We know it can be a crowded industry, and that you’re competing with other photographers and other websites. Because we want your website to stand out in the crowd, we offer a number of tools and tips for search engine optimization.
Want a visual synopsis of the tools and tips we offer? Check out this video:
Know exactly what you need? Feel free to click on a link below to go directly to that specific SEO topic:
- Search Engine Optimization
- Zenfolio Tools and Settings
- Edit Website Description
- Using Webmaster Tools Provided by Search Engines
- Submitting a Sitemap
- Enable and use text fields on your pages
- Organization of your site
- Ranking of your site
Search Engine Optimization
Let’s start with the basics of search engine optimization: what is it, and why is it important?
In short, the purpose of search engine optimization (SEO) is to make your website more visible to potential visitors searching online.
In order to understand the best ways to optimize your site for that purpose, you should develop a working knowledge on the basics of how search engines operate: before a search engine lists a website in search results, it needs to discover, crawl and index that website.
Discovery
It makes sense that before a search engine can list your website in its search results, it has to discover that it even exists! This discovery process can be long and drawn out if left to unfold organically and without any intervention. A better approach involves a little proactivity on your part: simply submit your website to Google or Bing and let them know you exist! Doing this jumpstarts the process and invites search engines to send web crawlers to scan it.
Crawling
Once your website has been discovered by a search engine, it sends programs called “web crawlers” to scan the website for new and updated pages. Pro tip: these crawlers follow the web of hyperlinks from one web page to another; this is why links to your website from other sites greatly increase the chances of your site being discovered by a search engine.
Indexing
If a search engine has a program crawling your website, that crawler then scans all textual information and indexes what it finds to be relevant. This indexed information is then used by search engines to process search queries. Keep in mind that since web crawlers can only scan text, media content such as videos and images cannot be indexed.
How do they determine what’s relevant? Search engines determine what text is relevant and important based on how an actual visitor viewing a website would process information. For example, someone might read the Title and headers of a page before reading any text-body content. Some text at the start of a paragraph might be interpreted as useful, while other text might be seen as a string of useless keywords not worth looking at. This is why we recommend that your pages have descriptive and relevant text in addition to your photos, and that you place that text on the page in a layout that visitors will find useful.
Text is Key!
If you haven’t picked up on it already, we’ll state it here: text is perhaps the most important tool for search engine optimization. Search Engines require that your website be filled with useful, well-formulated, and organized text in order to be indexed. You can create an amazing website filled with rich media content and useful interactivity, but without informative text... web crawlers may just determine that your website is not worth indexing.
Regarding your homepage: while a clean and simple homepage with minimal text can look great from a design perspective, they simply aren’t best for SEO. If SEO is important to you, consider using a homepage layout that’s conducive to useful text placement (such as one of the Classic Layouts), and make sure to display plenty of relevant text on your homepage.
While text is incredibly important, please note that we do not suggest you overload your website with an excessive amount of pointless text. In fact, doing so may do more harm than good by prompting web crawlers to deem parts of your website useless.
Links are also Key!
If text is king, links are queen. Hyperlinks are used to usher crawlers around your website, so you want to make sure that your website is chock-full-of internal and external links. In addition to hyperlinks on your own website, search engines favor a higher number of hyperlinks to your website from other well known sites (these are known as inbound links or backlinks). So, promoting your work online in an effort to increase inbound links is highly recommended.
Search Ranking
If you’ve done all you can do to improve SEO (invitation to discover, adding relevant text, hyperlinks and backlinks), and your website is still not listed in search results, it may be because your site is being compared to other websites with similar content. It may be disconcerting, but keep in mind that not only are you trying to earn your spot in those search results, so are many others. If other websites have better SEO (more content, frequent new content, more links, etc), search engines may rank and prioritize those sites higher than yours in search results. For that reason, when working on your website's SEO, keep those other relevant sites in mind as targets that you should meet and surpass with the SEO of your site.
Factors Outside of Your Control
SEO is a marathon, not a sprint, with many factors outside of your control. Statistics like number of site visitors, number of links to your site, where these links are originating from, and how long your site has been active with relevant content, all matter, and aren’t determined by you. If you’re not seeing the results you’d like, we encourage you to give it time. Of course, you’re always welcome to Contact us to brainstorm on whether or not there’s anything else that you can do to improve your website’s SEO.
