In this post I will share a few SEO tips specifically for surface pattern designers and illustrators on how to improve organic traffic to your website.
If you’re like most surface pattern designers and illustrators, SEO (search engine optimization) sounds intimidating and boring. But the good news is that as a creative, your website is filled with visual content—images of your designs, collections, and sketches. Optimizing these images for SEO can make a big difference in how easily people find your work online. And it’s not as complicated as it sounds!
Here are some quick and easy strategies to get your images SEO-friendly and help your website get noticed by potential art directors, licensing partners, and customers.
What is organic traffic?
What exactly is organic traffic? Simply put, as opposed to PAID traffic you might get to your website if you buy ads on social media sites or Google, organic traffic is typically achieved through search results. And it all starts with SEO and your site index. In this post I’ll show you how to optimize simple SEO strategies on your website’s image to help direct organic traffic to your website. In another post I’ll show you how to generate a sitemap that helps search engines index your images AND your entire website.
Why worry about SEO on images?
If you’re an illustrator or artist, images are the backbone of your business. Your portfolio showcases them, your online shop uses them to attract buyers, and you probably have hundreds on your website. Here’s the good news: most illustrators aren’t optimizing their images for SEO. Use this to your advantage.
If you’ve ever used Google Search or Google Image Search, you’ve seen images that were indexed by Google. Whether intentionally or by chance, the illustrator who posted that image got it into Google’s system. But the real question is: did they use strategies to ensure all their images were indexed properly? Or did Google just stumble upon them? This matters because without the right strategies, Google might miss your images entirely. Even if it finds them, they might not be categorized or ranked correctly, which means they won’t show up in the best search results for your business.
The bottom line is: don’t you want your artwork and designs to appear at the top of search results when art directors, potential licensing partners, and customers are looking for what you create?
You don’t have to use all the strategies I’m about to share, but consistently applying a few of them will help drive valuable organic traffic to your work.
1. Give Your Images Descriptive Names
Before uploading images to your website, name them with descriptive, keyword-rich titles. Instead of “IMG_1234.jpg,” try something like “spring-floral-pattern-fabric.jpg.” This is a simple approach but very effective. When search engines index your website they also index the names of the image files. Use this to your advantage.
2. Use Alt Text Thoughtfully
Alt text (or Alternative Text) is important for both accessibility and SEO. It describes your images to search engines (and screen readers for people with visual impairments). Be very specific but don’t stuff this with keywords; Google doesn’t like that. A good approach is to simply describe the pattern or illustration and add a keyword or two that indicates the media, style or context of the design. For example, “Surface pattern design for fabric of flowers and butterflies in a garden” works a lot better than just “floral fabric.”
This site uses WordPress. The alt tag is added to the image file inside the Media Library, as shown in the image below. If you’re using Wix, SquareSpace or another web building platform look for the alt text box in the location you upload your photos.
3. Compress Images to Speed Up Your Website
The gist of this strategy: Google loves fast websites and penalizes slow ones. So the first step is to save your image files as SMALL as possible while not losing quality. The image should be easily viewable and not pixelated or fuzzy. But it should not be huge either. All images that are meant to be published on the web should be saved for the web.
Large image files slow down your website. Large PNG files are actually the worst and in my opinion should not used on websites. (Use them on your high resolution private portfolio or on PDFs) Unlike Jpeg files, PNG files are not compressed. Whenever possible save the image files you plan on publishing to your website at 72dpi and save them as JPEGS.
After you’ve saved your image files appropriately for the web there is still one more thing you can do. Depending on the type of website you have you can compress them further either before or after you’ve uploaded them to your website using a service called TinyPNG.
TinyPNG and similar services compress images even further without loss of quality. You can use both JPEG or PNG files.
My website is built on the WordPress platform so I’m able to use a WordPress plugin that directly links to TinyPNG via the plugin. I have the free version but even the paid version is very reasonable.
