SEO can be difficult to grasp, but its basic premise is to get your website at the top of the search engine results. Getting to the top is easier said than done, but we’re here to help you out. Here are seven steps to improve your photography website’s SEO!
Optimizing Your Blog Posts
Not everyone has the talent to write a good SEO blog post for photographers. We can’t teach you how to write amazing content in your blog posts, but we can teach you the right text to use to help with your search engine rankings.
Try to make it your goal to mention the main photography keywords in the first 100 words of your blog post. Making it as seamless as possible is key to optimizing the quality of your blog posts. The number of keywords you use in your content depends on the content that you’re making, but using at least five keywords in a short blog post can elevate your content’s quality.
Avoid forcing keywords into places that don’t make sense. Think of quality over quantity. If it doesn’t add anything to the story you’re trying to tell, don’t add it in! Keep your content on point and as natural as possible.
If you’re not confident in your writing ability, don’t be afraid to hire a freelance writer. Experienced copywriters are a good investment if you have enough money in your budget to hire one!
Optimizing Titles & Meta Descriptions
The title tag of your website is one of the most crucial factors in improving your SEO. The title is what appears at the top of your search engine result, be sure to keep that in mind!
On the other hand, the description is the text that’s shown beneath the title and URL. Your meta description doesn’t influence your website's rank, but it encourages people to click on your site! Keywords written in the search bar by the user will be shown in bold lettering, so make sure to put some thought into your description.
Optimizing Headers
Header tags don’t affect your SEO much, but keeping your header titles in mind is still important!Headers provide structure to your blog posts and your web pages. Having a good header makes your content easier to read and process for users scrolling through your website. Good headers will also help search engines browse through your website a lot easier!
Learn how to use each header tag and what they usually indicate when they’re used. The “H1” header tag is the largest tag that can appear on your webpage, which is why it’s usually used as the title. Multiple H1 tags can get confusing, so make sure you only use this once per web page!
Optimizing your URLs
URL structure is crucial to make your website more organized. Make sure that your URL isn’t too long, and if possible, squeeze in a keyword where it’s relevant! Messy URLs with irrelevant information in them can knock down your Google ranking by a lot.
The first 3-5 words in your URL have the most weight when it comes to ranking your webpage, so make those words count.
Outbound Links
A common mistake that some websites make is they avoid linking to other websites because they’re afraid that the users may not return. Linking to relevant websites that are also good quality can boost your SEO. Outbound links to related pages and websites signal relevancy, indicating the blog post’s topic to search engines. This also tells search engines that your page has quality content.
Don’t be afraid to link to other sites during your blog posts. A good rule of thumb is to create outbound links two times for every 1000 words in your content. Internal linking is also an effective form of SEO!
Linking your blogs to content that you also write can boost your underperforming pages.
Boosting your Website Speed
The speed at which your site loads is one of the most crucial factors for SEO and user experience. Optimizing your website’s speed is a great investment that can net you a lot of engagement and clicks from your potential clients.
Try avoiding shared hosting, as that usually means that you’ll be sharing the same server as a hundred other sites. Photography websites utilize a lot of imagery in their websites, so making sure that those photos load fast is crucial for user experience and your search engine rankings!
Spend money on good website hosting to make sure that your website’s speed is ahead of your competitors! Not everyone has the patience to sit through one to two-minute loading times. If your website doesn’t provide a high-quality user experience, other sites will.
Optimizing Images
Aside from obvious optimization tips like downscaling some of your images to help with your web page speed, you should also think about editing the text associated with the images on your website. The name of your image’s file is the alt text, which is very important!
Making sure to squeeze in photography keywords in your file’s name will help boost your SEO. Alt text tells search engines what your image is showing. This helps boost your image rank in search results.
At the very end of the day, you can take no magic pill to make your website gain more traffic. However, these tips might still help boost your website's publicity and quality if you follow them!
Now, go out there and apply what you learned in this article.
