WEB DESIGN + SEO
Artist websites designed, built and kept up to date, with the SEO that brings collectors to them.
MDRN SEO designs, builds and updates websites for working artists on WordPress, Shopify and other platforms, then does the search work that gets them found. Collectors, galleries, interior designers and art consultants are already searching for work like yours. The site is where they decide whether to inquire.
15+
YEARS OF SEO EXPERIENCE
16
PUBLISHED CASE STUDIES
8 YRS
LONGEST CLIENT ENGAGEMENT
10x
BEST DOCUMENTED YEAR-ONE CLICK GROWTH
Someone stands in your booth for ten minutes, takes a photo of your card, and walks away. Three weeks later they type your name into Google. That search is the single most valuable query in your entire business, and for a lot of artists it returns a Facebook page, a stale gallery listing, and a Pinterest board before it returns their own website.
Art does not sell the way plumbing sells. There is no map pack for original oil paintings, and nobody is searching artist near me at midnight with a burst pipe. What actually happens is slower and more specific. A collector meets you at a show, or sees your work in a friend's home, or reads your name in an exhibition listing, and then goes looking. Separately, a much larger group of people search by medium, subject, and style, things like raku ceramics, blown glass sculpture, linocut prints of birds, or abstract landscape painting Pacific Northwest. Those searches are how new collectors find artists they have never heard of.
Rankings are not the goal.
The goal is inquiries. Commission requests, print sales, gallery and rep inquiries, studio visit requests, and mailing list signups are the actions that turn into income. We start with measurement, then fix the technical problems that keep portfolio images out of the index, then build the relevance and entity signals that make you the obvious answer when someone searches your name, your medium, or your subject. If you want to see what that looks like before committing to anything, start with an SEO audit that checks Search Console queries, indexing coverage on your artwork pages, and which pages should be producing inquiries but are not.
The market context matters here. According to the Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2026, global art market sales rose 4% to an estimated $59.6 billion in 2025, with the United States holding the largest share at 44%. Art fair sales climbed to 35% of dealer turnover, the highest share since 2022, and nearly half the buyers dealers worked with that year were new to their business. That last number is the one artists should care about. New buyers are entering constantly, and new buyers search.
Most artists see early movement in the first 30 to 60 days once tracking is in place and the biggest indexing problems are cleared. Meaningful gains usually land in the 60 to 120 day range, once artwork pages are being discovered reliably and your name, bio, and medium are consistent everywhere they appear online.
Start by separating the two kinds of searches that matter.
Branded searches are people typing your name, your studio name, or your name plus a show. These convert at a high rate because the person already decided they were interested. If you are not the first result for your own name, that is the first thing to fix.
Discovery searches are medium, subject, style, technique, and price-adjacent queries. Things like handmade ceramic dinnerware, bronze figurative sculpture for sale, fine art photography prints of the Oregon coast, or commission a pet portrait in oil. These are how you reach people who have never met you, and they are where most artist websites have nothing to offer a search engine because the work lives in an unlabeled slideshow.
Then we track what happens next. We set up and validate conversion tracking for contact form submissions, print purchases, commission inquiries, email signups, and outbound clicks to your gallery or shop, so you can tell the difference between a portfolio someone browsed and a portfolio that produced a sale.
Month to month, the report answers three questions. What changed, what moved, and what it produced. If you want more detail on the template-level and on-site work that drives most of this, our on-page SEO work is where the compounding gains come from.
If you are hiring SEO as an artist, you are not buying blog posts. You are buying a website that search engines and AI assistants can actually read, a name that returns you and not somebody else, and a clear line between visibility and inquiries.
Most of the work lives in three places. First, making your artwork pages crawlable, indexable, and fast, which is harder than it sounds when a site is built entirely from large images inside a JavaScript gallery. Second, building your entity, meaning the consistent, connected set of facts about who you are, what you make, where you show, and who represents you, so that Google and AI models can identify you with confidence. Third, tracking, so you can tell what is working without guessing.
Platform is not a blocker. Squarespace, Wix, Format, Shopify, Cargo, and WordPress all have their own constraints and their own fixable problems. We work within what you already have rather than pushing a rebuild you do not need.
If you sell prints, originals, or merchandise directly, the mechanics start to overlap with retail, which is where our ecommerce SEO work informs how we think about product pages, availability, and category structure.
This is where artist SEO is won or lost. If your work lives in a JavaScript slideshow with filenames like `IMG_4471.jpg` and no supporting text, Google has almost nothing to index and AI assistants have almost nothing to cite.
We start by getting the work into a crawlable state. That means individual, linkable pages for significant pieces or series rather than one giant scrolling gallery, real headings, and descriptive text that says what the piece is, what it is made of, how large it is, and what it is about. Collectors search using those exact words.
