Just as the metadata in your photos is important, adding Page Titles and Meta Descriptions to the pages of your PhotoShelter website will help optimize your site for search engines.
Topics covered in this article:
Page Titles
A Page Title is a short description of a webpage that typically appears in your browser’s tab when viewing a webpage:
The Page Title should be relevant to the content on the page. When filling in your Page Titles, keep in mind that there is a strong correlation between the order of words in the Page Title 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 County Commercial Photographer | Joe Smith Photography
Google recommends page titles of 70 characters or less. 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.
To add Page Titles in PhotoShelter:
1. Click "Website" from the navigation bar when logged in and then click "Enter Site Builder" under “Portfolio.”
2. On the left pane, fill in the fields under "Page Title" and "Meta Description."
3. Once you’ve added your Page Title, click the green “Save” button.
4. Navigate to the other pages on your site (e.g. About, Contact, custom pages) and add Page Titles specific to each page. To populate the Page Title field for your custom pages, you'll first need to click the blue edit icon that says "Content Area" when you hover over it.
Note: Your gallery and collection pages will automatically populate the Page Title using the gallery and collection titles.
Meta Descriptions
Meta Descriptions are used to describe the contents of a webpage. In search results, the Meta Description will often show below the page link:
We recommend making your Meta Descriptions 1-3 sentences long and including 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. For reference, Google generally truncates your meta description to around 160 characters for display.
Please note that your Meta Descriptions will not appear on the actual webpage. Instead, they are placed into the “<head>” of the page code where they exist solely for search engines to crawl and index.
To add Meta Descriptions in PhotoShelter:
1. Click "Website" from the navigation bar when logged in and then click "Enter Site Builder" under “Portfolio.”
2. On the left side add your desired Meta Description.
3. Click the green “Save” button.
4. Navigate to the other pages (e.g. About, Contact, custom pages) of your site and add Meta Descriptions specific to each page. To populate the Meta Description field for your custom pages, you'll first need to click the blue edit icon that says "Content Area" when you hover over it.
Note: Your gallery and collection pages will automatically populate the Meta Description using the gallery and collection descriptions.
5. To add a Meta Description for your Archive, navigate back to your admin area and go to "Website" > "Archive Page Settings."
6. Click the "Archive Homepage" link and you'll be able to add in your desired Meta Description. Be sure to click "Save Settings" when you're done.
Note: It may take time for search engines to update search results when you change the Meta Description.
Header Tags
In HTML, the header tag exists to make the heading of a page bigger and bolder. Here's an example of what an <h1> (i.e. header 1) tag looks like in a browser. You can see the large H1 content under “All Galleries” in the image below:
Here is the HTML code, taken from the title of the gallery:
PhotoShelter automatically places gallery names and image names into the <h1> tag for each corresponding page, as seen above. Unlike a Page Title, the header content actually shows up in the viewable page. Because the tags have an implicit hierarchy (<h1> through <h5>), search engines like Google assume 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.
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. See below for a tab’s title taken from the Headline of the IPTC Metadata:
Here is the metadata for this image:
When creating a custom page, keep in mind that text you designate as Header 1 text will be given the <h1> tag. It’s a best practice to have one Header 1 phrase at the top of the page which will help search engines and site visitors alike understand what the page is about.
Custom Pages
A custom page is a navigation element on your site containing a simple content area and basic formatting tools. You can create an unlimited number of custom pages on your PhotoShelter website, so we recommend taking advantage of this to increase your amount of indexible content.
Some custom page topic suggestions:
- Prints, Products and Pricing: If you are set up to sell, create a custom page outlining your available prints, products or downloads, your pricing, or any details important to the ordering process. You can embed print and product example images or talk about your sales policies.
- Affiliates, Press and Tearsheets: You can ask people or organizations with whom you’ve worked in the past to backlink to your site. Some sites, like news agencies or wire frames, are updated frequently and indexed more often. Backlinks from well-known sites with good content can be especially helpful to your SEO strategy.
- Testimonials or Awards: If your work is largely client-based, your business model might benefit from displaying testimonials or awards that you've received during your career. If your former clients have a website of their own, recommend that they backlink to your site.
Custom page best practices:
- Each custom page should be written in phrasing that is best suited for your target audience, not for search engines. Speak to your audience plainly.
- For each custom page, choose 1-2 keywords to optimize. Use them in your Page Title, Meta Description, and in the first paragraph on the page.
- Do not overuse the keyword you are optimizing for in one page. The keyword(s) should account for 3-4% of the content on the page. For instance, adding “portrait photographer” to every sentence to attempt to increase the instances of your keywords is not a good practice.
- Do not try to add hidden text on the page (i.e. white text with a white background) in attempts to increase keywords on the page; search engines will penalize your site for this.
- Link to other pages on your website (whether they are images, galleries, collections, or other custom pages) so clients can easily flow through your site. Use anchor text to do so. Anchor text is a hyperlink to another page that is represented by plain text. It should be used in a sentence that is related to that hyperlink’s topic. The following is an example of this: “Visit our website for more information on creating a website with PhotoShelter.”
For guidance on how to modify your custom pages, check out this article.