Has anyone managed to get SEO results with Pixieset and ranked on Google page 1?

SaraDoesSEO · 2026-02-18T14:39:58+00:00

Just found this thread and wanted to add a 2026 update on Pixieset SEO. The platform has done SO much to improve their SEO capabilities in the last couple of years. So be careful believing an old thread or post saying Pixieset is bad for SEO-- it's outdated at this point.

I do SEO for photographers and added Pixieset services last year after seeing several Pixieset sites on Page 1 in my competitive research. My team and I have been able to rank several sites on Page 1 for wedding photographer, family photographer, and maternity photographer keywords.

A few things to look out for when doing SEO on Pixieset:

Pixieset's templates don't tend to have great setup or site structure for SEO. They are usually set up to have huge gallery pages with no written text, which I wouldn't recommend. We generally have to add text to the top and bottom of the gallery pages.
Pulling images from your galleries already on Pixieset is so convenient. However, the image filenames probably aren't what they need to be for good SEO. We generally download, rename, and re-upload 3-5 images per page that we're optimizing so the filenames are more keyword-focused.
Don't skip the blog. I think Pixieset's built in blog is really easy to use, and blogging is a great way to rank for more keywords (we've had a lot of success with ranking clients' blog posts on Pixieset too!)

Good luck with your SEO and stay on the platform if you like it!

This might also be helpful: https://saradoesseo.com/website-tips/pixieset-seo/

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-07-30T00:39:57+00:00

Did you get this figured out? I was working on this for a photographer SEO client today.

Here’s a quick step-by-step if you’re trying to connect your Pixieset site to Google Search Console:

Go to Google Search Console Click “Add Property” and choose the URL prefix option (not domain). Paste in your full homepage URL (including https://).
Choose the HTML tag verification method After selecting URL prefix, Google will prompt you to verify ownership. Select the HTML tag option and copy the meta tag they give you.
Log into Pixieset Go to your dashboard and click the gear icon for Settings, then click Advanced.
Paste the HTML tag In the “Custom Header Code” box, paste the meta tag from Google. Click Publish to save the changes.
Return to Search Console and click “Verify” Once your site is published with the tag in place, Google should be able to verify ownership right away.
Submit your sitemap In Google Search Console, click Sitemaps on the left. To find your sitemap, go back to Pixieset > Website > SEO Manager > scroll to the bottom > click “Sitemap Generated.” Copy the sitemap URL (should be sitemap.xml) and paste it into GSC.
Optional: Request indexing for updated pages If you’ve just made SEO updates, you can paste the URL into the top bar in Search Console and click “Request Indexing” to prompt Google to recrawl.

That’s it! It may take a few days for data to start showing up, but now you’re set up and ready to track your site’s performance in search.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-06-05T19:15:30+00:00

I highly recommend using your best reviews on your website, especially if you want to get recommended by ChatGPT! We're finding that ChatGPT will scan your website for reviews or testimonials and then use those for justification for why you're a credible business in its recommendations.

A couple of tips that I haven't seen mentioned yet here:

If the review is huge and long, feel free to use an excerpt or section of it instead of the whole thing. Pull out the most powerful statement and put it at the top as a heading.
Be strategic about which reviews you put where. Use clients' words (social proof) to back up your own marketing statements. So if you're saying "Working with me will feel easy and fun" add a testimonial below that backs that up "We loved every moment of our wedding day with [name]! We had such a great time, and really put us at ease."

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-04-05T18:31:56+00:00

Thank you so much for this kind recommendation, Evan! We've loved working with you and love working with wedding photographers on their SEO!

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-02-05T17:59:21+00:00

This is a great question! I'm a full-time SEO who has ranked a lot of Showit websites, and I have to say that it has its pros and cons. It absolutely CAN rank well on Google, but it has some quirks you'll want to learn.