Zenfolio Tools and Settings
If you want your images, Groups, Galleries and Collections to show in public search engines at all, you’ll want to enable "Allow photos to be publicly searchable" Access Control option for your pages (seen below).
Keep in mind that this option is enabled by default, so it should not be necessary to make any changes. If you do not want a specific item to be found using search, check out the section on how to control which items are found using search.
If the Access Control settings for the top most Group (All Photographs, by default) is set to hide from search engines, it will cause your site's homepage to not be searchable by search engines, as it lies within the top most Group. So, if you would like your homepage to be displayed within search results, make sure that the All Photographs Group is not hidden from searches.
Use Zenfolio "Search Engine Tools"
Zenfolio actually provides a set of tools specifically designed to help optimize your website for search engines. Make sure you take full advantage of the following tools to improve your website’s SEO.
Create Your Website Description
With this tool, you’re able to provide a summary of what your website is all about to any web crawler. In addition, it’s good to note that most search engines will actually use this field as a short textual preview of your website’s Homepage in the search results. You can set your Web Site Description for your site by following these steps:
- Hover your mouse pointer over your username in the top right-hand corner, click on Account
- On the left-hand side of the Account Information page, click on Website.
- Choose the Search Engine Optimization option.
- Here you can edit the Home Page Title and Web Site Description.
Use Webmaster Tools provided by Search Engines
Most modern search engines provide Webmaster Tools, which allow you to monitor how search engines crawl and index your site, and allow you to see how relevant your pages are to different search criteria used by potential customers.
Zenfolio allows you to integrate your website with the Webmaster Tools of all three major search engines: Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Search. Please note that Bing and Yahoo are search partners, so you can use your Bing Webmaster account to control how your site is displayed in Yahoo search results.
For illustrated instructions for Google and Bing, follow the steps below.
List your site with Google
To get started with Google Search Console, Google requires you to verify the ownership of your site.
Follow these steps to list your site with Google Webmaster tools:
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Go to this link - https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome - and Sign In. If already logged into a Google Search Console account, you'll be directed to the next step.
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Once you're in the Search Console, you'll be given two options for creating a new property. Choose the URL Prefix and enter in your full website URL including https:// in front of it. It is very important to choose the URL Prefix option.
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Click on Continue.
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Google's Search Console will attempt to verify the ownership of domain, in case you have already provided the proper verification code. It will likely fail to verify and will provide you with options to complete this step. Select the HTML tag option under Other verification methods. THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT STEP, do not select any other verification option, you must select HTML tag.
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Click on the Copy button next to the <meta> tag that is provided under the HTML tag option.
Note: Google's Interface may change at any time, and these instructions may differ from what is available currently.
After the above steps, open a new web browser window or tab then go back to your Zenfolio account. Log in if necessary then follow these steps:
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Hover your mouse pointer over your user name
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Click on Account
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Go to Website using the menu on the left.
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Go to Webmaster Tools.
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Paste the meta tag into the Google Webmaster field provided and click Save.
- Go back to your Google Webmaster page then click Verify to complete the verification.
List your site with Bing
To get started with Bing Webmaster Tools, Bing first requires you to verify the ownership of your site.
To get started, go to this page - www.bing.com/webmasters.
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Click the Sign in button and login with your Microsoft account.
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Use the Add your site manually box to enter your site URL. Click Add.
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If you've already setup your website through Google Search Console, you can use that option instead. You'll just need to choose which Google account was used and it will automatically verify your website in Bing, and no further setup is needed.
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After Bing has processed the addition of your site, you'll be presented with options for verifying ownership. Choose the HTML Meta Tag option. Copy the Meta Tag provided. **Do not select any other verification option, you must select HTML Meta Tag.
Note: Bing's Interface may change at any time, and these instructions may differ from what is available currently.
After the above steps, open a new web browser window or tab then go back to your Zenfolio account. Log in if necessary then follow these steps:
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Hover your mouse pointer over your user name
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Click on Account
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Go to Website using the menu on the left.
