3 July 2026
Choose your focus: Technical, Content, or Network
Master one before expanding. SEO can be approached 3 different ways, and unless you are a team, you cannot excel at all of them. So, depending on your style, try to be good at one while not sucking with others.
The tips will be categorized into these 3, with each color representing a different category:
1. Technical SEO:
Technical SEO is about coding. Thanks to WordPress or other Content Management Systems (CMS), you only need to know the basics. And on a small note, don't expect to make any SEO from your mobile. Although some web builders claim to support this feature, their limitations will likely frustrate you.
2. Content SEO:
That's where the artists shine if they can write well, too! Images and text (but now also video and sound) are the website's flesh. We made an article about the type of content an artist's website requires.
3. Network SEO:
"The Internet is a table for two!"
You will need to be in contact with others. The best way to get a link to your website is to get to know the person behind the other websites.
Articles about SEO:
- Art keywords
- Artist websites backlinks
- Content for artist websites
- Art website name ideas
- SEO tips for artists
technical SEO
1- Own your website
To build any business, owning your content is vital, and art business isn’t an exception to the rule. If you’re in a position to register a domain and pay for hosting, treat it as a privilege and a crucial investment. It’s your permanent, optimizable corner of the web where you can attract visitors, collect emails, and sell directly.
2 - Study your data with SEO tools
Search Engines have made some of their data available. Instead of shooting blindly, you need to estimate how your audience will react to your content. Luckily, some acceptable SEO tools offer a freemium plan (Moz, Ubersuggest, ahrefs...), but most are paid and expensive. Their data is only an estimation, not a reality. But without them, you are looking for a needle in a haystack.
3 - Choose a CMS, not a site builder
If you are not tech-savvy, you should opt for a drag-and-drop builder (e.g., Squarespace or Wix) rather than a content management system (CMS) (e.g., WordPress, the easiest, Joomla, Drupal). Builders are not particularly SEO-friendly due to their limited toolset and have modest ambitions to rank at the top.
4 - Monitor keyword positions
There’s no SEO possible without tracking your position on search engines. Rank trackers are usually monthly expensive, even for the cheapest solutions. Art businesses are usually small and can’t afford to spend $100 on Ahrefs or SEMrush, which are the industry standards for rank tracking. The best rank trackers provide a graph for each keyword so you can daily check the consequences of your work on your website.
- SerpFox offers a free plan for 10 keywords. Its lowest-tier plan costs $12 per month and covers 100 keywords. This makes it a simple upgrade path if you outgrow the free limit.
- SerpBear (My favorite) takes a self-hosted approach. You install and run it on your own server, so you need some technical skills. It fetches data through a SERP provider. I use a provider called ScrapingRobot, which includes 5,000 free credits per month—enough for about 60 keyword checks. The results are consistent, and the only cost is your time for setup and maintenance.
- SerpRobot sells SERP bots. One free bot checks 10 keywords per day. Paid bots cost $4.99 per month each and handle 75 keywords. The free bot suits a small site; paid bots work for larger keyword sets without a large bill.
https://www.serprobot.com/pricing
- Website Ranking Checker comes from the team behind Keywords Everywhere. It tracks rankings at no charge. The interface is straightforward. The service remains free today, though that could change.
5 - Boost your website visibility
If the website isn't searchable, no one can see it. So you need visibility from somewhere else. The idea is to create content on your website that others want to link to without being asked to.
- Bored Panda: To make your art go viral, you must tailor your content to the platform.
- Pinterest: The only social media that doesn't aim to retain users.
Medium: Huge audience base
- Substack: A free newsletter system perfect for reaching new audiences.
- HARO: A platform that connects journalists with sources willing to provide information. By responding to relevant queries, you can get your insights featured in reputable publications, earning valuable backlinks to your website.
- Social media in general: Having a large follower base helps, but most platforms try their best to keep traffic. The retention is so high that there won’t be many clicks to your website.
community forums
6 - Set up Search Consoles
- Google Search Console is the most important because of Google Search's quasi-monopoly.
- Bing Webmaster Tools is incredibly useful, especially with their new tool, Clarity, which lets you see in real time how visitors navigate your website. It is incredibly useful for correcting navigation or design problems and improving the User Experience.
