You’ve invested the time, effort and money to create a professionally designed photography website. Now, take your site – and your business – to the next level. Today, we’ll explain why blogs are important to accelerate the growth of your photography business. We’ll even add in a few useful SEO tips for photographers.
What is a Blog?
Short and simple, a blog is an informational body of text available for the public to read on your website. Although blogs started as a diary of sorts for people to discuss their thoughts in the early stages, today, blogging has taken on many different formats.
When is the last time that you looked up a recipe for a new meal for your family? Or researched things to do on your vacation? What about how to DIY that last project? These are generally trendy blogging topics! The chances are good that you’ve read a blog, and maybe you didn’t even realize that it was a blog.
Why Are Blogs Important for Photographers?
Blogging is one of our most highly recommended SEO tips for photographers and other small business owners. Although we provide the best keywords for photographers through our SEO research in our Signature Brand and Website Design Experience, showing up in those top results is a long-term endeavor. Starting on the right foot is essential for success, but it doesn’t stop there. You have to consistently prove to the search engines (and your target audience) that you are an authority in your niche market. Once you prove to the search engines that you know what you’re talking about, they’ll start to show your website closer to the top of the search results.
How do you do that? Well, for starters, you continually add and update content to your website. Having a blog is the easiest way to do that. Rather than frequently updating pictures and services on your main website, you can easily dedicate a little time each week to creating new content to enhance your website through your blog. Blogging is a great tool that helps you add value to your client’s experience and gives you a space to share your latest work or answer any frequently asked questions. As an added bonus, since your blog is already integrated into your Showit photography website design, your blog also gives you more room to use those carefully researched SEO keywords for photographers.
What Should I Be Blogging About?
Unless you are a food photographer, we do not recommend you start by blogging your Grandmother’s Secret Cookie Recipe. Although this may be fine as a one-off post down the road to help your target audience get to know you better, it will also make your website compete with recipe sites (and not necessarily get seen by your target audience). Your blog topics should be relevant to the services you offer.
If you’re interested in utilizing your blog to optimize your website for SEO, consider creating content that is helpful to your target audience. Put yourself in their shoes. If you were an individual in the photography market, what kinds of topics would interest you? We recommend blogging about a variety of issues.
If we were looking for a photographer, we would be interested in the work they do. Therefore, one great way to use a blog is as an extension of your portfolio. Every time you want to highlight your newest session, blog it! Include the best photos, the session location (venue, city, state) and niche market (senior portraits, wedding photography, etc.). Then, you can take it a step further and discuss the subjects and what they were documenting, the time of day and other details about the session.
Another kind of blog you may want to consider is informational blogging. What questions do your clients ask frequently? If your number one question is, “What should I wear to my family photography session?” – blog it! It’ll preemptively answer the question and give you a space to refer to the next time the question comes up. You can confidently answer the question and simultaneously save time by saying, “Great question! I answer this in further detail here.”
Use your blog as a tool to highlight your services. Creatively explain how you stand out from the competition. Are you a wedding photographer? Consider the topic “Questions to Ask Your Wedding Photographer Before Booking.”Just be sure to add in a question that you know will highlight your services.
If you use a combination of these blogs, you’ll not only keep your content fresh and engaging for your target audience; you’ll also help answer some underlying questions for search engines.
How Do I Optimize My Blog?
In general, the best way to optimize your blog is to narrow your focus. What is the primary information you want to share with your audience? If you’re sharing your latest engagement photography session, focus on all of the details about the session.
When clients ask us for more SEO tips for photographers, they often want to know what keywords they should be using and where they should use them. As a rule of thumb, the niche market you highlight should be the primary keyword focus of your blog. Use it at least once each in your title, meta description, URL, headlines, and copy. Then include critical details such as venue, city, state, time of day or even the year. Finally, find different ways of changing it up throughout your blog.
For example, your session was an engagement photography session in Zion, Utah. You can make your target keyword more specific. For example, rather than just “Engagement Photography,” you can use “Zion Engagement Photography.” Your title would be “Zion, Utah Engagement Photography [Last Names].” A headline could be, “Utah Engagement Photographer.” Finally, you can name your image “Desert Engagement Photography in Utah.”
Professional SEO Tips for Photographers
Are you unsure of the best keywords for photographers? At Avenlee Collective, we have over a decade of experience providing professional branding, SEO and website design for photographers. Not only will we research the keywords that are right for your target market, but we’ll also put them into place for you, setting a solid foundation for long-term success. We’ll even walk you through step-by-step why a blog is important and how to optimize it for maximum profits. It’s time for you to confidently be the professional photographer you are. Send us a message today to schedule your free, no-obligation discovery call to find out how we can help! We look forward to getting to know you and helping you elevate your business to the next level.
