All photographers know that their skills are primarily rated based on their portfolio with the best works. As many photographers tend to create websites with their portfolios and other personal information, photography SEO basics would be essential to learn about. Best tactics for SEO for photographers and their websites are based on standard SEO techniques, though SEO keywords for photographers would be different. This article contains all you need to know about the SEO approaches for promoting photographers’ websites.
Basic SEO for photographers
Even if you are new to website promotion, you might have probably heard about SEO already – this abbreviation stands for search engine optimization. Basic SEO techniques are used to make a website more visible to online users. Those techniques range from keyword selection to technical SEO implementation.
Best SEO keywords for photographers
When optimizing your websites for Google or other search engines, you should select the right keywords first of all. Examples of SEO keywords for photographers range from simply “wedding photography” to “best wedding photography services in Dallas”. You should select those keywords that have immense ranking potential and match the activity you do.
To search for photography-related keywords, consider the dedicated SEO tools that would help you with that. Choosing simply the keywords that you like would not be an option because hundreds of other photographers might also use them. You need to select the ones that are not frequently used and describe your photography services at the same time.
Local SEO
While working on your keywords and phrases, you should also take local SEO into consideration. It means that you might consider choosing photography-related keywords that also include the name of your city or local area. Very often people are searching for photographers who would capture their special moments exactly in the same city.
URL modification
The address of the website means a lot to search engines when ranking websites. That is why you should use the proper URL that describes your photography services. Also, it should preferably include your name or the name of your photography studio. If you decide to optimize your photography website for the local SEO, include the city name in the URL address as well.
Advanced SEO for photographers
While basic SEO is important for every website, and it is literally necessary to be implemented for various reasons, there are also advanced techniques. Those usually refer to external sources and bring astonishing results in the website promotion.
Off-page SEO
One of those advanced tactics is off-page SEO which implies the reference to other websites and online platforms. It is highly recommended to create an off-page SEO strategy to take successive steps for effective photography website promotion.
A typical off-page SEO strategy heavily relies on link-building approaches. Webmasters aim to get paid do-follow backlinks as the latter help to raise the website reputation and positions on search engines. Such backlinks should come from credible websites with high domain authority to contribute to your photography website promotion.
Sitemaps
Taking care of sitemaps is important as that helps Google understand the structure of your website. Sitemaps also play a great role in describing how to crawl pages with images and graphics content. That is why elaborating on sitemaps is crucial for photography websites as those usually contain a lot of images and photos.
Other photography SEO tips
Along with basic and advanced SEO techniques, you might consider other SEO approaches that would help you to reach the top positions on Google rankings faster. Those could be small things, which might seem even unnecessary at first, but those greatly help to improve your website’s reputation and gain opportunities.
Create a blog
You might consider your website not only as the source for attracting customers but as a platform for drawing the attention of other businesses operating in adjacent spheres. To make that happen, consider creating a blog section on your website. There you would be able to publish articles about photography and use additional keywords that would help people to find you on the web. Moreover, you might consider guest blogging as the way to insert quality content links to other websites that wish to publish guest articles on your blog.
Image SEO
While most attention is dedicated to keywords and text, the promotion of images on the web is often left behind. However, this approach in SEO for photographers is effective for their websites on WordPress or other platforms. Image optimization has a high potential for photography SEO for Google top reach as people who search for photographers usually pay more attention to images rather than to the text.
Before you add a new gallery to your portfolio, it is needed to do portrait retouching on the website or in Photoshop. Good retouched photo will increase the conversion to the client. It’s also important to follow the steps below to get these photos better ranked on Google Images.
- Select a proper file name for your photo;
- Reduce the file size so that the photo is loaded fast (make sure that its quality remains exceptional);
- Add the alt text.