There are other consoles, such as Yandex, with useful tools. I personally don’t have any problem with that, but you are your own judge.
- You will need a Sitemap for them:
This is done in the Sitemaps tab on the left-hand side in Search Console. Your XML sitemap is usually available at your homepage URL, e.g., ./sitemap.xml or ./sitemap_index.xml.
7 - Avoid penalties
You can put in all the effort you want on your content, but your article will not rank well if you get penalized.
- Bad links to your site: There’s nothing you can do if anyone wants to link to your website. If it’s from a bad source (drugs, adult, baiting…), it is officially efficient to disavow it, but many sources say you're just helping Google with their next algorithm update. So do it only if you get the manual action penalty alert on the Search console. Otherwise, you are just notifying Google that you have bad backlinks.
- Paid links: officially, again, paid backlinks won’t do anything good to your website and might hurt its ranking. I am telling more about this at the end of the Backlink article.
- Cloaking: There is some hidden content on your site, like white writing on a white background. It might be coming from a manipulation mistake, which can be detected and penalized.
- Keyword stuffing: You unnaturally cram the same words over and over just to force a higher ranking.
- Hacked site: Google detects malware, phishing, or that your site has been taken over by hackers.
- User-generated spam: You allow spammy comments or forum posts on your site that exist only to create links.
- Usability issue: Drops your rank if your site is difficult to read or tap on a smartphone.
CONTENT SEO
8 - Plan on writing
Even today, algorithms can read images and voice; text is still the primary SEO parameter. Today, algorithms can even spot your writing style and from it, who is the author. So if you are writing, work on improving your style. On the other hand, if you are looking for a writer, find a good one and plan on a long-term collaboration. Lastly, if you plan to use an AI writer, use it only as an assistant for brainstorming, correcting, or suggesting problems in your argumentation.
9 - Structure with clear Headings
- Find a title that can meet an audience (explained in the art keyword article)
- Stay within the subject
- Find what others tell about it simply by looking at the top-ranked articles on Google.)
- Find your difference (position) and how your article can improve
Make a reader-friendly text
- Using bullet points or numerical lists.
- Use headings every time a new idea comes up:
- H1 for the main title
- H2 for a chapter
- H3 for paragraph within the chapter,
- H4 for small ideas or argumentation.
- Breaking the text up into easy-to-read chunks.
- Prefer short sentences with connection words.
- Write short paragraphs (5, 6 lines max before another heading).
- If there is a citation to a source, add the link.
It’s better to have many small paragraphs broken up with bullets and numbers than big blocks of text.
10 - Focus on one niche
As a creative person, there is a good chance that you are experimenting with several projects in different directions. To make SEO work for you, you need to prioritize one theme and build around it (I explain how to do this here). You can expand to other areas once you rank on search engines for one set of keywords. SEO algorithms reward websites that are consistent subject-wise. Do not change direction whenever an opportunity shows up.
11 - Be patient
Unlike the likes and shares on social media, you will not receive instant gratification on search engines. After applying SEO strategies to your website for the first time, it takes at least six months to see the results of your hard work. It takes a month to see some major improvements after each upload or update (traffic-wise). SEO is a game for patient players.
12 - Stick to your plan
(hence, years)
As we just mentioned, SEO results won’t happen overnight. You need to be prepared to work even if you don’t see any results, ignore the random tidbits, and resist the urge to run off to new, promising platforms (e.g., a new social media site or a new site to sell art online). Instead, you must put one foot in front of the other and stick to your plan. You need to adjust your plan according to the data, but not change it.
13- Repurpose social media posts
Social media are seductive in so many ways, especially for artists. It gives instant gratification while promising to help you grow your business. But when their companies decide to change their terms and conditions, you can only click 'accept' and continue. Your content and influence could also be at risk when a social media company decreases.
The idea is to use the dopamine delivered to post on Social media and use the same content to populate your website. For example, if you build a portfolio on Instagram, use the same photos at the same size for your website. Search Engines don't penalize that. For text, copy but significantly expand it into a blog post.
14 - Optimize your titles & descriptions
Your meta tags (Title and description) will show in social shares and search results.
