Marketing a Portfolio Site 101

For web designers and web developers (as well as other professionals, such as photographers) the portfolio website is one of the most important assets. In many cases the portfolio site will be a leading source of inquiries from potential clients, and it is the best way to showcase your work to anyone who is interested.

Although the importance of the portfolio site is obvious, having an effective one requires that people actually see it. Having a great portfolio is one thing, but getting it seen is another. There are so many designers out there that competition is very stiff and without marketing your site it is likely to get very little attention.

In this article we will discuss some of the basic things that you can do to get more eyeballs on your portfolio site, and ultimately more business.

1. Build a Search Engine-Friendly Site

There are almost infinite topics that we could discuss about Search Engine Optimization, but one of the most important is simply building a search-friendly site. This doesn’t mean that your site will rank high, but it does mean that search engines will have no problems crawling your site to find all of you pages and to know what phrases it is targeting.

Making a site search engine friendly involves using clean, valid coding, proper use of heading tags, and avoiding practices that can make it difficult for search engines to crawl your site.

2. Use Effective Page Title that Include Your Keywords

The page title is one of the most significant factors for determining how search engines rank pages. Because of this you should take your time and give some thought (and research) to how you will be titling your pages. Try to use phrases that people are likely to search for.

Since there are so many sites out there already that are about web design-related topics, it’s best to pick more specific phrases that can narrow down the amount of competition you have and increase your chances of ranking high.

Try using a specific phrase like “custom WordPress themes.” This will be highly relevant to the services that you offer, plus it will give you a better chance of actually getting search engine traffic since there will be less competition for your keywords.

3. Don’t Forget About Localities

One way to make your website stand out is to optimize it for local searches. For example, instead of targeting the phrase “web designer,” try targeting “Philadelphia web designer.” This will drastically decrease the competition that you have for search rankings and it is something that local clients would actually search for.

4. Get Links from Other Sites

Link building is probably the most important aspect of marketing a website. Search engines see links like a popularity contest, and sites with a lot of links from quality websites are going to be respected by the search engines, and thus very likely to rank well.

Anyone that aspires to build a site that gets lots of search traffic will need to focus on link building. Here are a few ideas of ways to get links to your portfolio site:

Put a blog on your site – Portfolio sites and blogs are popular combinations, and part of the reason is that blogs attract links from other blogs. It will take some work to maintain the blog and publish new content, but it is one of the best things you can do for search traffic.

Market your site and blog via social media – SMM is a great way to get links. Articles that draw a lot of attention from social media users will generally get a lot of links.

Link exchanges – Exchanging links with other designers and bloggers can also help.

Web design galleries – There are tons of sites out there that exist for the purpose of displaying the best web design work from various designers. If your site is good enough you can get featured in a lot of galleries and build links this way.

5. Create Something Amazing

One of the best things you can do to promote your site is to simply make it special. A great portfolio design will market itself quite well. Take your time and make something that is reflective of your best work.

6. Give Something Away

People like to get things for free, so if you can give something away from your website (i.e. icons, stock photos, blog themes, etc.) you may be able to attract a lot of links and new visitors.

Steven Snell is a web designer and freelance blogger. He maintains a gallery of portolio websites and a gallery of e-commerce websites.