Then suddenly, it dropped out of the top ten, and for a period, it was back at number 21. I remembered reading something about a new Google algorithm, that takes mobile phone website optimisation into account. My site was hardly web-optimised, let alone mobile-optimised!
I began to grow weary of my experiment, and started to wonder why I was bothering any more. I'm not a designer or a website coder, and I have never have the free time I need to make my site look and feel the way I'd like. My domain came up for renewal, and for over a week, I contemplated not renewing it...
However, three things happened today which changed my mind...one: I own and run a business called Yewhew Limited, so it makes sense to own the yewhew.com domain. Two: I googled "free mobile friendly website template" and discovered dudamobile.com. The great thing about their site is that they convert your site, optimise it for mobile, allow you to edit it, and give you a redirect as well – all for free!
Not only is my site now mobile-optimised, it actually looks good on a mobile! It looks designed! It's basic, it's functional, but it's actually aesthetically-pleasing now (for once!)
It not only makes it mobile-friendly, it also optimises it for iPhone, Android, Windows and Blackberry :)
And the third and final thing that convinced me to keep my domain, was that I checked my "dormant" email address, thefreelanceartworker@gmail.com, which I'd created back in March just to see if it helped the SEO of my site – and lo and behold – I actually had two legitimate offers of work from two complete strangers...and they sought me out via my site (which I don't publicise, other than writing this blog) and via the email address which only ever appears on there!
The great thing about the work is that one of the offers is for an annual report, which I love doing, and the other sounded like it was getting into the integrated/mobile/digital side of artworking, which I am also loving!
Just to top things off, I got the mobile version of my site right first time – dudamobile is so intuative – and the redirect code was also a doddle to drop in and upload. So now, if you access http://yewhew.com/freelance-artworker/ via a mobile, it automatically sends you to http://mobile.dudamobile.com/site/yewhew_2 :)
And I checked "freelance artworker" on Google...I was back on top via Safari and Firefox, and number 2 via Chrome :)
Maybe my blogging about it will strengthen it even more and push me up to number 1 all round again?!