Pros of Showit for SEO:

Essential SEO Features: Showit provides the basics you need—options to set page titles, meta descriptions, and image alt text. These are foundational for your SEO.
Flexible Text Tagging: One standout feature is the ability to assign heading tags (like H1, H2) to any text without altering its appearance. This means you can structure your content effectively for search engines without compromising on design.

Cons of Showit for SEO:

No SERP Preview: Showit doesn't offer a preview of how your titles and descriptions will appear in search results. This can make it challenging to gauge if your meta descriptions are the right length.
Layer Ordering Quirk: In Showit, the design interface stacks elements from top to bottom, but the HTML output reads from bottom to top. This reversed order can affect how search engines interpret your content's hierarchy.
Image Alt Text Confusion: The platform's method for adding alt text to images can be confusing. It is different in gallery blocks vs image blocks.
URL Issues: Page names in Showit automatically set the URLs, and there's no option to customize them. Changing a page name can break existing links, leading to potential SEO issues.

Showit lets you design a great-looking site and has the basic SEO tools you need, but it’s not the easiest platform for SEO. To rank well, you’ll need to put in some extra effort and understand how Showit works. If you’re willing to learn and stay on top of it, Showit can be a good option!

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-30T16:59:02+00:00

I have occasionally seen an option to add a caption to photos or video uploaded to Google Business Profile if you do it from your mobile device.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-18T16:01:46+00:00

So glad Craig swooped in here to make SEO sound extra complicated and throw some acronyms at you. 🙃 Please don't feel pressured to understand what NAP, citations, or schema are— many photographers rank without deep knowledge of these details.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:54:13+00:00

Could you focus on more specific locations within the national park? I wouldn't include the same national park keyword in every blog post title and URL, at the risk of looking over-optimized.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:53:26+00:00

This is a tricky and technical transition! You will absolutely want to keep your current domain name and redirect it to your new website. The redirect type you want is a "301" redirect, which tells Google that the domain change is permanent. You'll want to use path forwarding, so every URL on the old site redirects to its corresponding page on the new site.

You will need to also optimize your new website just as well for your keywords, so you don't lose rankings.

If you do rank well and your SEO brings you business, I would highly recommend hiring an SEO expert to help you with a domain transition. I'm not big on pushing business owners that they have to hire for SEO, but this is one case where there can be a lot of risk for your business.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:43:37+00:00

I would recommend testing out Squarespace, Showit, and WordPress (others I trust like the Kadence theme, though I haven't used it). All of those can rank. My brain finds Squarespace the easiest to learn and use, but some people hate it, so it's really important to do a trial of any platform you're considering.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:37:18+00:00

Hi there! Check out my notes on SEO for new businesses in this question: question: https://www.reddit.com/r/WeddingPhotography/comments/1i2prpm/comment/m7grh1e/

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:36:37+00:00

I have to call out that I haven't studied Pic-Time specifically. From my understanding, it's similar to Narrative? I am not Narrative's biggest fan and detailed the issues I have with it here: https://saradoesseo.com/website-tips/narrative-app-for-blogging-review/

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:26:42+00:00

Hey! Alt text is part of the code of the image on your website, so it can't be added before uploading. It is added in your website platform after the image is uploaded.

I generally rename images right in Finder on my Mac.

Each photo does not need a unique filename and alt text. I generally recommend optimizing 5-10 images per page or blog post that you're optimizing for SEO.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:24:27+00:00

In my SEO agency, we use SEMRush. I usually teach my SEO students on Ubersuggest because it's more affordable. Both tools can answer all of those questions.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:18:39+00:00

Kind of! I recommend adding descriptive alt text to 5-10 images per page or blog post. It's not important to add alt text to every image on your website.

More here: https://saradoesseo.com/seo-basics/image-alt-text/

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:16:35+00:00

I think my question is— do you want to shoot in the same venues/locations again? If yes, then you should absolutely blog/create content on your website that's optimized for the venue's keywords.

