Increase Traffic to Your Gallery Website with Helpful Written Content

Art gallery websites all have one thing in common: lots of beautiful images of artwork. But to increase traffic to your site, you'll want to include helpful and interesting written content. Here's why - and how - to get started.

Written content drives search results

While it may be tempting to think of your website as a virtual exhibition, most galleries are missing out on higher search rankings because there is simply too little written content on the site.

By including helpful and interesting content that aligns with the keyword phrases people are searching for, you give Google's spiders more information to 'crawl' on your website.

This is good for search engine optimization (SEO) and helps the pages on your website rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). The end result? The quantity and quality of the traffic to your site increases.

What to write about

When it comes to content, you'll want to cover your basics - artist bios, show descriptions, and information about your gallery and the local arts scene. But you can stand out from other galleries and see an even greater boost in SEO by going beyond the basics.

The key is to think about your website as a virtual art consultant and strategically use it to help your clients the same way you do in the gallery.

Consider the types of conversations you have with clients in the gallery and the problems you're helping them solve: what pieces would look best on their walls, how to go about buying artwork, or the process of commissioning a piece from their favorite artist. These are exactly the types of topics you'll want to write about.

A great example of content that serves as a virtual art consultant is The Art of Gifting: A Guide to Buying Art as a Gift, from Ann Korologos Gallery.

Now it's tempting to want to reserve this type of consultative advice for direct communications with clients. But if you do, you may be missing out on a lot of potential new clients. After all, it's 2018 and people's buying habits have changed. As a result, galleries need to adjust their marketing strategies to align with the way people make purchases today.

Regardless of what they're buying - a TV, a car, a house, or art - most people start the process of making any type of large purchase or investment by searching for information online. This is especially true of the newer generation of tech-savvy art collectors. It's also an opportunity for your gallery to get in front of clients at the beginning of their art buying journeys - when they're searching the Internet for information.

Find out what people are really searching for

Before you start writing, you absolutely must do some research into what people are searching for, the volume of searches, and how hard it is to rank for various keyword phrases. Doing research will help ensure that you write the content that will help your site's search rankings the most.

The easiest place to start is with Google. Try some searches that you'd like your website to rank for, then scroll to the bottom of the page and look for the related searches. Here, Google will display a number of similar searches that indicate what else people are looking for. You should explore these keyword phrases and see which ones you may want to incorporate into written content about your website.

For example, when Googling 'art galleries in Atlanta,' here are the related search results:

Another great - and free - tool is Moz's Keyword Explorer. You can use the Keyword Explorer to type in the keyword phrases you found through Google and see more detailed information about them, like monthly volume (approximate number of searches for that keyword phrase) and difficulty (how hard it is to rank for that keyword phrase).

You'll want to look for phrases that have decent monthly volume and aren't too difficult to rank for. Keep in mind that a low monthly volume isn't necessarily a bad thing. Even if not that many people are searching for 'Atlanta art galleries,' the ones who are know exactly what they are looking for. And by including content that covers those keyword phrases, you can get your website in front of them.

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