In addition to being a photographer, I also make my living as an SEO consultant. That's why I think I can combine the best of both worlds. For those who don't know what SEO is, it's Search Engine Optimization. It is a set of techniques designed to increase unpaid traffic to your website. SEO encompasses many different techniques. You can read about these on a number of different blogs. The primary resources I recommend are:
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials
- https://ahrefs.com/blog/
- https://www.searchenginejournal.com/
But in this article, I want to show you techniques that work on my site and have proven to increase traffic to my site.
1. Category descriptions
The artwork on your site will compete with many stronger sites in Google search results. To be at least partially equal to them, you need to have a site that is better than the competition.
As an example, take a look at my black-and-white photography category https://martinvorel.com/art-prints/black-and-white/. In addition to the photos themselves, I have video and a lot of other content there. After I added this additional content to the page, the traffic to that page almost doubled.
2. Description of artworks - of single photographs
The photo that probably gets the most visitors from the Google search engine is this one https://martinvorel.com/art-print/sad-man-on-the-wall/.
Why? Because it has a very comprehensive description that is unique and not the same on all other product pages.
3. Page loading time
For Google and other search engines, how long it takes to load a page for users is absolutely crucial. For pages with a lot of photos, this can be a big problem. I found it most helpful in this regard when I changed the format of all images from JPG to WebP. If you have WordPress, this can be done in a few clicks using a plugin.
To test how fast your site loads, I recommend using this tool from Google: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
4. Guest posting
If, like me, you don't have enough time to write blog posts that can increase traffic to your site, try guest posting. This means that bloggers will write an article for your site for free in exchange for having a backlink in that article leading to their site.
In most cases, all you have to do is create a page on your site where you invite people to write articles and they will already find you on their own.
Guest posting can also be used in reverse. Just write an article with a link to your site and try to place it on another site. Through this link, additional visitors will come to your site.
5. Write a blog - just a little but high quality!
I have quite a lot of blog posts on my site. But most of them bring only a few visitors per day. But if you come up with an interesting topic, you can get much better results.
More than 80% of all the visits that come to my site through my blog come through just two articles:
- Unique Minimalist Photographers Working in Black & White (https://martinvorel.com/blog/unique-minimalist-photographers-working-in-black-white/)
- Fine Art Photography Wall Visualizers for Free Use (https://martinvorel.com/blog/fine-art-photography-wall-visualizers-for-free-use/)
So my advice is: write fewer articles but make them all the more important!
I hope that these tips will help you to increase the traffic to your website and especially to increase the sales of your artwork.
Thank you.