From starting your photography business, to creating your website, to essentially having to become a content creator on Instagram (and everything in between), building a thriving business is A LOT. And once you’ve done all of these things, it can be devastating to see that you’re still not getting any traffic to your website. What if I told you that there’s one most likely culprit holding you back? In most cases, it’s your SEO, and thankfully it’s totally fixable!
As a web designer, this is a common mistake I see among photographers. If you’re DIYing your website, you most likely are building it to look good, which is awesome, but Google and other search engines can’t read an aesthetic.
If search engines can’t figure out what your website is about and people can’t find it, well, it’s as good as not having a website at all.
If you’re tired of chasing clients through Instagram DMs or cold pitching, and you want to start having your website collect inquiries for you passively in the background while you focus on your clients, you need to fix these key SEO details. Here is the exact checklist I use when building photography websites to make sure they rank.
1. Optimize Your Photos
The bigger your image size, the longer it will take to load. Period. This means it will hurt your website load time to upload RAW images or by using maximum resolutions images exported straight out of Adobe Lightroom.
Why does this matter? Because Google penalizes slow-loading websites. The way this happens is kind of like a domino effect. If your portfolio takes more than 3 seconds to load, most visitors will leave. Google then tracks that as a “bounce” and drops your ranking because your website didn’t engage them for longer than a few seconds.
To fix this:
Export & Resize: when exporting portfolio photos for your website, resize them so the long edge is somewhere between 2000px to 2500px.
Compress: If you’re using Adobe Lightroom, decrease your export quality slider to about 75 to 80 percent. This is generally the sweet spot for retaining your image quality visually while compressing the photo enough to keep your website loading speed high.
This step alone can take a lot of time but is SO important. If you don’t have the time to dedicate to this step, I highly recommend hiring a professional web designer (ahem, hi!) or SEO specialist to help you.
2. Add Alt Text and Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Alt text on a photo is important because that’s how Google and other search engines are able to “read” or know what the photo is about. It’s also important for user experience because it ensures that your website is accessible to visually impaired visitors.
With that being said, if you have a portfolio or gallery page that has gorgeous photos without any alt text, search engines will essentially read this as a blank page. This is where alt text is the solution, but it must be done strategically to work for your website. Here are some tips for your gallery page specifically and keywords:
Write 2 to 3 paragraphs of descriptive, genuine text for every single gallery page. This could look like an introduction section that gives more context to your portfolio page as if someone landed there first before any of your other pages.
Use natural headings and weave your keywords into the story of the shoot.
When adding your alt text to images, write as if you're explaining the photo to a friend over the phone, or in other words, complete sentences to someone who can’t see the image.
Avoid keyword stuffing! This looks like repeating the same keyword phrase over and over throughout your page (or website) or putting a bunch of keywords together unnaturally in alt text.
3. Host Your Website on a Platform with a Powerful SEO Structure
Where you host your website matters more than you think. Photography-based platforms like Pixieset are awesome for delivering high-resolution client galleries, but they unfortunately fall short on the backend for SEO when used as your main website.
To rank on Page 1, you need full control over your page hierarchy (aka your heading and paragraph tags), indexing rules, and metadata.
TIP: A lot of photographers find the best solution is to use a gallery hosting site like Pixieset in conjunction with an SEO-friendly CMS like Squarespace. This way you don’t have to sacrifice client experience for marketing or vice versa.
If you want to dive deeper into how Pixieset and Squarespace compare, check out my full breakdown here.
4. Link, link, link!
Google views the internet as a massive web of trust. If your website has no links, whether that’s linking to your own website or someone else’s, Google assumes your content isn’t authoritative. It’s also a huge signal of trust when you’re able to link your site on another business’ website (aka backlinking).
Internal Links: Every time you write a new blog post, link it back to your main Services or Contact page, at minimum. If you want to have fun with it, you can also link to other blog posts you’ve written, as long as they’re relevant. This keeps users clicking through your site, which signals high engagement to Google.
External Links: Don't be afraid to link out to external websites. Mention the venues, wedding planners, and vendors you worked with on a wedding or a shoot and link to their websites. They might even notice the traffic and return the favor with a backlink to your portfolio.
5. Start a Blog
If you’re anything like me, you might be thinking to yourself right now, “Me? A blog? Who would even read it?”. That’s how I felt when I first started blogging too. And while blogging is definitely a long-game, it’s an incredibly powerful tool to help boost your SEO over time.
If you’re wondering what to write about, I’ve seen photographers write everything from blogs about the weddings they photographed to lifestyle blogs, to tips and tricks for beginner photographers. The most important thing is that you find something you like and can write about consistently (like I said, it’s a long-game!) and it’ll be helpful if you can naturally weave keywords into your posts.
6. Make Your Google Business Profile
If you are a local service-based business, as most photographers are, your off-site SEO matters just as much as your website SEO. When people search for “photographer near me," Google defaults to showing the local Maps widget before it ever shows website search results.
How to Optimize Your Google Business Profile:
Make sure your business name, phone number, and location match your website exactly.
Actively send your client sitemap data to Google Search Console so your new pages are indexed instantly.
Regularly ask past clients to leave reviews directly on Google. This is a huge way to build social trust before someone even visits your website.
Want Your Website to Look Good and Actually Rank?
You probably didn't get into photography to spend your weekends resizing image files, researching SEO keywords, and wrestling with Google Search Console. You got into it to capture your client’s most important life moments.
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