Search Engine Optimization requires work on content and metadata within your website and marketing efforts outside of your website. While we don't currently offer individual hands-on SEO strategy as a service, we can point you in the right direction with best practices. We recommend that you use the checklist below to guide yourself through our suggestions to make the most of the tools we have in PhotoShelter:
Before Upload
1. Know your audience - When you have an understanding of who your audience is, creating keywords and meta descriptions will become easier because you will know what kind of thing potential clients will be looking for to find your website.
2. Add IPTC Metadata to your images - Using insights from understanding your target audience, decide what keywords you want to use to describe your photos. This article includes a list of the important fields to fill out for SEO purposes.
Managing Site Content
1. Make your images publicly searchable - In PhotoShelter, you will need to designate what photos you want to be found by both your website and public search engines. This article walks through how to mark images as publicly searchable.
2. Add IPTC Metadata after upload - If you didn't add IPTC Metadata to your photos before upload, you can add metadata in PhotoShelter. If you already added your IPTC Metadata prior to upload, all of that data will be visible in PhotoShelter and you can move on to the next item.
3. Create custom pages - You can have an unlimited number of custom pages with unique titles and meta descriptions. Consider making pages for topics that are relevant to a site visitor that would draw them to stay on your website.
4. Fill in your Gallery and Collection descriptions - Add descriptive information about your galleries and collections so search engines can pick this data up on the visible page.
5. Populate your Page Titles & Meta Descriptions - Each page of your website can have a unique title and meta description (not related to single image pages since those use the image IPTC metadata).
Marketing & Analyzing Traffic
1. Review key SEO Definitions - Our glossary covers the key terms that come up in our SEO documentation.
2. Develop a backlink strategy - Backlinks are a key factor in your search engine rankings, so it's crucial to develop a strategy for quality backlinks.
3. Blog - If you have a blog, you have the advantage of keeping your site updated with a frequency that will positively impact how often your site is crawled. Read about our blog integration options and how a blog can help with backlinking.
4. Submit your Sitemap to Google Search Console - Google accounts for nearly 70% of global searches. Learn how to how to submit your sitemap to Google so you can keep track of what is being indexed.
5. Review your PhotoShelter “Overview” - The Overview section of your account reveals some high-level stats on site traffic over the past 30 days. This article explains the data on that page.
6. Track site traffic on Google Analytics - To go more in-depth, Google Analytics can help you understand and organize detailed data on who's visiting your site, how they got there, what they do once they arrive, and much more.
7. Set up a Google Business Profile - Google has a free tool to help your business have an official profile in their Search Engine.
8. Leverage Social Media: Use your social media accounts to help get the word out about your content.