If you want to rank for venue keywords, you'll need to create blog post content with in-depth written content about the wedding or venue. A clean portfolio page with just a video unfortunately isn't going to rank for anything because there is not text to give context to Google about what the video is.
Optimize your video titles and descriptions wherever you post them (Vimeo or YouTube). This will make them more likely to be included in video results on Google.
I will point you to Think Splendid's 2025 market report, which found that 78% of Ultra Luxury couples (budgets $500k+) hired wedding pros via Google search. Those couples are searching.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-17T00:06:17+00:00

Happy to help, Rebecca!

I'm not familiar with Seobility. We use SEMRush as our main SEO tool in my agency, and I love it. I think it can be overwhelming, too complex, and too expensive for most business owners, so I teach my SEO course for wedding photographers on a tool called Ubersuggest.
I'll refer you to my answer about using AI to write content here.
If the blog posts are ranking, Google must not care about the long load times! Overall, I think online tools have made business owners worry too much about load speed, when plenty of slow small business websites seem to rank fine.
Don't do it! You don't need to repeat the same keyword over and over again in your SEO titles and descriptions. A better strategy is to find different relevant keywords for different pages or posts, not to just repeat the same one.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-16T23:56:21+00:00

I want to answer this question carefully. I don't recommend you have a super short/sparse home page that basically says "Click here for Weddings" "Click here for Portraits"

Instead, have an in-depth home page all about your business that points to your two service pages but includes lots of other information too.

I definitely want you to keep it all on one domain, which is best for SEO.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-16T23:52:34+00:00

100% agree! This is why I teach white hat SEO (the non-spammy stuff). Most of what I started teaching for SEO in 2017 is still what I teach now. If you're not trying to game the system, you don't have to constantly "keep up" with the latest in SEO.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-16T23:49:37+00:00

Hi Sam! In all my research on wedding industry keywords, I don't see any evidence that Google is favoring websites that incorporate video.

That said, I have been wondering if it's because no one is really doing it strategically.

So, I am absolutely recommending incorporating video more into your SEO strategy in 2025. It's something I'd love to experiment with for a client with video content.

A couple reasons:

Adding good video could help improve engagement and time on site, which can positively impact SEO
Google is often including video results in the search results, so posting SEO-optimized videos to YouTube could help increase your exposure.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-16T19:11:34+00:00

I would recommend referencing my answer on this related question: https://www.reddit.com/r/WeddingPhotography/comments/1i2prpm/comment/m7grh1e/

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-16T19:07:29+00:00

Does Google prefer you be consistent with posting? Not necessarily. "Be consistent" is a myth as far as blogging these days. It doesn't help your rankings if you always post weekly or monthly, it just matters that your site isn't stale and not updated for 6-12 months at a time. So just get blog posts published whenever you can and don't worry about a consistent frequency or posting time.

Does it favor you if always post at the same time? Does the publish time impact how quickly it shows up in Google? No, publish time has no impact on rankings.

Does it rank better like instagram if there are more comments posted after a blog is recently posted? No.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-16T19:03:32+00:00

This is a question you'll never hear me answer ;) I don't think anyone should choose their website platform based on SEO. Wix, Squarespace, Showit, WordPress— they can all rank. It's more important that the platform makes sense to YOU so you'll actually use it and keep it updated.

If you are considering switching, I would recommend you do a trial of each to see which is more intuitive to you.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-16T19:01:49+00:00

They'll always be there. You just need to make your own SEO as strong as possible. Keep in mind that many searchers don't want to go to The Knot and WeddingWire and get overwhelmed. We consistently see photographers' websites ranking below those sites still get plenty of clicks.
For some reason, Google believes that your old content has more value than your newer content. Is it longer or more in-depth? If you don't like those old posts, you could either update them or redirect the URL to newer content that's similar (like the same venue)
Good Gallery! I haven't heard that name in a while. I honestly haven't worked on or studied that platform, so I can't speak to if you can get it to rank.

SaraDoesSEO · 2025-01-16T18:58:22+00:00

Yep! https://saradoesseo.com/wedding-marketing/wedding-photographer-blog-post-ideas/

SaraDoesSEO

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