Your portfolio on Google: how people who don't know you yet find you

The two searches

The first is for your name. It comes from someone who saw you at a concert, got a recommendation or kept your card. That one is easy: if you have a site with your name on it, it shows up.

The second is for what you do, almost always with a place: "guitar teacher Pombal", "children's book illustrator", "outdoor family portraits Aveiro". Whoever types it doesn't know you exist. This is the one that brings new work, and this is the one worth preparing your site for.

What Google needs to read

Google doesn't look at your photographs the way a person does. It reads the text on the page, the title, the file names and the description that comes with each image. A beautiful gallery without a single word is, to Google, an empty page.

• Say what you do in the words your clients use. "Chromatic explorations" may be true, but nobody searches for it; "commissioned oil paintings" gets searched.
• Say where. If you work in an area, write it in the text: the town, and the places around it you also travel to.
• Give each kind of work its own page: weddings on one, portraits on another; lessons for children on one, for adults on another. A page about everything answers each search poorly.
• Add two or three lines to each piece in your portfolio: what it is, who it was for, where. That's what Google reads, and it's also what convinces whoever is looking.
• Describe your images. Each photo can carry a short text that Google reads and that people who can't see well hear: "Family portrait on Buarcos beach", not "IMG_4021".

The Google Business Profile

It's the listing that appears on the map and next to the results, with opening hours, photos and reviews. It's free, and in a search with a place in it, it often appears before any website.

• It's for people who meet their clients in person: you teach, run sessions, welcome people to your studio, or go to their homes.
• If you work from home, you can hide the address and show only the area you serve.
• If you only work online, Google's rules don't allow you a listing. Then your site does all the work.
• Reviews count: ask happy clients for one right after the job, while the feeling is still fresh.

What happens outside your site

Google trusts a site that other places talk about. You don't need anything sophisticated: you need the places where your work already appears to mention your name and include the link.

• The gallery, shop or fair where you show your work.
• The school, conservatoire or association where you teach or play.
• The local paper or radio station that covered you — ask them to add the link to the story.
• Your social profiles, all pointing to the same site, under the same name.

How long it takes

A new site takes weeks before Google shows it, and months to climb in searches where there's competition. The more specific what you do and the smaller the area, the faster you reach the first page.

To see what's happening, Google has a free tool, Search Console: it shows the searches your site appeared in, how often, and how many people clicked. You don't need to be technical to read it — just to visit it once a month.

When you don't need this

• All your work comes by recommendation, and there's enough of it.
• A gallery, publisher or agency represents you and handles the promotion.
• You don't want new clients right now — and that's fine.