visitor from Lithuania. You know those levels of details you need to pay for for for Alexa dot com. But you can get a basic ranking there. Quick sprout dot com Huge resource. Huge. Ah, this guy Neil Patel, founder and ah, right off the blood Quick sprout that. Come quick sprout dot com, though that exactly where l will lead you to his data analytics. Sorry. Data analyzer website. Analyze that he calls it and it's cool. You just type in your website. Hit the button. Wait a couple seconds and it turns you out. All the dada from your website. It's amazing. And it's free. It's incredible. You're gonna be if you're seeing my face right now. How amazing it is. Your you'll be like he wasn't kidding. I made the same face. It gives you just this incredible amount of data. Check it out. It doesn't even have to be your website. You can take a look at any website that you enter on there. Uh, be where he has a couple pop ups. Um, of course, he was made that for free for everyone to use. So there'll be a couple of days, But then I also want to lead you to Google Analytics. This is often in building some, but if not, it's really easy to implement Google Analytics. It's a simple case off putting their code onto the web site or webpage that you want them to track. It's a pre reading code, by the way. It's not something after, right? A simple case of having a Google account sign off analytics, getting the code, plunking it onto your website. Okay. Ah, Now I don't want to get too technical about it. But let's say you have you have a ah wordpress website. They have plug ins for this. They have areas where they tell you where to put it. Okay, so I know it can get a bit techie, but don't be overwhelmed too much about this. So once you pinpoint where you are, you can then later revisit those again and see if there's any improvements on the rankings. But, ah, huge part of the S E O is making your URL and page names obvious. So if you can, I encourage you to get your own domain name, which I mentioned before. But don't make it so obscure that I have no idea what you're selling on what you're talking about. Um, at the end of the day, if you're a designer, it should be your name. There's other ways of getting around this. You can put you could put a hyphen in it. Your name is very common. You can pull it design after it. Ah, just try to make your you Earl, uh, single minded, you know, they're gonna go on your website, and your name is gonna be on it. Hopefully it's Ah, it's your first and surname dot com. And, uh, make the page is obvious. Okay, when I say that if you're creating a bio, then call it that you're creating contact. They call it that. If you're writing a blood post, then say the name, right, The name of the sorry. Be mindful of the name of the the topic because that's gonna be the page. Eso say it's, ah, how to take a photo with your IPhone for a portfolio. That's a pretty long headline for a blawg Post. But it's gonna be ram castilla dot com slash how to create a such and such with the thing. Okay, that's fine. At least I know what it is. But don't make it a bunch of numbers or we'd letters or yet, because that's a start of CEO right there. They're gonna pick those keywords, and if someone searches, it's gonna be that. So how does this affect your portfolio? Well, uh, essentially, that's where the captioning comes in. So you've got your projects of what they are. So let's say you did work in you to do a job for Pepsi. That's how you did do on If they talking Pepsi. Ah, Pepsi design. Your work might come up there. Why? Because you had Pepsi has the heading. And then in the caption, you had a couple key words of design in there that you're gonna be ranked as part of that search keywords. So you gotta be mindful of making sure that words are relevant. So take a look at this. Ah, this is inserting Klay and relevant page title and description tags as well so that this is the next step after the URL and page names. This refers to meta description tags, which I hate to female attributes that provide concise explanations off the contents of Web pages. I'm not gonna get into hedge team. L hear God's okay, but in simple terms, we have an example. Chris MacLean. This is he's meta description tag where it's in purple there. That that that's his. Ah, sorry. That is his title tag. Rather his title tag. Then he's your l comes up. The description is that tag day portfolio sort of. Chris MacLean executive credited Director Interbrand Australia. How did he do that? Okay, a lot of these portfolio platforms that I spoke to you about They have a space for that. Okay, It's there is a way WordPress so simple. They have it right there. And I'm sure all the others to do as well. So it's also the that right there, Chris MacLean in purple, which I'm referring to as the title tag. You can make that whatever you want. So for May I have ran Castillo and then I do that line. Straight line. Then then I say designer, author, Blogger Uh, whatever it is, Um so it's important to because that's what they see on top of the browser. That's what they see. That's what that studies. Okay, so there are ways to implement that. Just remember what they call. They are meta description tags entitled tags. Okay. Label your image file names as well. How many of us just leave it? As you know, I m g underscore. 