Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of making your website easier for search engines to discover, crawl, index, and serve as a search result. In simple terms, SEO is about helping Google know your site exists so that it can show it to the relevant audience.
When you publish your Pixieset Website, Google and other search engines typically take a few weeks to crawl your content to determine what type of search queries your site may match. By applying the recommendations outlined in this article in your site’s SEO Manager, you can increase your chances of appearing in relevant search results.
On this page:
What is SEO?
SEO involves describing your site content to search engines like Google so they can determine how to best display it in search results. When potential clients look for a site or service through a search engine, Google will present them with a list of webpages related to their search query. By optimizing your site page’s titles, images, and descriptions, you can greatly improve the chances of Google recognizing your site as a relevant search result.
All of Pixieset’s website themes are automatically optimized and easy for search engines to navigate, giving you a fantastic first step towards improving your search result ranking. You can boost this further by following the tips in this guide.
Creating SEO Friendly Content
When creating content for your site, keep the following SEO guidelines in mind:
- Relevant keywords: Include keywords related to your business in your writing, such as location, type of photography, and your services. Make sure these naturally appear in your sentences rather than just listed by themselves.
- Good balance of image and text: Keep your site engaging with a mix of images and text. The longer a visitor stays on your site pages, the better it is for your SEO.
- Keep content fresh with blog posts: Adding a blog that highlights topics related to your business will help improve your search ranking, since there will be regularly updated content for search engines to index and match with search queries.
- Useful internal links: Add links from one page of your site to another to help search engines better understand how your site is organized, and to keep visitors engaged.
Optimizing your Website for SEO
Your Pixieset Website comes with a built in SEO Manager, which is a centralized dashboard where you can review critical settings that directly impact your site’s search performance. This can be accessed in Settings > SEO Manager. The main Overview section comes with a checklist so you can see areas for improvements at a glance.
Here are some helpful steps you can take within the other sections of the SEO Manager to make sure your site content is thoroughly optimized:
Step One: Set up robust titles and descriptions
Your site’s titles and descriptions play an important role in SEO. They’re often your visitors’ first impression of your business too, since they can make up the excerpt that appears in search engine results.
Within the Global and Pages sections of the SEO Manager, you have a centralized place to customize your titles and descriptions. When writing descriptions, keep them concise to ensure they show fully in search results. Avoid pasting generic descriptions. Instead, create unique descriptions for each page and naturally incorporate relevant keywords (e.g. location, services).
Good Example: Vancouver-based photographer Patricia Johnson creates timeless portraits and wedding photos with an elegant, documentary style.
Bad Example: Patricia Johnson’s about page photography
Tip: Save time by automatically generating page descriptions based on your site content (available on Pro Website and Pro/Ultimate Suite plans).
Step Two: Review your site pages’ URLs
Each of your site pages come with a unique URL slug. It is important for SEO purposes that your page links make sense for the page’s content and title. You can review your page links by going to the Pages section of the SEO Manager. Click directly on any URL slug to rename it.
Good Example: www.patriciajohnsonphotography.com/testimonials
Bad Example: www.patriciajohnsonphotography.com/New-Page-Copy
Tip: URL slugs are case-sensitive! It is a best practice to keep them lower-case.
Step Three: Add accurate alt text to your images
Alternative text is used to describe your site’s images and to help search engines understand what each image is about. Alt text should be short, simple, and descriptive. It’s also a great opportunity to include one or two keywords that might help SEO such as the location or photography type. To add alt text to your images, go to the Images section in the SEO Manager.
Good Example: Bride and groom holding hands and walking along a road with a green field and the Dolomite mountains in the background.
Bad Example: a wedding photo outside
Tip: Have a lot of site images? With a single click, you can automatically generate all your images’ alt text (available on Pro Website and Pro/Ultimate Suite plans).
Step Four: Publish your changes
When you make any changes to your website, including SEO-related updates, you will need to re-publish your site so they can go live.
Once your SEO changes are live, Google and other search engines will be able to start crawling and indexing. Google will review your site structure, pages, descriptions, alt text, and content to determine how to best display them in relevant search results. This process can take up to a few weeks for search engines to complete.
While there is no guaranteed way to speed up Google’s indexing process, you can manually request Google to recrawl your site through Google Search Console. You can learn more about this process through Google’s support article.
Note: In order to use Google Search Console, your site must be connected to a custom domain (available on all upgraded Website and Suite plans)
Advanced Tips
Improving your site’s search performance is an ongoing process. In addition to our video tutorial, the following tips can help you make the most of your SEO:
- Submit your latest sitemap to Google Search Console: Google will periodically crawl your website whenever you publish changes. To speed up the indexing process, manually retrieve your sitemap from your SEO Manager and submit it to Google Search Console.
- Connect a custom domain: Your Pixieset Website has a default “mypixieset.com” domain based on your username but with an upgraded Website or Suite plan, you can connect your own custom domain to increase visibility in search results.
- Run an audit to check for common SEO issues: Use the audit tool in the SEO Manager to identify any broken links or missing alt text that will impact your site’s SEO and overall accessibility.
- Create external backlinks: Link your site on other platforms such as social media, online magazines, and photography directories to generate traffic. Search engines take these external links into account so the more places your site is mentioned, the better.
- Review how your site appears on Google: If Google has indexed your site, you can review how your site pages appear in their search results. You can do this by searching for webpages with this format: site:yourwebsite.com
- Track your site’s performance via Google Analytics: Google Analytics can help you understand how clients find your website, how much time they spend on particular pages, and what information they look at before sending an inquiry or booking a session. With an upgraded plan, you can connect Google Analytics to your site.