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Go to Webmaster Tools.
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Paste the meta tag into the Bing Webmaster field provided
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Click Save.
- Go back to your Bing Webmaster page then click Verify to complete the verification. You must choose to verify the HTML Meta Tag option.
Submit a Sitemap
A sitemap is another important tool that you may use to improve SEO. Sitemaps provide a structured outline of your site and all its pages. Submitting a sitemap to search engines is a great way to ensure all of your pages are crawled and indexed. Please note, if there are Galleries in your site that you do not want added to the sitemap and you do not want to display in search results, make sure to set them up so they’re not displayed in search results.
So, how does it work? Actually, Zenfolio automatically creates a sitemap for your site, which is based on your own site's web address, formatted like this:
https://your_Zenfolio_site/sitemap.xml
Be sure to replace the 'your_Zenfolio_site' part with your actual site address. An example sitemap address would be https://lookingsharpphotography.zenfolio.com/sitemap.xml . If you're using a custom domain, your sitemap would look something like https://www.lookingsharpphotography.com/sitemap.xml
Once you find your sitemap, you can then provide it to the Google or Bing search engines using their Webmaster Tools.
To submit a sitemap to your Google Webmaster account, follow the steps displayed here.
If you already have a Google Webmaster account, click here to go to the Sitemap submission page.
To submit a sitemap to your Bing Webmaster account, follow the steps displayed here.
Submit your Business with Google and Bing
In addition to submitting your website to search engines, we also recommend submitting your business to Google and Bing. This lets the search engines know about your photography business and allows them to display information about your business on their ancillary services.
Please visit these links for more details:
https://www.google.com/business/
Use the Robots.txt. file
Please note that while a robots.txt file is automatically generated, the actual file is not user editable. Zenfolio automatically adds search-excluded pages to the file on behalf of the photographer.
Enable and Use Text Fields on Your Pages
Search engines only process text information, and cannot index rich media content like photos and videos. For that reason, it is very important to provide textual content on your pages so the search engines can index them. If your website is missing textual content, it cannot be indexed by web crawlers.
So - what are all the ways to provide textual content on your website?
Display Name and Home Page Title
You actually have the ability to create a Display Name for your Public Profile, which will be used as the page Title for your site's Homepage and other pages.
If you’d like, you may choose to manually change your Homepage Title in order to add more detail about your website. When a Homepage Title is created, it overrides the Display Name as a Title for the homepage.
Welcome Message and About Message
Adding a Welcome Message and an About Message is a fine way to provide a warm welcome for site visitors, and it’s a great way to display descriptive text on your website in a natural and cohesive way. When enabled to show on your homepage, both messages can be indexed by search engines. Note that you may also reference your About Message in your site menu, as an additional indexing opportunity.
You’ll want to make sure that your Homepage is configured to show both the Welcome Message and the About Message, which can be displayed via the Options Panel in the Customize Website View.
- In your account, hover your mouse pointer over the Website button.
- Choose the Customize Website option.
- In the Customize view, click on Options.
- In the Page Options, select the Page Elements tab.
- Choose whether you want to Show or Hide the Welcome Message and About Message.
- Click on Save.
- Be sure to also Publish your website changes.
Two final important things to note regarding these messages:
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If you create the messages but do not enable them to “Show” in Page Options for your Home page, they will not be indexed by search engines.
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Not all Homepage layouts support the display of the About Message or Welcome Message. If you don’t see an opportunity to create and show one, feel free to try a different layout.
Enable Titles, Captions and Keywords
Titles, Captions, and Keywords present opportunities to describe your images to search engines, and are highly recommended for SEO purposes. You can change these details for an image, Gallery, Group or Collection at any time in the Details.
- Titles are used in conjunction with your Display Name to construct page names - very helpful for search engines.
- Captions add more textual description to your pages for search engines to index.
- Keywords are imported from your images’ IPTC data upon upload, and can be edited in the Photos page of your Main Menu.
Keep in mind that if you have a Title and Caption assigned to your images, having Keywords displayed would have minimal additional impact. However, if the design of your site allows displaying Keywords and you find those keywords useful, it might be worth enabling them.