Images need to carry their own weight. Descriptive file names, meaningful alt text that describes the work rather than stuffing keywords, correct sizing so a 6MB studio photo is not the reason your page takes nine seconds to load, and an image sitemap so Google can find everything. Image search is a real discovery channel for visual work and most artist sites give it nothing to work with.
Structure matters as much as content. Series pages, medium pages, and subject pages give search engines a way to understand the shape of your body of work, and they give you somewhere to send links from show listings, press mentions, and gallery pages.
Sold work is where artist websites quietly bleed authority. A piece sells, the page comes down, and over a few years you accumulate dead URLs that used to hold links, impressions, and long-tail relevance for exactly the kind of searches you want.
We handle archived work with rules instead of instinct. If a sold piece has earned links, rankings, or meaningful organic entrances, keep the page live with a clear sold status, the full description, and strong paths forward, meaning similar available work, the series it belongs to, and a commission inquiry link. The page stays useful to a visitor and the equity stays on your domain. If a page has no history and no value, redirect it to the closest relevant series or medium page, not the homepage.
There is a second benefit. An archive of sold work is proof of a real practice, and it is the kind of depth that makes an AI assistant more confident describing you accurately.
Share your website and what you want more of. We will look at the design, the build and your search visibility against other artists working in your medium, then send a plan.
Get a Free Proposal
WEB DESIGN
A portfolio site has two jobs. It has to show the work the way you want it seen, and it has to give a collector, a gallery or a designer a clear next step. Most artist sites do the first job and skip the second. We design and build sites that do both, on WordPress, Shopify or the platform that suits how you sell.
Every build starts with the structure search engines read: a page for each series, a page for each piece worth finding, real titles and descriptions, images named and sized for the web, and an inquiry path on every artwork page. The SEO is part of the build, not a project added after launch. See how the web design and development work runs.
Each piece and series gets its own page with medium, dimensions, availability and an inquiry button, laid out the way you want the work seen.
Shopify or WooCommerce pages for prints and originals, with sold work handled so a page keeps its search value instead of becoming a dead end.
Add new work, shows and press on your own. The templates carry the titles, image settings and structured data, so new work is ready for search.
SITE UPDATES
Most artists do not need a new website. They need the one they have to work better. We update existing WordPress and Shopify sites directly: new series and artwork pages, a cleaner gallery, faster image loading, fixed mobile layouts, better navigation, an inquiry form that works, and the search fixes that come with all of it.
If your site runs on Squarespace, Wix or another builder, we will tell you plainly what can be improved where it is and when a move is worth it. When it is, the move is planned so the work you have already published keeps its place in search.
BUILT BY AN SEO
A redesign is where search visibility is most often lost. Pages get new addresses without redirects, galleries load through scripts search engines cannot read, and the text that ranked disappears into a slideshow. Micah has spent more than 15 years in SEO, including the SEO side of MarineMax moving from Sitecore to Shopify, where he built a 10,553-row redirect map so the new site kept what the old one had earned.
On Shopify he has hand-coded Liquid modules and delivered new page designs in Shopify-ready HTML. On WordPress he works at the code and server level. The person who plans your SEO is the same person who builds and updates your site.
People are already asking AI assistants for artist recommendations. Questions like "who are the best contemporary glass artists in the Pacific Northwest" or "recommend a ceramicist who makes functional wood-fired dinnerware" now return named artists with links, and the artists who get named are the ones the model can identify with confidence.
That confidence comes from consistency and corroboration. Your name, medium, location, and biography need to match across your website, your show and fair listings, your gallery representation pages, press coverage, museum or collection references, and any directory you appear in. When those sources agree, you become a resolvable entity. When they conflict or barely exist, you get skipped in favor of someone easier to verify.
We also build the kind of pages that get quoted. Clear artist statement and biography pages, a documented exhibition history, process and technique explanations, and plain answers to the questions collectors actually ask. AI answers pull from text that directly addresses a question, which is a problem for artist sites built almost entirely from images and white space.
This is an area where the ground is moving fast, and it is the core of our AI-driven SEO work. We monitor how you are described across assistants, correct the source material producing wrong answers, and build out the content that makes accurate citation likely.
Shows produce a spike of interest that mostly evaporates. Someone sees your booth, means to look you up, and forgets by the time they get home. The ones who do remember search your name, the show name, or a description of the work, and whatever they find is your entire follow-up.
There is real leverage here. Art fair sales reached 35% of dealer turnover in 2025 according to the Art Basel and UBS report, which means the in-person channel is not shrinking, it is compounding, but only for people who capture the demand it creates.
