Photography SEO

Start by Choosing the Right CMS

I recommend Squarespace.

I moved from WordPress to Squarespace because the design and typography are much cleaner. As a photographer you’re selling something visual, so I’d recommend Squarespace for most photographers.

In the SEO Guide, I will walk you through how to rank on Google

• Create a website

• How to make content rank on Google

• How to do Image SEO

• How to create links & why it matters

How to make photos rank on Google

I won’t go into all the advanced technical stuff because it will confuse you more than it will help you.

Let me explain how I this page rank on Google for the search “Street Portraits”.

• The title tag of the page contains the word “street portraits”

• I have mentioned the sentence “street portraits in color” and “street portrait in colors” throughout the page since it’s the search I want to rank for on Google.

How to do Image SEO as a photographer

Images SEO is crucial for a photographer since Google often shows 6-7 images on the first page of photo-related searches.

When you upload a photo for your photography portfolio or blog post, remember to:

• Describe your photo in the file name before you upload it.

• Include a description of your photo in your Title, Alt Text, Description, and caption.

An example of Search Engine Optimization for Photographers

When I uploaded the photo you see above, I named the photo “street-portrait”.

This gives Google an idea of what the photo is about and it helps it rank in Google’s image search.

Image SEO tip: Always include a description of your photo when you upload it. Add a Title, Alt Text, Description, Caption, and filename. Remember to include the keyword you are targeting and synonyms too.

Keyword Research: How to find which keyword you should target on Google

Use this free keyword tool to generate ideas for which keywords you should mention in your text.

Let’s say you are writing about Street Photography Cameras, then you put that word into the keyword tool and it will spit out which synonyms and related keywords you should include in your copy.

For this article, I’m targeting people who search for “Photography SEO” or “Search Engine Optimization for photography”.

How to create links & why it matters

Google’s job is to give the user the most relevant results possible.

One way Google determines which website they should show on the first page on Google is by looking at links pointing to a website.

Let’s say you and I both have galleries of street photography and both of us have written decent content mentioning “street photography” “street photos”, plus all the synonyms we can imagine, then Google looks at the authority of my site and your site.

Let’s say National Geographic has mentioned you and your website in an article.

Google’s bots called crawlers knows about this, and because National Geographic has a lot of links pointing to their website and now mentioned your websites, gives Google a signal that your website must be somewhat credible since National Geographic links to it.

The reason your website doesn’t show up on Google could be

You might have written a long ‘SEO text’ including all the right keywords that should make you go directly to the first page on Google, but you are not that.

When I search for Street photography on Google, I get 752,000,000 search results.

In order for me to get my photography and portfolio website on page 1 on Google, I’d need to be the most relevant search results for that query.

• Google doesn’t think you are the best search results because:

  • Due to not enough links from photography websites with authority.

  • Due to sloppy content:  Maybe you wrote too much for Google and not enough text for the users.

  • The Bounce rate:
    Because people who visit your website leave immediately. This is caused by having a slow site or bad usability.

  • Technical SEO Issues:
    You might have a technical website issue as duplicate content or a problem with getting your site crawled and indexed.

  • Your photography website is really slow: Maybe you have included large photographs in your portfolio that makes your website load really slow. Try to keep all your photos below 100-300 kilobytes.