3761981 b 79.7896 Y know, leave. Don't leave it like that. You've got to rename it and make it as descriptive as you want. Pinterest is gonna pick it up. I can guarantee you that. So when you're labeling your names of your images gonna be quite a lengthy process because you've taken time. No photos, didn't you? And you've probably got, you know, 10 projects in may be five project pieces under each project. So that means I've got 50 photos. I've got a net label. Yeah, Yeah, that's what you gotta do. So I would start with the captioning, so just simply who the client is, what it's for And, you know, let's say it was sold color sold color underscore packaging design on the school or dash ran Castillo Dash Image one never paid that with the same jewelry design, whatever was relevant to that image. Okay, that's k this that this is all gonna help. All of these are going to help people stumble across your site. And you know what? If they stumble across it even by accident, there's a high chance that they're gonna stay on. If they like what they see, there's a high chance that they're gonna tell their friends is a high chance that they're gonna bring you to light through sharing your work. They might tweet about it. There is a great opportunity in image file names. So in terms of keywords, naturally, if you laid with quality content, the appropriate keywords gonna follow. I mean, you know, design package design and say, Doc poetic Gothic painting, Right, So it's obvious. So make sure that your content is uh, being led by is leading the keywords. Okay, so the problem that a lot of people do is keyword stuffing and keyword stuffing is known as putting ridiculous amount off key words. Uh, but it's not gonna help your rankings. You know, It's like, Oh, I'm a designer. So I'm gonna put the word designer everywhere I can. I'm gonna put it like 50 times in my bio. I'm gonna put it in my every caption. I'm just gonna put designer, designer designer like, you know, of course, within reason. But that's not gonna help you. In fact, it will penalize you literally. Google will crack onto Google is a smart robot, Um, and it's gonna lower your ranking. It's been proven in any it's ah, the often things that I have found on. And I was a culprit of this. I, uh, before Rhoda Blawg. Then I posted that same blawg post on other platforms or Yeah. Can you? I wrote this piece. Can you Can you show it on yours? So I'm a guest poster on yours. Don't do that. Um, you will get penalized without as well. So if you're showing the same content five times, Okay. As an example, if I wrote a piece and now I am raising my hand to be a guest blood, post that, and I'm showing that exact piece that's on my giant think is that come website and I'm showing it there and then, you know, six months later that someone that's like, Oh, I'm starting this blogger, you know, can you write a post? Yeah. Yeah, sure. I've got one written, and then you send the same one that was already live, like six months ago. Google tracks that as well and will lower your ranking. Okay, so you you can't be ah, essentially, just come up with fresh content, come up with new stuff. All right? Now, it's not to say that with your portfolio work that are. But you said to put my weapon be hands, car, flipped cargo. That's different. That's that's that's different. So it's different because there there are all different mechanics. And essentially, when someone tops your name, they're gonna probably go to your name girl, Right? The benefit of having your work in thes other creative communities means that when people are on their, they're gonna stumble across you when they're swimming. In that point, all right, it's a keyword stuffing. It really has to do with blogging. Okay, but blogging we're gonna get to It's a big part of getting your your name out there. So another point to be made is ah so every recovered that duplicating exact content on multiple websites will also have you penalized. So we've covered that cart with fresh material. Implement internal and external back, back, linking again. Very much useful for blogging. Ah, it's essentially doing something like this. Oh, you like packaging? Hey, open this door here. You're gonna find mawr cool packaging, so it's important to keep them on your website as much as possible. How do you do that? Well, if I'm typing a description about ah, some digital of work that I've done, I am I putting brackets, check out some other check out this new project I've done for such and such that I have done for UX designs. Link that where it says Check out this project This new project link that to that project within your within your website. Back link Is Maura about external back. Linking is about having your portfolio on other people's websites. This is huge when it comes to ranking. So let's say all of us here Hade are you are else on our personal websites And let's say I had a section on my about page and underneath I said, Uh, if you like my work, check out the work of some of my friends and we all agreed to link each other. That's that's that's gonna help your ranking. Of course, that's a very direct way of doing it. But essentially, if you are doing great work and he gets featured, someone doesn't write up about you. Let's say on the Huffington Post or something cool or FastCo or design taxi or you get featured somewhere there's a link. The more links that you have from external websites coming to you is gonna jack up your ranking like you would not believe. I can tell you that for certain, because when I started the website, get a get a job is a designer dot com I waas not even existent, right? I wasn't even crawled by Google. I wasn't archived within, I would say three weeks. I was on page three when I typed in. How do I get a job as a designer? Within two months, I was on the first page and I was number one on that page. How did I do