SEO for newborn Photographers – Best Practices
As a photographer who recently moved to a new State – I had to start from scratch! New website, new clients, new everything. Word of mouth for my photography business was not an option in the beginning because I had a full time job and absolutely no time for meeting new people and making friends or even volunteer. I started to build my online presence working a few hours each night. I have done a lot of research and implemented a ton of SEO techniques. Some worked and some failed but, at the end, I have learned a lot. Today, I am sharing my strategies and SEO tips for photographers hoping that you find this information helpful.
what is seo and why does it matter?
If photography is your thing, then you are probably already familiar with technical terms like ISO. However, in our online search engine world, it's important to become familiar with even more technical terms, like SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it's the way you plan and write your online content with the goal of gaining visibility by ranking higher in search engine results.
Search engine optimization is important because virtually everyone begins their search for any product or service with an online search engine. You have the opportunity to utilize SEO for your benefit and appear in the top results or at least on the first page of search results. If you appear beyond that first page, you are losing potential customers. SEO for photographers is a free and easy way to promote your website and get more hits. I am writing this as a photographer myself and therefore no technical mumbo jumbo here just simple and effective strategies.
SEO Keywords for Photographers
The SEO keywords that will help your website be easier to find in search results are the words or phrases that people are mostly likely to type into a search engine in order to find a product or service they need. Your first step to increasing your rank is to identify SEO photography keywords that are most common and important to use in your website content.
Put yourself in the position of your typical or potential client. What words or phrases would he or she type into a search engine during their search for a photographer? These keywords could include your location and/or your specific niche. For example, I am a photographer in Pittsburgh. I specialize in newborn, maternity, family and senior photography. So examples for me for best SEO keywords would include "Pittsburgh newborn photographer" or “Family photographer Pittsburgh” or “Pittsburgh senior photographer”. You can take a few minutes to consider the possibilities and write down all of the phrases that come to mind. An online keyword research tool can help you narrow your list down to just two or three main phrases and a couple of additional popular phrases. Online keyword tools I use are Ubersuggest and Cognitiveseo. These tools are very helpful with keyword ideas for photographers. It will tell you how many times your potential keywords are actually searched on Google every month and how difficult it would be to rank high on google search for those keywords.
Main takeaway here is to not overthink it – always put yourself in the shoes of your potential client. Keep in mind that it will probably be a lot easier to rank higher on google search results if you are in a specific niche. One exception to that would be wedding photography. This photography niche is extremely competitive and SEO for wedding photographers is bit more involved although it’s not more difficult.
You will include these keywords throughout your website, with two to three uses on each page to keep your copy sounding natural. Using your keywords in the titles, descriptions, and URLs of your webpages is also important. It's even useful to update the file names of the images that appear on your website to include your chosen SEO keywords. Instead of "image1.jpg" you can rename your photo "Pittsburgh-maternity-photography.jpg." There's also an alternative or alt text for each image where you can add a slightly longer caption and utilize a popular keyword.
Caution With Keywords
The content you add to your website needs to be useful for your clients and potential clients. You can maintain the quality of your content by not overusing your keywords. Trying to use the same keywords too many times produces content that does not flow well and is not helpful for your readers. In this case, more is not always better. Using your keywords in a sloppy way will actually have a negative impact on your search engine rankings. Relevant keywords in relevant areas of your website! Use your keywords in the headings near the top of your pages. It is often easily done in pages such as “About me” where you can say something like this:
“HEY, I’M ANNA! As a Pittsburgh portrait photographer, I fell in love in photographing newborn babies after having my beautiful daughter…”
Photography Blog Ideas
Using keywords only once or twice per page is the best practice with SEO. Blogs are a good way to incorporate both quality content and SEO keywords in your website. You should focus on writing at least two quality blog posts every week. Google likes long articles like this one with plenty of useful information. Even just one “meaty” blog post per week is probably going to get your website ranking higher than competitors very quickly. Reason for this is that most photographers are missing out on this opportunity. The photographers that do write blog posts usually stick with shorter and less informative blog posts such as highlights from a recent session.
I cannot stress this enough – write blog posts about everything as long as it is related to your business! In fact, I would even suggest creating another website where you can write a slightly different content but link back to your photography site where appropriate. This also creates backlinks to your website which is huge but more on that later.
Another tip here is to share your blog posts on Pinterest – especially if you can post an awesome photograph you took recently that will serve as clickbait!
What if you just don’t have the time to write these stupid articles every week? Outsource it! I often use sites like Textbroker and PeoplePerHour to buy articles from authors. Sometimes it’s easier for me to pay $50 for a great article written by an author who does this writing thing all day long. Lots of authors on Textbroker are just moms who have degrees in literature and just want to stay home with their kids while earning a little bit of cash online.
Update for 2024: USE Chat GPT! This AI-powered pal is changing the content game for good, and trust me, it's here to stay. Let it be your brainstorming buddy who's always on hand to help you whip up insightful blog posts, adorable captions for your social media.
What if you don’t know what to write about? Honestly – anything related to you, your client or photography in general. For example, you as a photographer found some article helpful in the past and want to share this knowledge with the rest of us – write about that! Or maybe your clients are asking the same questions over and over – put together a blog post explaining the topic in detail. You can now save time answering inquiries about this topic by sending your clients directly to your blog post.
Here are just a few topics that could be relevant for your ideal client and will also provide an opportunity for you to utilize popular SEO for photographers:
How to Dress for Family Photos
Tips to Prepare for a Maternity Session
What You Need to Know About Newborn Photography
Why a Professional Photographer is a Great Investment
Choosing a Location for Your Photo Session
How to Involve Your Children Without Stress
Headshot Photo Session Guide
Props to Bring to Your Family Photos
Can't-Miss Photos to Capture at Weddings
Creative Ways to Display Your Photos
should you even start a blog?
The answer is Yes, you should start a blog right now if you haven’t already. As we've stepped into 2024, the digital landscape has become more competitive than ever. Ranking a new website on search engines is now a formidable challenge due to the ever-evolving algorithms and the sheer volume of content online. If you're lucky enough to already have a website, you're sitting on a goldmine of potential. Now is the perfect time to revitalize your site with a major content overhaul.
Consider adding new life to your website by refreshing existing content and introducing over 50% new material, including blog posts. This strategy is not just about staying relevant; it's about leveraging the authority your established domain already has. By injecting fresh, high-quality content into your site, you're effectively waving a flag at Google to come and take a new look. Your site will register as 'active' and 'updated,' which are positive signals for search engines.
The beauty of this approach is that while your content feels new, your domain retains its age and the trust it has built over time. This combination can be powerful, as search engines often favor websites with a history of reliability. By doing a content refresh, you're giving your website a facelift that can help you climb the SERPs more swiftly than starting from scratch with a new domain. Keep your website in the game by staying fresh and relevant, and watch as your ranking potentially improves at a faster clip.
optimize all your images
If you do not follow any of the tips in this blog post - PLEASE at least do this one thing: optimize your website images! Larger images very negatively impact load time of your website. Your potential clients WILL leave your site if they find themselves waiting for your webpage to load. You need to compress the images on all your pages especially the Homepage and the galleries.
In order to elevate your client’s user experience while visiting your website, upload photos at the exact size they will appear on the web. What I mean is, if you have a high resolution 3,000 pixel-wide image as your homepage banner and your site displays it at 500 pixels wide, why not just upload the 500 pixel-wide image to begin with?
There are a ton of free tools out there to help compress images and you can do this in bulk using bulkresizephotos.com. I have used a lot of different websites for this task and found that bulkresizephotos.com is the fastest and easiest to use. Images compress beautifully keeping all the details and color exactly the same as the originals.
If you have a Squarespace website you should know that there is a bunch of Javascript code that is loaded every single time someone goes to your website. There are 2-6 seconds of load time that you have absolutely no control over - Squarespace is built this way. If your photography site is with Squarespace - image optimization becomes absolutely crucial! For all my Squarespace website users - check out my SEO for Squarespace: Image Size Optimization blog post!
optimize your videos
This topic needs its own blog post and explainer video would not hurt and its coming soon. In the meantime here is my two cents on how to optimize your videos’ size.
Optimizing videos for your website is crucial; it's not just about keeping your site speedy, it's about ensuring a smooth user experience. You don't have to bog down your Squarespace or WordPress site by hosting videos directly on the platform. Instead, consider using Google Cloud Storage buckets. These buckets are a highly affordable and efficient way to store large files, like videos, outside your main website hosting.
Google Cloud Storage offers a cost-effective solution to keep your site's load times quick, without sacrificing video quality. With a bit of code magic, you can embed videos from these buckets directly into your site, enabling them to autoplay seamlessly when a visitor lands on your page. This approach is particularly beneficial because platforms like Squarespace load a heap of code before getting to your content. By keeping your videos light and externally hosted, you ensure that your website remains nimble and responsive—a key factor in maintaining visitor engagement and improving your overall SEO.
Now its worth mentioning that all these tools I use myself and NONE of these links are affiliate links. Also, no ads on my site because I HATE ADS! Alright, lets keep going.
Linking Out to Increase SEO
Keep your main blog as part of your general website. Along with using your keywords, do some internal linking. This notifies search engine bots and causing your site to be included in more indexing. More indexing will help you appear in search results more often and at a higher rank. As an example, include a link to your pricing page or contact page at the end of a blog post. On the next blog post link to a specific page of your portfolio or another blog post of a relevant topic.
As for external linking, just make sure you are linking to websites that are reputable and of high quality. You can even do this by linking to product information and reviews for props or equipment that you use as a regular part of your business. You could link to the florist you always work with for your wedding photography business, or to another vendor you recommend for your clients. Linking out using one of your SEO keywords is always helpful, but again, be sure not to overlink or your website will not look professional.
I would also let people know you are linking to their web pages so that maybe they can be so thankful and do the same for you! This will help you build those juicy backlinks you probably so desperately need!
Backlinks to Increase SEO
Speaking of backlinks, they are a cornerstone of great SEO! When another website links to your website you get a backlink. If another website owner has decided to link to you, it gives you more credibility and provides more avenues for readers to discover your website. If that website is very reputable and high quality – well even better because their SEO juices will spill over onto your site just as soon as google recognized that backlink.
Having informative, useful, and up-to-date content on your website is what will ultimately cause others to link to your website. Being featured on other websites or online publications and writing for other photography blogs is another way to create backlinks. Include your website URL anytime you are featured in another website or social media platform. That includes your own social media accounts.
Make sure your blog posts and images have buttons to make it easy for viewers to share them. You should also be linking your web content often to your social media accounts, as that's where a majority of people are consuming content these days. The easier it is to share, the more often people will do it, and the more often people share your content, the more traffic you will get.
Many photographers do not recognize the opportunities which can potentially earn them a backlink! Truth is, best SEO tips for photographers include creating backlinks and it is one of the top ranking factors for search engines like Google.
Let me leave you with some examples. If you are a wedding photographer, you would want backlinks from websites that pertain to wedding planning in your city. So next wedding you’ll photograph, be sure to make acquaintances with the floral vendor. Take their “behind the scenes” photo and give them your business card. I guarantee you, he or she will reach out to you for those behind the scenes photos! And just like that, a valuable relationship is made and a great opportunity for a potential backlink.
If you are a newborn photographer, SEO for newborn photographers can include building relationships with your hair and makeup vendors. Very similarly, take some behind the scenes photos of them doing what they do best. If they have a website, ask to be featured on the next blog post. If they use your photo, they will give you credit and a backlink!
If you are looking to get a dozen relevant backlinks to get you started – I know a few ways you can do it quickly! I share this and many other tips in my “SEO for Photographers ” workbook. This workbook is perfect if you are confused about this whole SEO game and just wanting to be told what to do and how to do it! I give you a 30 day challenge to get your website to the first page while working 30 min a day on your site’s SEO. Best part is the workbook is absolutely FREE as my gift to you for reading through this article. Enjoy!
Keep in mind that building backlinks is a long term strategy and you should invest your time and energy if you want to dominate your industry with high rankings. Quality is better than quantity which is good because a couple of juicy backlinks a month is really all you need in my opinion.
Local SEO
While local SEO strategies are similar to all the “traditional SEO” strategies, these have different goals. While basic principles of traditional SEO focus on ranking higher on the search results for main keywords, local SEO’s focus is traffic. Search engines recognize the location of you potential client as he/she searches for photography services nearby and responds by providing a list of business in their local area. It is important to note that google will respond differently to someone searching “newborn photography ideas” and “Pittsburgh newborn photographer”. When my client specifies the city or a phrase “near me” in her search, google reads that query as intend to find a local business. It will provide a list of top three photographers. So how can get in the top three results?
There are few strategies I would like to share that helped my photography business show in top three results for certain keywords in my city.
First thing I did is fix my NAP (name, address and phone) all over the internet. I made sure to stay very consistent. Basically, I had to make sure that my website, Yelp, Facebook, my google listing, and any local listings and citations are all showing the exact same name, address, and phone number. This helps search engine bots understand my business location. My advice is if you don’t do anything else with local SEO, make sure to at least stay consistent with your NAP. If you move or change your phone number and forget to update your info somewhere on the web, search engines will see that and it will be hard to outrank your competition.
On my website, I made sure to include all the relevant keywords including the word “Pittsburgh”. I wanted to give a message to the search engines that this website is local and I want local clients. The thing about keywords is you have to come up with keywords that are searched often but have less competition. What I found was that my potential clients do not use keywords “newborn photographer near me” as often. Instead they simply google “baby photographer near me”. This was interesting to me because I have realized that I was still thinking about all this as a photographer and not as a potential client. As we consume information about cameras, lenses, strobes, and other technical things, we forget that regular people do not speak photography language.
Another thing I did is optimize my google business listing. I have added as much information as I could. I have added service areas and business categories – multiple categories. I made sure to add as many images as possible while implementing some basic image SEO techniques. Those would be things like small file size and targeted keywords in the metadata. Also if you don’t have any reviews – please ask your past clients to help you out. This is so important! I always look at the reviews when I need a new dentist or hair stylist. Therefore I know my clients will read google reviews. Also, respond to every single one of those reviews and not just on google business profile. Include Facebook business page or yelp or any other site – always answer reviews. Speaking of Facebook, social media profiles like Facebook and Instagram must exist everywhere on the web where you leave your NAP breadcrumbs! Your domain authority depends on this heavily. Domain authority and many other helpful photography SEO terms are fully covered in my Free SEO guide.
More Ways to Increase Traffic
Quality content is important to optimize SEO for photography websites. Search engines are designed to show the best websites at the top of their results to get more users to them right away. Poor quality sites are only going to be included in later results.
One way to make sure you have a quality website is by making your site user friendly. A website that is hard to navigate, especially from a mobile device, is going to turn people away. It needs to look great from both a desktop computer and a mobile phone. Your home page should make it clear what the purpose of your website is. Show some of your best work here, and also include a menu that makes it easy for clients to navigate to your important information like your services, rates, and your portfolio.
Another important factor in having a quality website is your content itself. 97% of all your potential clients are going to Google your services first! What are they going to find on your website? A great looking portfolio and a contact form? Nope, that is not going to build trust with your potential client. Your website can look pretty, but if it doesn't have useful information for your clients, they might not stick around to check it out. Make sure that when people visit your website, they can tell that you are trustworthy and an expert in your field. Your content must be relevant and current. Writing from the perspective of your potential clients can help you make sure that your content is educational and informative. Think of it this way, google searches words on websites, then evaluates the content and how well these words cover the topic. You need to have words for google to know you exist and put you in the first three results so you’re your potential client can find you! Use the blog ideas above that are relevant to your particular niche as a springboard to get started. Then continue writing about topics that pertain to your niche and your ideal clients.
avoid fake traffic
Steer clear of fake traffic bots, like the notorious "Microworkers," which can spell trouble for your website's SEO health. Although platforms like Microworkers use real people to generate clicks, the scattered and unnatural traffic patterns from users all over the globe can raise red flags for Google, marking your site as potentially spammy. This can harm your site's credibility and tank your rankings.
Instead, focus on genuine methods to boost your traffic. Engage with your audience through social media, collaborate with parenting bloggers, and optimize your website with SEO best practices tailored to newborn photography. Consider creating valuable content for new parents, such as tips for photographing their little ones, which can naturally attract visitors to your site. By investing in authentic and relevant content, you're more likely to draw in an audience that's genuinely interested in your services, and this organic approach will benefit your website's standing with search engines in the long run.
Take Action
Now you know more about using search engine optimization to rank your website higher in search results, it's time to take action. This is the cheapest and easiest way out there to get your online portfolio more visibility among your potential clients. More views will mean more clients and more opportunities to expand your business and grow your photography skills in 2024.
If you don't have your own website yet, there are several website builders and tools that make it easy to get started. Many also have SEO services for photographers to continue learning more and optimizing their keyword usage for ranking higher in search results. Applying your new SEO knowledge to your online portfolio will have you ranking higher and getting more new hits on your website. Google ranking is still relevant for 2024! Strategies and ranking factors may change a little, but the goal is always the same – make your business stand out!
I am cheering for you!