We build the pages that catch it. A current and upcoming shows page that stays updated. Individual pages for major shows with your booth number, the work you are bringing, and the dates. An exhibition history that does not get deleted every year. These pages rank for show-plus-name searches, they give festivals and organizers something worth linking to, and they give returning collectors a reason to come back between shows.
We also make sure the basics are working. If your show listings, ZAPPlication profile, gallery pages, and social bios all point to slightly different versions of your name or your website, that inconsistency is costing you. Cleaning it up is unglamorous and it works. Our link building work focuses on the earned mentions that actually exist in the art world, meaning show listings, press, gallery pages, and collection references, not directory spam.
Artist sites break in predictable ways. Enormous uncompressed images, JavaScript galleries that render nothing to a crawler, infinite scroll that hides most of a portfolio, missing or broken sitemaps, and template pages that all share the same title tag.
We prioritize crawl and index control first, because none of the content work matters if search engines cannot see the pages. That means confirming your sitemap is complete and submitted, checking Search Console for pages stuck in "Discovered, currently not indexed" or "Crawled, currently not indexed," fixing duplicate and missing title tags, and making sure your portfolio is reachable through actual links rather than only through a script.
Speed is the second lever, and for artists it is usually the biggest one. High resolution photography is the whole point of the site, so the answer is not smaller images, it is correct formats, responsive sizes, compression that preserves color fidelity, and lazy loading that does not hide images from crawlers. Our technical SEO work covers this in more depth.
Share your website and what you want more of. We will look at the design, the build and your search visibility against other artists working in your medium, then send a plan.
Get a Free ProposalIf you are paying for SEO, you should not have to take anyone's word for it. We document a baseline first, then show what changed, when it changed, and what it did to real inquiry actions.
Most reporting gets stuck on rankings and sessions because those are easy to chart, even when they do not match what the studio actually feels. That is not how we run it. Proof has to tie back to the pages you care about, meaning your name, your series pages, your shop, and your contact page.
Here is what proof looks like in practice. We pull a starting snapshot from Search Console for clicks, impressions, and indexing coverage on artwork and series pages. We pull GA4 for engaged sessions and conversion events. We check how your name performs as a query and whether you own the first result. Then we look at what those visits produced, meaning form submissions, commission inquiries, print orders, and email signups.
And yes, attribution has limits. A collector might see you at a show, find you on Instagram, search your name a month later, and email you from their phone. We do not promise perfect single-source credit. We promise clean tracking, consistent definitions, and reporting that matches how the business actually works.
If you want the plan side of this rather than just the reporting, our SEO strategy work is where we map intent to pages and decide what gets fixed first.
We track the full path from query to inquiry, then report it in a way that answers one question. Did search create more real opportunities this month than last month.
Dashboards are fine. The part that matters is the note explaining what moved, what caused it, and what changes next.
If the work includes content support, we keep it tied to your practice, not filler posts. That is the difference between writing to publish and writing to be found, and it is why our SEO content work is built around intent and internal linking rather than volume.
Most artist SEO engagements go sideways for one reason. Nobody agreed on what a win looks like.
Expect the work to start with measurement and access rather than a content calendar. We define which inquiry actions matter for your practice, then tie them to the pages that drive them, usually your name, your series and medium pages, your shop, your shows page, and your contact page. You will also see us get specific about the things that break artist sites in particular, meaning uncrawlable galleries, oversized images, deleted sold work, and inconsistent name and bio information scattered across the web.
Expect some early friction around access. We need Search Console, GA4, and admin access to your site platform. If you are on a builder with template restrictions, some fixes take longer or need a workaround, and we will say so rather than pretending otherwise.
Also, do not buy guaranteed sales. Nobody controls the art market, your show schedule, or what a collector does after they leave your booth. What we can control is whether the right pages get crawled, indexed, and clicked, and whether those clicks turn into tracked inquiries.
First 30 days is about visibility of the basics and clean baselines. We audit indexing and crawl behavior across your portfolio, especially pages stuck unindexed, missing or duplicate title tags, and images that are invisible to search. We check whether you own the first result for your own name, and if you do not, we find out what is outranking you and why. At the same time we lock down measurement, meaning GA4 events for inquiries, form tracking, and a baseline of branded and non-branded query performance.
Days 31 to 60 is where the artist-specific work shows up. We restructure the portfolio so significant work and series have real pages with real text. We fix image file names, alt text, compression, and sizing across the site. We handle sold and archived work with rules so past demand keeps working for you. We build or repair the shows and exhibition history pages, and we start reconciling your name, bio, medium, and website across every listing, gallery page, and profile where they currently disagree.
