By most estimates, there are over 200 signals that affect SEO rankings, and these can largely be divided into “on-page” and “off-page” factors. The on-page factors are the ones you can control through your website. The off-page factors (e.g. backlinks, social media) are much longer term plays because they often involve getting other people to interact with your website, which means you need a marketing plan.
Below we will go through some of the most important on-page SEO factors. Make sure that you're paying attention to as many of these factors as possible, because SEO isn’t comprised of one thing. It’s an amalgamation of many factors that help your website rank higher with search engines.
Page Title
The Page title is a piece of text that appears at the top of your browser when viewing a particular webpage.
There is a strong correlation between the order of keywords and SEO success, so you’ll want to put your most important terms up front.
For example:
- Bad: Joe Smith Photography | Serving the OC for 20 years
- Good: Orange Country Commercial Photographer | Joe Smith Photography
Google recommends page titles of 70 characters. This doesn’t mean you’ll be penalized if you go over. The limit exists because search engines use the page title as the anchor text in search results.
How it works in PhotoShelter:
1. Click "Website" from the navigation bar and then click "Enter Site Builder" under “Portfolio.”
2. On the left pane, you should see the "Page Title" field. Enter in your desired Page Title. If you do not add anything to Page Title, it will default to your “Site Name” which you will see in your General Settings .
3. When you're done, click the green "Save" button.
4. You can add a unique page title for your homepage, portfolio page, about page, and contact page.
Note: We automatically populate the page titles and meta descriptions for your archive Gallery and Collection pages and individual archive image pages. For example, we automatically pull your galleries' names and descriptions and your images' IPTC metadata for the Gallery and Individual Image pages. This is to make your life a little easier - the key is to properly keyword your gallery names, image descriptions, and image IPTC metadata.
Meta Description
There are a number of “meta” tags that can be defined for a webpage, and none of them appear on the actual page. Instead, they are placed into the “<head>” of the webpage where they exist solely for the enjoyment of search engines.
The Meta description for your site is an influential field that you can populate with keyword hit list terms or a few sentences. You should consider making this 1-3 sentences long which should include keywords that someone should search for to pull up your site. Some suggested items are, the kind of photography you do, the location you are based in if relevant, and your name. This is important because the meta description appears on a search engine results page below the page title. Note that it may take time for search engines to update your search result when you change the meta description.
How it works in PhotoShelter:
1. Click "Website" from the navigation bar and then click "Enter Site Builder" under “Portfolio.”
2. On the left pane, you should see the "Meta Description" field. Enter in your desired meta description.
3. When you're done, click the green "Save" button.
4. You can add a unique meta description for your homepage, portfolio page, about page, and contact page.
You can determine the page titles on your PhotoShelter website for almost every single page. If you're using one of our themes, simply click Website from the navigation bar and then click Archive Page Settings from the navigation on the left-hand side. You can then select any page (My Homepage, Portfolio, Gallery List, etc.) and scroll toward the bottom; here you'll see a section called Meta Data Options. This is where you can input your page title.
Note: We automatically populate the page titles and meta descriptions for the Gallery Display page, Gallery Image Display page, Gallery Slideshow page, Gallery Collection Display page, and Login page.
For example, we automatically pull your galleries' names and descriptions and your images' IPTC Meta Data for the Gallery Display and Gallery Image Display pages. This is to make your life a little easier - the key is to properly keyword your gallery names, descriptions, and image IPTC Meta Data.
Check out all of these individual pages in the Website Pages area of your account to learn more.
Header Tags
In HTML, the header tag exists to make type bigger and bolder. Here's an example of what an <h1> (i.e. header 1) tag looks like in a browser:
Here is the HTML code, taken from the title of the gallery:
Because the tags have an implicit hierarchy (<h1> through <h5>), Google assumes that <h1> content is more important than <h5> content. And more specifically, Google only wants to see one instance of the <h1> on the page.
So what should the <h1> be used for? It’s very similar to a page title, but unlike a page title, the header content actually shows up in the viewable page. A logical piece of text to put into a header would be something like a gallery name or an image name.
How it works in PhotoShelter:
PhotoShelter automatically places gallery names and image names into the <h1> tag for each corresponding page. If your images have a Headline or Title in the IPTC metadata, the <h1> tag and the name of the browser tab will use those fields instead of the filename. Headline will be used if Headline and Title both exist in one file.
ALT Attribute
In HTML, the <img> tag is used to display an image on a webpage. Like many HTML tags, the <img> tag has a number of attributes that can be specified (e.g. width and height). The ALT attribute stands for “alternate text” and is one of the signals affecting SEO.
How it works in PhotoShelter:
PhotoShelter automatically populates the ALT attribute with your IPTC “Description/Caption” field. You can edit your images' descriptions in the IPTC metadata. Just select an image in the Image Browser and then click the pencil icon next to the ITPC metadata field in the Right Pane. For more on this, check out our detailed Editing IPTC & metadata tutorial.
General On-Page Text
The judicious use of keywords in the body text of your web pages helps reinforce the words and phrases that are most important to your business. Avoid exclusively using colloquial phrases like “shot” instead of “photograph” or “image” because users are much more likely to search for the latter two. Also, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that simply displaying an image is the best way to convey that you’re a photographer. You must have text on your website (and a lot of it) to be successful with SEO.
How it works in PhotoShelter:
Like your individual images, you can infuse all your gallery and collection names, as well as gallery and collection descriptions, with your keywords. You can do this by navigating to the Image Browser (click "Images" from the Navigation Bar) and selecting a gallery in the Left Pane. Then look to the Right Pane and click the “Description” tab. There is an edit circle that will appear when you hover over the description field that will allow you to edit its contents.
You can also edit your images' captions in the IPTC metadata. Just select an image in the Image Browser and then click the pencil icon next to the IPTC metadata field in the Right Pane. You can also do this in batch. For more on this, check out our detailed Editing IPTC & Metadata tutorial.
PhotoShelter embeds some IPTC metadata in screen-resolution images, so publicly searchable images from your website that Google Images can index will have more contextual info available. The embedded IPTC fields are:
- Author (also known as Creator)
- Credit/Provider (also known as Credit Line)
- Copyright (also known as Copyright Notice)
- Headline
- Contact Email
- Contact Phone
- Contact URL
In 2018, Google Images added more rights-related metadata into a new "Image credits" section for search results. This displays metadata from the IPTC Creator, Credit, and Copyright fields when available. Read more about how these fields are indexed on the official IPTC site.
Note: This is general overview of the on-page factors that affect your website's SEO. For more in-depth information, download our SEO Guide for Photographers.