Welcome to Part 2 of our SEO Tips for Artists. In Part 1 we looked at meta descriptions, keywords, and backlinks. If you want to read it you can find it here: https://artworldblog.com/2021/05/13/seo-tips-for-artists-2021-part-1/

In this article we are going to get into some more crucial aspects of SEO in order to help you increase your traffic, online presence, and ultimately get eyes on your artworks. Again, much of the information here is relevant to any business, but as this is an art-focused blog it has been written specifically for artists.

Let’s jump straight into our SEO suggestions. 

1 SEO Tips – Create a Blog For Your Art Website 

Audible groans and moans. I’m not a writer you say, I’m an artist. I paint and take photographs, I don’t use words I prefer images and symbols. While that’s understandable, it’s so important at the moment that you craft a story for your business and your artworks because that’s what buyers are often looking for.

Writing a blog for your website regularly gives people another way to find you, your art and buy into your story and business. It can work tremendously well for search results and SEO. You don’t even always have to do it yourself, you can outsource it at a small cost. If you really must you can use Fiverr.com or the likes to pay people quite cheaply to write a blogpost for you. However we would recommend writing about your art and artistic lifestyle yourself to keep things authentic.

Many platforms, such as Shopify, have a blog section built in to your store package. Etsy also realise how valuable a blog can be, although you have to pay a monthly subscription to link your blog to your Etsy shop. A blog allows you to post articles about new artworks, collaborations with other artists, gallery events, as well as your ideas and inspiration for your art. You can then place a link on your article taking your reader directly to individual artworks or your homepage. This can actually become a useful backlink for your art website if it is on a separate platform, and especially if your blog has a decent Domain and Page Authority. 

Medium is a brilliant blogging platform which performs very well in search results. You can even monetise your blog articles on there and get paid while promoting your own art!

2 SEO Tips – Use Instagram Consistently

Instagram is arguably the best Social Networking site for Artists because it centres around sharing images and videos. 

What a lot of people don’t realise however is that Instagram (and other Social Media) also indirectly help your website rank higher in the search engines. Shares in particular, but also likes and comments on your Instagram posts signal search engines to rank your website higher. Unfortunately Google does not count your Social Media links in the same way it would other authority sites, but more often than not the sites that rank highest are the ones with the most social shares.

Although you can’t share links to your art site on your posts, you can put one link in your Instagram Bio so people can click back to your art shop. 

Top Tips for Instagram – To discover the best hashtags for your art niche find the artists in your niche with the highest followers and engagement and check what hashtags they are using. 

Cycle your hashtags so you aren’t overusing the same ones over and over. The Instagram search will give you autosuggestions of what hashtags to use and how many posts are using them. Try to have a mix of small, medium and large hashtags for maximum impact. While it may be tempting to use a hashtag like #abstractartist it has 4 million posts, which makes it very hard to stand out. It’s worth adding but along with other hashtags which have less competition and more chance of being found.

Try to post something art-related 1-3 times a day and up to 5 reels (Instagram’s 30 second videos) a week for maximum engagement and growth. Take a mostly soft sell approach (remind people of your brand/art without pushing products right in their face) with a post here and there about a painting you specifically want to sell. You could do a reel of your painting process – perhaps a time lapse – or show a painting you have recently sold in its new home. Some posts could be about an inspirational art quote or trip you took which will lead to a painting.

3 SEO Tips – Use More Header Tags

A header tag is simply a title or a subheading. The title of your page is the most important in terms of telling people what your page is about, and the place to put your focus keyword. It is called the H1 tag, but you should use a number of smaller headings throughout your page, H2, H3, H4 and so on. Not only is it good practise as a content writer to organise your ideas into subtopics in this way, it is really helpful for SEO as well.

You could do this by having a table of contents (like you would find in a book) summarising each section of a blog article or the sections of your website pages. You can optimise these header tags using well chosen keywords which relate to your page content and will help you rank. These tags help both Google and your audience to follow what your content is about. 

According to research, sites with 12-13 header tags rank for more featured snippets. Featured snippets are little boxes which are designed to give a very clear, concise description of what the site is about. Think of them as the search engine equivalent of the trailer of a movie. They are very useful and can entice people to click on your website from a Google search. See the example below.

Header tags make your content easier to read, provide you advantages in the search engines, help you get more clicks, and help you use your keywords more effectively to rank higher. Well worth the effort! 

We’ll be back soon with Part 3 of our SEO Tips for Artists 2021! 

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