Days 61 to 90 is where you should start seeing movement you can feel. Not just impressions. More inquiries, more print orders, more email signups, and better positioning for your name and your medium. We expand what is working rather than doing everything. That usually means deepening the series and subject pages that started to rank, strengthening internal links into them, and building the small set of question-answering content that makes AI assistants more likely to describe your work accurately and cite your site.
A good ongoing cadence is one part technical maintenance, one part content depth, and one part entity and listing consistency. It is not glamorous. It works.
If you are comparing options, ask specifics. How would they handle sold work URLs. What would they do about a JavaScript portfolio gallery. What do they report on each month besides rankings. How would they check whether AI assistants describe your practice correctly.
If you want a look at your current setup, use the contact page and tell us what platform your site is built on, roughly how many pieces are on it, and how you currently take inquiries. Pricing for a one-time review is on the SEO pricing page.
Both. We design and build artist websites on WordPress and Shopify, and we update existing sites on those platforms and others. The SEO is part of the build: page structure, image handling, structured data and redirects are planned before anything launches.
Most artists do not need a rebuild. We start with the site you have, fix what is holding it back and add the pages it is missing. If a move to a new platform is the better call, we explain why and plan it so your existing search visibility carries over.
Shows and galleries create the interest. Search is where people go to act on it. A collector who meets you at a fair will usually look you up days or weeks later, and whatever they find at that moment is your entire follow-up. Search also brings in people who have never encountered your work, through medium, subject, and style queries.
Yes. Squarespace, Wix, Format, Cargo, Shopify, and WordPress each have their own constraints, and each has real, fixable problems. Most of what matters for artists, meaning page structure, image handling, text depth, and internal linking, is achievable on any of them. Where a platform genuinely blocks something, we say so instead of pushing a rebuild you do not need.
Most artists see early movement in 30 to 60 days once tracking is in place and indexing problems are cleared. Meaningful gains usually appear between 60 and 120 days, once artwork pages are being discovered reliably and name and bio information is consistent across the web.
Keep pages for sold work that has earned links, rankings, or traffic, with a clear sold status and paths to similar available work or a commission inquiry. Redirect pages with no history to the closest relevant series or medium page. Deleting sold work outright throws away authority you already earned.
By becoming easy to identify and easy to verify. That means consistent name, medium, location, and biography information across your site, show listings, gallery pages, press, and collection references, plus pages that answer collector questions in plain text. AI assistants cite sources they can resolve with confidence.
It depends on the size of the portfolio and the state of the site. A one-time review and prioritized plan is the usual starting point. Current pricing is on the SEO pricing page.
Design, development and search work for artists, handled by one senior person: a site built to show the work, kept up to date, and found by the collectors already looking.
We identify the medium, subject, style, and technique searches collectors actually use, then build the page structure to rank for them.
Individual artwork and series pages with crawlable titles, descriptions, and structured data so each piece can be found and cited.
Portfolio, series and artwork pages designed around how you want the work seen, with an inquiry path on every page a collector might land on.
New builds and redesigns on WordPress or Shopify, with redirects, image handling and structured data carried over so search visibility is kept.
Complete on-page optimization including title tags, heading structure, schema markup, and internal linking architecture built for visual portfolios.
Fix crawl and index issues, JavaScript gallery problems, Core Web Vitals, and the page speed damage that high resolution photography causes.
Artist statement, process, series, and show pages that answer real collector questions and give press and galleries something to link to.
Product page optimization, availability handling, and category structure to increase organic revenue from print and original sales.
New pages, gallery fixes, speed work, mobile layout fixes and inquiry forms on the site you already have, without a full rebuild.
No vague promises. MDRN SEO builds sites and search programs for artists tied to real inquiry definitions and measurable results.
Micah Albert has spent more than 15 years in SEO, including enterprise programs for Intel, Century 21, Discover, and Academy Sports + Outdoors. He leads the strategy on every MDRN SEO engagement.
Every optimization we perform is backed by data, competitive analysis, and proven methodology. We focus on what actually moves the needle for rankings and lead generation.
We combine on-page, off-page, technical, local, and content strategy into a comprehensive plan that covers every angle of search visibility.
Rankings, traffic, and competitor movement are tracked continuously with automated alerts. When algorithms shift, we adapt your strategy immediately to protect your positions.
No black-box reporting. You receive clear, detailed monthly reports showing exactly what we did, how your rankings moved, and what's planned next.
You work directly with founder Micah Albert, the person who reads your Search Console data and decides what gets fixed first. No account-management layer, no junior handoff.
Share your website and we will send a review of the design, the build and the biggest search and AI visibility opportunities for your work.