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Enhancing culture through SEO: the Venice Biennale case

The Venice Biennale is the most significant cultural foundation in Italy and one of the most important globally. It hosts international events in various contemporary arts disciplines, including Art, Music, Cinema, Theatre, Architecture, and Dance -e.g. the Venice film festival. Its primary goal is to promote emerging artistic trends. It’s crucial to note that the site also functions as an ecommerce platform, selling tickets for its events, publications from its publishing house (the Venice Biennale editions), and merchandise.

The cultural sector holds immense importance in Italy. However, the activities of organisations and foundations in this field need to be enhanced and promoted. That’s why it’s crucial not to underestimate the strategic value of effective SEO for their online presence.

While the Venice Biennale is a significant foundation, there are several aspects that we could address to enhance international visibility and traffic on the official website. This insight comes from an analysis that involved cross-referencing data from various tools, including Website Hubspot Grader, Google PageSpeed Insights, SEO Site Checkup, SEOptimer, and Semrush.

SEO analysis

The official website of the Venice Biennale attracts around 349,200 monthly visitors, primarily through organic search (>99%). Among these visitors, 59% are from Italy, while 41% are from other parts of the world, according to Semrush data.
Despite the positive scores from the analysis conducted using all five tools, a few issues require attention.

Fig. 1. The Venice Biennale official website.

Specifically:

  • 10 links and 27 out of 35 images lack descriptions or “Alt” attributes;
  • meta descriptions exceed the recommended length (> 220 characters);
  • some links are not crawlable due to the absence of a recognizable Href attribute;
  • there is an inappropriate use of H1 and H2 tags, with only one title and an excess of H2s.

Additionally, SEO Site Checkup has identified the absence of a Google Analytics script, indicating that the site does not utilise this valuable tool.

Fig 2. An overview of SEO site positioning according to Semrush.
Fig 3. The Venice Biennale’s significance in the global cultural landscape enhances the quantity and quality of backlinks, earning the site a position assessed by Semrush as “reputable.”

Performance

In terms of performance, there is room for improvement. According to the Hubspot tool, the homepage takes approximately 8.2 seconds to load completely, which falls outside the optimal range (it should ideally be within 5.3 seconds).

The issues primarily revolve around coding:

  • some JavaScript files are not minified, which is a common best practice;
  • the site is not utilising the updated HTTP2 protocol;
  • there are inline CSS styles, which are not recommended as they increase page loading times;
  • third-party code is slowing down the loading of pages;
  • images lack “width” and “height” attributes;
  • the cache policy is not optimised for efficient loading of elements.
Fig. 4. According to PageSpeed Insights, a tool from Google, the site’s performance is poor, as loading times exceed the limits necessary for a seamless browsing experience.
Fig. 5. Also Website Grader, a tool by HubSpot, evaluated the site’s performance and identified some major issues.

Additionally, both PageSpeed Insights and SEOptimer indicate that the homepage falls below the minimum scores for “Google’s Core Web Vitals”. These metrics, designed by Google to measure user experience on a particular page, are becoming increasingly important as a ranking factor.

Fig. 6. SEOptimer reports the site is scoring poorly on “Google’s Core Web Vitals” evaluation for the mobile version: these are metrics that measure user experience and are increasingly important ranking factors.

Links

Due to its significance in the cultural heritage sector, it’s unsurprising that the Venice Biennale website boasts an impressive number of backlinks (2.8M), with an “Authority score” of 54 out of 100, categorising it as “very good and niche relevant”, according to Semrush.

However, even in this scenario, these results could be further optimised if the link URLs were more SEO-friendly. Currently, they seem less discernible, potentially explaining why SEOptimer recognizes “only” 1.1M backlinks, in contrast to Semrush’s evaluation.

Fig. 7. SEO Site Checkup indicates that certain URLs are not SEO-friendly, which undoubtedly impacts the site’s positioning.

Mobile

On the mobile front, there are several areas that could benefit from improvement, focusing on both performance and user experience:

  • in many cases, tap targets are not appropriately sized;
  • none of the images are in a new-generation format (webp, avif, etc.);
  • the dimensions of the images do not always match the dimensions of the user’s viewport;
  • background and foreground colours do not consistently maintain an adequate contrast ratio.

Overall, the scores from various tools, especially PageSpeed Insights, are relatively low in this area.