For the Meta Title, aim to be as close to 70 characters (including spaces) as possible so the full title shows in Google without truncation. Include the main article keywords, the URL, and the H1 title.
The Meta Description should be as close to 160 characters as possible, including the keywords. Avoid being salesy or overly enthusiastic; you are an artist, your website isn't Amazon.
On WordPress, you can use plugins to preview how your Title and description appear in Google search results (Yoast, RankMath). You can also use this SERP review tool to do the same thing manually.
Below is an example we are using for one of our articles with RanMath. The main keywords are "Art keywords":
15 - Optimize your images
- Alt text primarily ensures images are accessible to visually impaired users. Images can appear in image search results by including the keywords of your article and a description of what the image is. This is a priority for visual-based content websites, so artists should use it.
- Before uploading your images, write your file names including descriptive information. Avoid spaces and underscores "_" and use minus "-" to separate words.
- Image size matters: Because visuals are very important for artists, you cannot use images that are too small. A good practice is to follow Instagram's guidelines: square images should be 1080x1080 pixels. 1350 x1080 or 1080 x 1350 pixels for others.
And each article needs a thumbnail of 1200x628 pixels.
16 - Organize your site
Your website should be clearly organized, and especially your art. Traditionally, the classification can be per year or series. You can have a blog section where articles can be about anything related to your art, but separate from your artwork. More in our article about content for artist websites.
17 - Avoid making AI Slope
AI-generated content is permitted. Studies have shown that, over time, articles solely made with AI don’t rank on Google Search. Google does not directly penalize content simply because AI assists it; Only lazy, unedited, mass-produced AI slop is. AI companies don’t do that for the sake of doing good; they do it because, if AI just feeds on AI-generated content over time, it will degenerate (the mad cow effect).
Articles written and detected as AI content are more likely to appear in the top 10 positions on Google. But the top positions 1-3 don’t, and these positions matter most. (source originality.ai)
NETWORK SEO
This part is important because your website needs backlinks to build authority in order to rank higher in search results. And the best way is though networking. (Check our article about backlinks)
18 - Give before asking
The easiest way to start a relationship is to do something for someone without asking for anything in return. Giving likes or having a sweet tongue won't do anything. The key here is to show your involvement by paying a bit to an association or Patreon page, for example. This way, with a bit of time, you will have the person's heart and be able to talk about your website.
19 - Mention other artists
Let's say you are an urban artist in Boston. You fall into this category of urban artists in this region. To rank high, you need to have some kind of credibility or expertise in it. How do you gain credibility? You can write about other artists in your region and put yourself among them, or collaborate with or build a community of like-minded artists. It is a bit counterintuitive for an artist. That's one of the reason art platforms outrank artists' websites. Unlike with most social media, SEO is not just about you.
20 - Be genuine with art institutions
Let's be honest: institutions and businesses from the Artworld don't care whether you rank top on Google. This is especially true in Europe, where branding and marketing in art are seen negatively. As part of your marketing, SEO does not give you a head start in the world of institutional art. Many institutions like museums, art schools, and foundations still follow this moral value:
"Take these things away; do not make my Father's house a house of trade. John 2:13–16".
SEO is more for artists who want to be their own producer and sell directly. Unless you can collaborate closely with a gallery, avoid mentioning your SEO strategy; they will see it as a lower standard or, worse, a threat.
21 - Reach out of the art sphere
Artists are in harsh competition, and galleries won't promote your site; the best way to get interest is to reach out to people involved in what your art relates to, but outside the art sphere. Become an active participant in Reddit, Slack channels, or Discord servers specific to this subject. Reply to the topics with your visual content.
22 - Write Evergreen, Stay Relevant
Freshness: With time, a text loses its value, its coherence with the context in which we live. Even if the shelf life of a page on a website is much longer than a post on social media, you will need to revisit it every year or two (check the facts, update broken links, or replace outdated references). A good approach to writing any content is to make it as evergreen as possible, meaning not attaching it to a precise date.
Being relevant is simpler: when writing an article, always keep its title in mind; writing very long content doesn’t hurt the ranking as long as it stays on the subject. If you feel like continuing writing, but it is digressing, extend it into another article with a different title. Your site will grow naturally.
Condensed Infographic of the article:
