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SEO for Photographers: An Introductory Guide to Getting Your Site Seen

Chris Gampat
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03/26/2018
4 Mins read
004a-SEO-Rankings

Last Updated on 03/26/2018 by Mark Beckenbach

This is a syndicated blog post from Digital Photo Magazine originally written by William Sawalich. It and the images here are being syndicated with permission.

Do you want people to find your photography website? Whether you’re displaying your images for fun or, more than likely, with the hopes of making a profit, it’s important to optimize your website so search engines will be more likely to return your site in the search results much earlier. The sooner you appear in that list, the better, because studies have shown most people don’t go very far down the list of search results before choosing a destination or going back and trying it again.

The point is, if you want to rank highly in search results, you need to use search engine optimization techniques, or SEO, in order to tailor your site the way search engines like them. Here are five straightforward (i.e., not for computer programmers) tips photographers can use to optimize their websites.

1. Go Where The Traffic Is

And the traffic is, by and large, using Google to search for things on the Internet. Well more than 90% of mobile searches, and 80% of all searches, are done with Google. So Bing, Yahoo and Ask may be on your radar, but you’re the anomaly. The second through tenth most popular search engines combined don’t serve up the search traffic that Google does, so the bottom line is simple: If you’re going to optimize for a search engine, optimize for Google.

2. Choose An Ideal Web Platform

There are plenty of affordable and easy-to-use photography-specific website platforms out there, like PhotoShelter, Zenfolio and others, that do a great job of serving up attractive websites and beautiful portfolios and web galleries. But even though the pictures are the thing on a photographer’s website, when it comes to SEO, a picture isn’t quite worth 1,000 words. In fact, those words are worth quite a lot—at least as far as Google is concerned. So, instead of using a webpage template that’s so spare and minimal as to not leave room for sufficient text, choose a page that offers the opportunity to write about your photos as well. For this purpose, web platforms that make it easy to set up blogs, like Squarespace and WordPress, are the ideal place to set up portfolios, because they’re built to allow for substantial text. Photos without text are less visible to Google. But a couple of good long paragraphs filled with your keyword phrases will go a long way to improving your results.

The author’s website is built on a pretty gallery platform, but it’s not conducive for including the kind of text that’s essential to rank highly in search results.

3. Update Often

Fresh content makes your site more valuable in the eyes of Google, so update photos and text on a regular basis. An easy way to do this for photographers is to upload photos from new shoots to a blog. Behind-the-scenes photos, or snapshots at the location where you were photographing landscapes, or really any photos from any shoot, make for ideal social-media content, and that’s the kind of update that Google likes to see. The ultimate approach, of course, is to write a blog and update it regularly. The frequent addition of new photos and text that comes from blogging might be the best way to make your site constantly new and improved in the eyes of the search engine.

4. Add Some Video

You’re a photographer, and that means you’re just an inch away from shooting the thing Google most likes to see on a website these days: video. Your camera probably already shoots high-def video, so why not flip that switch every now and again and look for some opportunities to shoot video that you can upload to your site. Video on your site becomes fresh new content, but it’s also deemed by Google to be especially important because viewers love video, so a video-rich site will rise higher in the rankings. If you’ve been looking for an excuse to shoot more video, here it is.

5. Cross Your T’s And Dot Your I’s

Make sure the little details are all in place. Don’t allow dead links to remain on your site; get those gone ASAP or Google will penalize you. Make sure your site is mobile-ready (utilize responsive design to ensure your pages will resize appropriately for different-sized screens, in particular) and the links are clickable and the text is readable on that tiny smartphone screen. Also ensure that your site loads quickly. JPEGs need to be big these days, but they don’t need to be uncompressed JPEG files or your pages will take too long to load. Make sure those pictures are smaller than 150 KB each or Google will ding you for that one, too. Run a Google responsiveness test online and check how quickly the pages load, as well as how the pages work on a small mobile screen.

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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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