that? But here, I guess, posted for so many blog's like you wouldn't believe I wrote All right, about 12 articles. Full American Institute. A graphic cots in like, two months I wrote for many magazines I wrote for my own blood giant Think is that come back linked to that? I write and broke and wrote Ever and all these back links at the end of my article said For more information on getting a job as a designer, check out rams. Um, check out Rams book. That's enough. In the URL link was there. Yes, I've noticed with Google analytics that when I comment and I typically comment on the main photographer websites that I'm interested in, they'll do a blawg and I'll comment how much I like the blawg and why it links back to my site. And I've had I have traffic from those big photographers. Just because of a comment that I made on their block Absolutely well, that I normally wouldn't comment. Now I'm obviously commenting more. Yeah, Yeah. Uh, huge. You huge, huge part of this year. Why? Well, essentially, not only is your your profile link and your you don't even have to It's your profile, link. It's your profile. So I imagine you wouldn't go. Yeah, I really agree with the article. Also, check out my page. Yes. My exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that's because Google are social. They know they know what's really they know what's robotic and who know everything about you. Um, a bit scary. Yeah. And I think the other point that I just wanna touch on on that is participation. Now on my other workshop getting the design job that you want, it talks about all these other areas on participating, having credibility authenticity to what you do. All these things Okay, So internal, External back blinking as much as you can. Site speed. This is now a factor. It's funny. It may not seem like a huge deal But Google recently announced that around about 1% off your ranking, he's Jew to site speech. Usually that I even unless it's quite important, they don't say it, 1% is a lot. Let's just put it that way, Okay? But not only that, guys. Who wants a slight that loads for ever None of us we don't have time. Okay, so that's gonna help your s u. And again, how you save your images. Go to file safer Web devices output at 70 duty dp I at the exact size for that platform. Some of them are only 5 500 Some of them are 5 50 Some of them are 6 50 pixels. Whatever that is designed to that size and save it accordingly because fast pages lead to higher visit, engagement, retention and conversions. We are all customers as well. So we understand the frustrations of a very slow website. Have coverdell that remove unnecessary JavaScript files. Just a point to note down they are quite heavy. And for those of you that ah, using templates and things like that, you don't really need to worry about that. Potentially don't put too many plug ins that that are unnecessary on your website and be on every libel and fast hosting. Ah provider. Okay, that really leads to this. Um, that's coming too close there. Anyway, consider using a content delivery network, which is known as a CD end service. Most off the domain names that I've listed for you, which are, uh, go Daddy and crazy domains or any other for that matter. They already have this. This is Maura about your knowledge that if you're from the UK or from Australia or from San Diego or from New York, wherever you are you from Switzerland wherever. Google, for example. If you're being hosted by Google, they have servers all over the world. In order for them to host your portfolio, a website your dada essentially and someone from Switzerland goes on your website that speed is reliant on their server. If they have a server in Switzerland, ultrafast. If they have a server in a complete opposite end of town such as Australia, and then have once over there that's blasting out into the World Wide Web, then it's gonna take longer. Okay, so if you don't have one, you don't have to worry about this too much, but it's just worth mentioning. Ah, Cdn is effectively an interconnected system of cash. Servers that used geographical proximity as a cart ear for delivering Web content and a city in content exist as multiple copies on strategically dispersed service. All right, make sense. Okay. Avoid flash completely on a game changer. But ah, it's because flash doesn't do anything for us, you know it is limiting, and you can't link to a single page arise and ever using flash anymore, stick to the HTML five platform in my recommendation, which are all the platforms that are universally best practice now on any device, you'll have problems viewing flash websites on mobile devices as well. It just won't load on Apple. They've removed It s your resources. You should note these down. Google search engine optimization started guide pdf that's available from Google. You should also take a look at the advanced guard to S e o Blawg Post. But you can just google that it's on quick sprout dot com. So if you google that title and quick sprout, it'll come up or feel free to type it indirectly. Quick spout dot com slash the dash advanced Dash guide, Dash two, dash CEO. Perfect example off. Uh, you know, using your content to lead the name off your pages for WordPress users. Feel free to YouTube. This very handy. Quite lengthy. But when you watch it once, you're gonna learn a whole ton. So WordPress Seo by Yoast set up guide by press ability. This shows plenty off the previous mentioned CEO Information that I just explained to you best practice integrations in this plug in that that he shows you how to use and vestibule. It's it's free.