Fig. 8. Website Grader points out that tap targets are not appropriately sized for the mobile version, impacting the site’s usability.

Security

The tools employed highlighted several security issues, contributing to a low score in this area as well. Specifically, according to SEO Site Checkup:

  • the SSL certificate is present but will expire within a month;
  • the HTTP2 protocol, which ensures greater security, is not in use;
  • the site lacks an STS header (Strict Transport Security), a security measure that forces browsers to use secure connections for HTTPS sites;
  • the homepage employs target=”_blank” links without the rel=”noopener” or rel=”noreferrer” attribute, potentially exposing it to performance and security risks.

Furthermore, the Hubspot tool identified outdated JavaScript libraries that could be exploited by attackers.

Speed

As mentioned earlier, the loading speed of the home pages, especially on mobile devices, is not optimal. In this context, SEO Site Checkup identified several issues:

  • the “Page Object test” revealed that the homepage triggers over 20 http requests, primarily due to the loading of media files, JS, and CSS;
  • image formats such as jpg and png require longer loading times compared to newer formats like webp, avif, and svg;
  • the “Document Object Model” (DOM) of the homepage consists of 1,921 nodes, exceeding the recommended value of 1,500 nodes (the DOM’s complexity depends on how the HTML page was structured);
  • the “Render Blocking Resources test” highlighted that the loading of certain JavaScript and CSS files obstructs the rendering process of the page.
Fig. 9. One of the issues detected by Website Grader is the absence of JavaScript minification, a best practice essential for enhancing page loading speed.

According to PageSpeed Insights, these factors prevent the site from achieving a good score in terms of “First Contentful Paint” and “Largest Contentful Paint”, as well as the mentioned “Google’s Core Web Vitals”. These metrics indicate the time when the first text or image appears and when the largest text or image is displayed, respectively.

Recommended actions

The primary recommended interventions focus on performance, as this area appears to be particularly lacking for the site. According to all the tools used, it is advisable to address the following areas:

  1. Images and videos: speed up the site by optimising pages, compressing files where possible, utilising new-generation formats, and adding “alt” attributes to enhance accessibility.
  2. Page requests: reduce the number of HTTP requests your site makes by removing unnecessary images, scripts, or files. Eliminate any render-blocking resources and consider adopting the HTTP2 protocol.
  3. Code cleanup: utilise a minifier tool for JavaScript, remove unnecessary JavaScript libraries, or update them with security patches. Ensure each link has a recognizable “Href” attribute.
Fig. 10. SEO Site Checkup detected extensive page loading times and offered some recommendations.

These operations are particularly critical because, as SEO SIte Checkup reminds us, “users may abandon pages that take longer than 5 seconds to load, resulting in a potential loss of up to 50% of visitors. Faster loading pages can lead to increased traffic, better conversions, and higher sales” (SEO Site Checkup, 2023).

Originally published on Medium, November 22, 2023

REFERENCES

Fig. 1. The Venice Biennale official website. Available at: https://www.labiennale.org/ [Accessed October 16, 2023]

Fig. 2 & 3. An overview of the SEO analysis on the Venice Biennale website provided by Semrush. Available at: https://www.semrush.com/
[Accessed October 18, 2023]

Fig. 4. Some details of the SEO analysis provided by PageSpeed Insights, a Google tool. Available at: https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-www-labiennale-org-en/qx76a157bb?form_factor=desktop
[Accessed October 17, 2023]

Fig. 5. Relevant highlights of the SEO analysis provided by Website Grader, a Hubspot tool. Available at: https://website.grader.com/tests/www.labiennale.org
[Accessed October 16, 2023]

Fig. 6. What SEOptimer detected analysing the SEO of the Venice Biennale website. Available at: https://www.seoptimer.com/www.labiennale.org
[Accessed October 19, 2023]

Fig. 7. Key findings from SEO Site Checkup. Available at: https://seositecheckup.com/
[Accessed October 20, 2023]

Fig. 8 & 9. Further insights of the SEO analysis provided by Website Grader, a Hubspot tool. Available at: https://website.grader.com/tests/www.labiennale.org
[Accessed October 16, 2023]

Fig. 10. Some recommendations from SEO Site Checkup. Available at: https://seositecheckup.com/
[Accessed October 20, 2023]