Anyone interested in buying art or discovering new artists simply types a search query into Google or another search engine and then sifts through what comes up. If you want your art to be discoverable, you must know how to find the best keywords for artists. Optimizing your art posts for search engines will help you get your artwork seen. Here’s how to do SEO for artist posts!
Every artist knows that the key to finding success is getting as many eyeballs on their work as possible. In this day and age, that involves building an artist website and making sure that it is easily discoverable by art lovers, collectors—and search engines.
Because, fact is, anyone interested in buying art or discovering new artists simply types a corresponding search query into Google or another search engine and then sifts through what comes up.
That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is vital for every artist who wants to get their artwork seen. Choosing the right keywords for your art will help you improve your visibility and ranking in search engine results pages.
Without proper SEO, your artwork may go unnoticed and you won’t be able to reach interested audiences and make sales.
That being said, it’s evident that every artist should learn how to do SEO and find the best keywords for their art.
Do you think social media is enough to get your artwork seen? Think twice!
In this post, I show you how to find the best keywords for artists to help you make your website and artwork rank in search engines, and thus attract buyers for your work!
Let’s get into it:
How to do SEO for an artist?
As its name suggests, search engine optimization is primarily designed to optimize websites for search engines so the most relevant results get delivered in response to a user’s search query.
If done correctly, SEO can help you create a consistent flow of traffic coming from organic search results to your website—for years.
That being said, your artist website is definitely the best place to do SEO.
However, you can also optimize your social media posts using the best keywords for artists. While Instagram and Facebook posts are not prone to come up in the search results, images you upload to Instagram and LinkedIn, for example, do show up in the search.
Likewise, you can also use keywords for art or hand-crafted items that you offer on Etsy and other online art marketplaces.
What are keywords for art?
First off, there are no general keywords for art. Of course, you can use the keyword “art” to describe your work, but it won’t help you get found because it’s way too generic and used in so many different contexts. In other words, it’s too competitive to help you rank your work in search engines.
That being said, the best keywords for your art are as specific as possible and describe your work from a range of different perspectives.
Even if you use terms like “digital artwork” or “portrait photography,” you are not specific enough. You have to keep in mind that there are thousands—if not millions—of other artists out there who create the same kind of art.
Plus, you will also be competing with art magazines, galleries, tutorial sites, and software developers that also use these terms when writing articles and describing their products and services.
Unless you are an extremely well-known artist with a highly authoritative website, you won’t have any chance of appearing in the top of the search results for those keywords.
What you can do instead to increase your chances of ranking—that’s what I’m going to tell you now!
Here’s more you can do to rank your website: SEO For Artists: 5 Game-Changing Tips To Get Traffic To Your Art Website
How to find the best keywords for artists?
To find the most SEO-effective keywords for your art, ask yourself the following questions:
- What type of art do you create?
e.g. traditional art, digital art, mixed media art - What is your style of art?
e.g. abstract, modern, surreal, impressionist - What art movement describes your art best?
e.g. pop art, surrealism, pop surrealism, lowbrow, highbrow - What medium do you use?
e.g. oil paint, acrylic, pencil, digital software, wood - Are there any other materials that you use?
e.g. paper, fabric, glass, gold leaf - What is the main subject of your artwork?
e.g. men, women, animals, architecture, landscapes - What is special about this particular subject?
e.g. red-haired woman, flying eagle, wild ocean waves - What other artists inspired your work?
e.g. Andy Warhol, Van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, Mark Ryden - What is the main color of your artwork?
e.g. black and white, monochrome, red, pink, light blue, pastel colors - What are synonyms for all of those descriptions?
Keep in mind that your audience might use different terms to search for the same thing. That’s why it can be a good idea to include some synonyms in your art descriptions.
For example, instead of “black and white photography,” people might as well look for “B/W photos.” Likewise, another term for “popsurreal art” is “lowbrow art.”
Try to mix things up so everyone has the chance of finding your artwork with the keywords they are using—but keep the keywords relevant to your art!
As a matter of course, you should never forget to include your artist name. If you want to sell in your local area, you can also mention the state and the city you live in.
With that in mind, what are SEO keywords for abstract art?
Let’s do an example. Let’s say you are an abstract oil painter from Richmond, Virginia, and you paint ocean landscapes in soft colors, very much like Claude Monet.
The best keywords for such an artist could be something like:
“Abstract oil painting of a beautiful ocean cost with low waves in pink pastel colors in the style of Claude Monet by TheArtistYouMustKnow in Richmond, Virginia.”
When you use the above questions, you already have a great formula to figure out the best keywords for your craft.
∗∗∗
If you want to achieve even better results, you can use a keyword research tool that shows you exactly where the low-hanging fruit is. By low-hanging fruit, I mean the most searched keywords for artists with the lowest keyword difficulty.
Keyword research tools analyze the competition level for each term and give you feedback which keywords are easy to rank for.
Below is an example of the KWFinder showing the keyword difficulty of search terms related to “surreal Photoshop tutorial.” The lowest hanging fruit on the list is “surreal photography tutorial” with a keyword difficulty of 24, marked in green (= go for it!).
Apart from the KWFinder, there’s a range of other (free, paid and freemium) keyword tools you can use:
∗∗∗
Whatever keyword research strategy you use for your art, don’t forget that SEO always takes time. Search engines take a while before they’ll have indexed all pages of your website and before they’ll consider your website trustworthy enough (aka domain authority) to show it at the top of their search results page!
Be patient. In the end, researching the best keywords for artists will be well worth the effort.
![How To Make An Artist Website [Everything I Did To Create This Website!]](https://ginangiela.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/how-to-make-an-artist-website-500x400.jpg)