It works automatically in the background so when I upload an image to my site it automatically compresses the file. The free version will automatically compress files until you run out of “credits.” Credits start over each month so potentially you may be fine with the free version.
There are quite a few other WordPress plugins you can install that compress images without losing quality.
In the image below, you can see that TinyPNG automatically compressed the image for this blog post when I uploaded it.
I realize that everyone reading this blog post isn’t using the WordPress platform so you may not have access to the TinyPNG plugin. If you don’t use WordPress, check with the service or platform you do use to see if they have a built-in image compressor. If not, you can upload and compress images directly to the TinyPNG’s website.You’ll need to signup using an email address, but the service is still free for a set number of images per month.
4. Make Sure Images Look Great on Mobile Devices
To add to the strategy above, make sure the images you’ve published to your website look great on mobile devices. Literally look at your website using your phone and tablet.
More and more people search the internet from mobile devices, so double-check to make certain the images on your website load quickly and look great on small screens. If not, go back to number 3 above and resave the file smaller and as a 72 dpi JPEG if needed, and compress the image even further using a service or plugin like TinyPNG.
It’s important to note that if your website is slow and sluggish and/or your images do not load because the file size is too big or the images themselves are too big to display on a mobile device, Google WILL penalize your website. When that happens your website will not appear in searches performed on a mobile device.
5. Pay Attention to the Text Around Your Images
Search engines use the surrounding text to understand what an image is about. Make sure you place your images next to relevant content—like descriptions of your designs, inspiration, or licensing availability.
6. Use Descriptive Titles for Galleries & Portfolio Pages
If you’ve got galleries, collections or a portfolio on your site, use page titles and separate gallery titles that help people (and search engines) understand what they’re looking at. “Floral Surface Pattern Collections” is better than just “Gallery.”
You can also add a few sentences that describes the gallery or group of photos. As number five above states, the words around your images are important. Take a look at my portfolio to see how I added a brief description to each of the galleries (collections).
7. Make Sure Google is Indexing Your Images
There are two basic ways Google can index your website: either it finds it through links from other websites, or you submit a sitemap via Google Search Console (more on that in another post).
Obviously, submitting a sitemap is much more efficient. If Google can’t find a page through links, that page is essentially invisible and won’t be indexed. But with a sitemap, you provide all the links to your site’s pages and images. If you blog, it can also include links to your blog posts, categories, and tags.
If you’re using WordPress, the easiest way to create a sitemap is with an SEO plugin like RankMath. There are many other SEO plugins, but I chose RankMath because I find it the easiest to use. I’m not an SEO expert, and honestly, I don’t want to be. My goal is to spend as little time on SEO as possible.
RankMath guides you through the process of setting up SEO for your site and creating sitemaps. It also shows you how to submit your sitemap to Google Search Console and other search engines like Bing to ensure proper indexing.
Below, you can see a screenshot of my website’s sitemap. The main sitemap is located at /sitemap_index.xml, and within it are four separate sitemaps: pages, posts, blog categories, and blog tags. Since I blog and want my categories and tags indexed, I have these four sitemaps.
Now, beyond the text on your website, you want to make sure Google and other search engines are indexing the images on your site as well. This helps them discover, categorize, and rank your images properly. Most WordPress SEO plugins, like RankMath, automatically include images in their sitemaps for pages and posts. If not, you can usually turn this feature on in the plugin’s settings.
If you’re not using WordPress or an SEO plugin, you’ll need to manually check your sitemaps (for pages and posts, if you blog) to ensure they include your images.
RankMath, for example, automatically adds images to its page and post sitemaps. You can see my page sitemap below, which lists the number of images per page. If your plugin does this, you’re all set! Search engines can now find your images and index them. From there, it’s up to you to apply the strategies in this post to make sure your images are properly categorized and ranked.
Final Thoughts
These strategies can help improve your website’s visibility without overwhelming you. You don’t have to do all of them. Implementing just a few of these strategies can help drive more traffic to your work and portfolio, helping you land those coveted licensing deals or print-on-demand sales.