Titles, Captions and Keywords can be enabled to “Show” in the Options Panel within the Customize Website view. Follow the steps below to Show these Details:
Old Photos Page
- In your account, go to the Photos page.
- Select the item you want to edit Details for, from the left-hand side.
- With the item open, click on the Details option on the right-hand side. If you want to edit details for a particular image, be sure to select that image first.
- Edit the Title, Caption, and Keywords.
- Click Save.
New Photos Page
- In your account, go to the Photos page.
- Select the item on the left-hand side that you want to edit.
- Click on the Details button.
- On the right-hand side you can then change the Title, Caption, and Keywords.
- Click Save.
Use Friendly Links
We highly recommend that you assign Friendly URLs to your Galleries, Groups, and Collections.
Why? In regards to SEO, when you utilize Friendly Links, those links will become part of the URLs for those pages, and will be indexed by search engines; therefore, the words used within the link will have an impact on search queries.
Old Photos Phage
- In your account, go to the Photos page.
- On the left-hand side, select the item you want to create a Friendly URL for.
- With that item selected, scroll down on the right-hand side, click on the Sharing & Client Access tab.
- Create a Gallery ID, which will also be used as the Friendly URL.
- Click Save.
New Photos Page
- In your account, go to the Photos page.
- On the left-hand side, select the item you want to edit.
- With that open, click on Access.
- In the Access Settings window, go to the Sharing tab.
- Switch on the Friendly URL.
- Use the Gallery Link text box to create your Friendly URL.
- Click Save.
Organization of your site
In addition to ensuring a positive experience for website visitors, having a well-organized website is more likely to be indexed by search engines. Having clear internal links between your site pages is crucial for SEO optimization. Here are a few features that will help with that:
Site menu
We highly recommend you use a site menu on your website. At the very least, a site menu promotes a positive experience for visitors navigating your website for the first time, and it helps search engines index your website. With the site menu, you can utilize built-in and custom pages, where additional textual content can be displayed and indexed by search engines.
Page Header
Utilizing a Page Header ensures a simple visual navigation experience both for viewers and search engines. Feel free to use the Header on your Homepage, as well as other pages of your website.
Show a Title
For clarity, ease of use and SEO optimization, you can assign a Title to any item within a Group or Gallery. Once assigned, simply set the Title for Thumbnails to “Show” in the Page Options on your Customize Website View. Doing so will associate the Title text with the Thumbnail link, and will help search engines to associate the Title text with the referred pages.
Breadcrumbs
If you’d like to create a path for your website visitors to retrace their steps as they navigate your website, we recommend that you enable Path to Gallery (Breadcrumbs) - this is usually enabled by default. Enabling Breadcrumbs will allow your website visitors and search engines to navigate quickly and easily to previous sections of your website.
Assigning categories
You have the option to “Allow photos to be publicly searchable” within the Access Control settings for any particular image, Group or Gallery on your Photos Page. When you allow item contents to be publicly searchable in this setting, you are essentially adding the item contents to a directory of Photos and Galleries that Zenfolio provides to search engines. That being said, we highly recommend that you also assign a Category and Subcategory so that search engines can correctly and appropriately categorize and associate the item contents with reference to your website. Keep in mind that categories must be made visible on the page for search engines to index them.
Site Ranking
It is worth reiterating that having a higher Site Ranking is a crucial part of potential visitors seeing your website in their search queries, but much of this is outside of your control.
If you’ve done all you can do to improve SEO, and your website is still not listed in search results, it may be because your site is being compared to other websites with similar content and simply has a lower site ranking. Keep in mind that not only are you trying to earn a top spot in those search results, so are many others. If other websites have better SEO (more content, frequent new content, more links, etc), search engines may rank and prioritize those sites higher than yours in search results. We recommend that you do all that you can do for search engine optimization, but be patient and recognize that improvements typically come slowly over time.
You can find more information on how to improve your site ranking in search engines by taking a look at these blog posts:
50 Shades of SEO:
- Link Your Way to the Top
- How Blogging Can Boost Your Business
- Keywords are Your Best Friend
- The Secrets of Social Media
We also suggest taking a look at the following guides: