Table of Contents
1 SEO Tips for Artists – Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
2 SEO Tips for Artists – Meta Descriptions
3 SEO Tips for Artists – Backlinks
SEO Tips are as important for artists as any other business, yet many artists know very little about increasing their online presence and are not taking advantage of the free organic traffic that Google can provide. The global pandemic has forced even some of the biggest physical stores of the need to sell online. If they finally are realising the need for online sales, isn’t it time you started thinking about SEO and the visibility of your art online?
These valuable SEO tips obviously apply to any business that aims to increase visibility online, but as this is an art-focused blog it has been written specifically with visual artists and photographers in mind.
Assuming that you have a website with plenty of professional photos of your work, here are some valuable techniques and strategies to get your art in front of a wider online audience.
1 SEO Tips for Artists – Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
It’s so important that you include keywords that people who are actually searching for art like yours would use in a search. The best way to do this is to use a free Keyword planner where you can enter words associated with your style e.g. abstract art and find how many people are searching for this keyword a month (volume), whether there is a lot of competition for this keyword, and how difficult it will be to get high in the search results (SEO difficulty). A free tool to use for this is https://h-supertools.com/ or you could sign up for Google Ads and start a campaign. You don’t have to go through with the ad campaign and can just use the Keyword Planner to discover the best keywords you can possibly rank for. This information is really useful (and free) because it comes directly from Google itself.
TOP TIP – there are some websites you will never be able to outrank e.g. Etsy, Amazon, eBay etc so you need to check the top results in a keyword search to see who ranks in the first page of Google. If the websites on the first page are ‘weaker’ sites – in other words they are fairly average websites that anyone could produce, and they have a low Domain Authority and Page Authority (both are rated out of 100) you should be able to easily outrank your competition and get to the top. If the SEO difficulty is less than 70 (also rated out of 100) you have a decent chance. If you write a better article than the existing ones, especially if you write a longer one (around 2000 words) you will most likely rank higher. Google loves long content and will most likely rank you higher because you appear more impressive and knowledgeable.
Install the extension Keywords Everywhere from the Google Chrome Web Store and you will get extra information from your searches, such as related keywords and the Domain Authority and Page Authority of the websites in your searches. Again this is invaluable information. You can also use Ubersuggest to give you extra information for your searches.
2 SEO Tips for Artists – Meta Descriptions
Meta Descriptions are a summary of what your page is about, and a key indication for search engines and their users to understand the content of your site actually is. You will have seen them many times in Google searches, and probably made a decision to click or not to click based on them. It’s really important that you optimise these descriptions with keywords that people who are searching for art like yours would put into Google. Use the keywords you want to rank for in the first part of your title, and use them 2-3 times in your meta description as well. Only the first part of your meta description will appear in Google so make sure your most important keywords appear near the beginning of your meta description.
3 SEO Tips for Artists – Backlinks
Backlinks remain one of the best ways to rank your website in search engines. In fact, they are unavoidably crucial for shooting your art website up to the top. You want to try and get high quality links back to your website on authoritative sites in your particular art niche. These could be art blogs with a high Domain Authority, galleries, art journalists, art collectors, local shops, hotels and restaurants where you could display your art. The higher the Domain Authority the better as this link authority will transfer directly to your website. If you think about things are similar in real life – the more people recommend you and the more qualified these people are, the better it is for you. The same is true of Google – the more websites that link back to and the higher their Page and Domain Authority the better your site looks to Google, and the higher your rankings will be.
It isn’t easy to get fantastic backlinks. You have to do a lot of outreach, contacting as many authoritative art sites as possible in polite emails trying to provide value to them. You could mention other artists, galleries, blogs on your art website (perhaps on your website blog), then email them telling that you have mentioned their art, gallery etc. You have provided them a link and perhaps you could begin a business relationship that might eventually lead to them linking back to you.
You could also do a guest post on an art blog or a related subject and then leave a link back to your site. Simply Google guest blogs for artists and see where you might write a guest blog to link to your own website. You could also do a podcast about a favourite art topic, in the form of an interview with another artist or art-related podcaster, and link back to your website.
There are some amazing SEO paid tools out there to help with backlinks, generating relevant suggestions for websites as well as templates for emails, and none better than SEMrush. Although SEMrush is pricey the features you get are undeniably, brilliantly comprehensive. You can also find out all the keywords your competitors rank for and use them for your own site. Fortunately you can get a free trial for 14days to see if it will work for you at this link:
Read SEO Tips for Artists – Part 2 here:
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