Case 007

the secret files of new york art detective

Walter Lin P.I.

website and s.e.o.

The Backup Gambit

The website runs on Squarespace, slick as a dealer sliding a pair of aces across the table. It’s reliable—for now. But the thought’s been gnawing at me like a rat in the walls: what happens if Squarespace folds? What if it all just disappears overnight, dragging my site into the abyss? It’s not paranoia—it’s pragmatism. So I started backing things up. Photos, text, every line and pixel tied down in an organized safety net. Just in case.

At the same time, another beast showed up. SEO. Search Engine Optimization—sounds clean, almost clinical, but don’t let it fool you. It’s a grind. It’s about making sure your site loads fast, plays nice with the bots, doesn’t break under scrutiny. And when you’re retrofitting an entire website by hand, trust me—it eats time like a black hole swallowing stars.

The Scrape and the Scour

For me, SEO meant combing through every image on the site. Resize. Reduce file size. Rename. Provide alt text. Not one or two images—many. Too many. I ran some free trials on SEO tools, scanning for broken links, missing headings, whatever might have slipped through the cracks. SEMrush was the standout—a sharp blade in a messy toolkit.

But Squarespace? It has quirks. Like lightbox on images. Slick for the user, sure. But SEO? It doesn’t like it. No matter how I finessed it, the bots weren’t buying it. Frustrating doesn’t begin to cover it. Sometimes you just have to let the machine win.

Overview page from semrush’s site audit. Site health 90% - i’ll take that, for now at least.

Still Climbing

The work isn’t finished. Not yet. Product descriptions need text—more of it. Keywords need to be folded in, seamlessly, like whispers in the shadows. Backlinks—other sites pointing to mine—have to be hunted down. And then there’s the 85% of my work still waiting to be added to the site, pictures and text untouched, unprepped. It’s a mountain, but the climb is inching forward. Every step brings me closer, even if the summit stays out of reach.

For now, it’s progress. One tick on the list, one piece closer to bringing the whole thing together. And as someone once said—onwards and upwards. Or maybe just onwards. Sometimes that’s enough.