SEO Mistakes by Photographers

SEO on your mind? Don’t want to pay hefty monthly cheques to an SEO agency or some freelancer?

Read the entire post ( and a surprise in the end ) and if you implement all the suggestions. I bet you as a wedding photographer will help you in improving the SEO of your website.

Most wedding photographers have websites. The majority of these websites are on WordPress and few use hassle-free solutions like Wix and Squarespace. All these have SEO-friendly templates, that take care of basic SEO needs.

The idea behind choosing a WordPress template is to look for a visually appealing template. They rarely look for how it is reviewed as per SEO standards or how mobile-friendly they are. Whether it is photography or any other business, if you are online your website needs to look good to your customers as well as Google.

SEO makes the website, google friendly, and appealing to customers.

Navdeep Soni

Actually, both of them are connected. If you use ethical SEO, it is going to attract clients as well as Google. I have noticed a lot of Indian wedding photographers, knowingly or unknowingly making basic SEO mistakes. You don’t have to be a genius to avoid basic SEO mistakes.

I have been an SEO expert for a few years before being a wedding photographer. I have been handling my website for the last 10 years with the help of my tech background. You should check some valuable SEO tips for wedding photographers.

This is in no way a comprehensive or detailed guide to SEO basics for photographers. But if you take care of important but basic SEO mistakes, you will rank better on Google in a matter of weeks. Your content will look good to your website visitors and Google.

1. Keyword Stuffing: Keyword stuffing is one of the most common mistakes photographers are doing. They are doing every post for Google.

To achieve this, they are forcefully using keywords so that the post looks like targeting that keyword. But if you read that post as a normal user, it will look like a very amateur post and of no value to the reader.

I will give you a very simple example. Let’s say you are a Chennai-based wedding photographer. So one of your target keywords would be a wedding photographer in Chennai. But that doesn’t mean you start using this keyword in every blog post or multiple times in the same blog post.

It will look fishy and a novice to your readers as well as to Google.

Don’t underestimate the algorithms of Google. They are smart enough to see such manipulative tricks. Google will understand and will rank you lower. It can even impose some penalties. Google wants to push content that is useful to people. Do you really think such keyword stuffing will help the article?

If the answer is no, then why are you expecting Google to show the post to its users?

We go to Google because we know Google will give us relevant articles.  Google is constantly working on improving its search results. Google will only support the content which helps them and its users.

2. Random Link Building: Random link building is also quite common among many photographers. Either they are doing it themselves or they are hiring freelance SEO services from individuals or agencies.

They do provide search services at cheap rates but they are not helping your cause. They may complete your daily or monthly targets of link building but this is going to affect you negatively.

Backlinks from credible websites are going to give you positive results. Backlinks from directories or fishy-looking advertising platforms are going to impact you negatively. Now imagine a scenario where you see an advertisement for a brand on a website that doesn’t look very authentic.

What impression will you make on such a brand?

This is exactly how Google’s algorithm works. So getting all those link-backs from shady websites is not going to help you.

These websites have been created for the sole purpose of link building. Too many such backlinks can attract even a penalty. So make sure you avoid such techniques or even agencies that promote such things. It is one of the easiest ways to judge the credibility of the SEO agency or SEO freelancer.

3. Share Key Details: I understand wedding photography is all about pictures and we want to share our work in the form of pictures. Always make your blog post a combination of pictures as well as text. Write about the wedding and all your experience as a wedding photographer at that particular wedding.

Again think like a visitor on your website rather than a photographer.

Imagine what a bride would like to see in the blog post. It will always be a lot of pictures and details about the wedding. The details could be the venue, the brand name of the outfit, the name of the makeup artist, the wedding planner’s name, etc.

The idea of your blog post should be to help the visitor and not just self-promotion.

When a visitor spends time on your website or on your article, Google feels that your article is relevant and useful to its users. So it will push your article on its search engine.

4. Internal and Outbound Links: Links are the backbone of Google. Links are like the connection from one piece of information to the other. You need to have a few internal and external links. But make sure you don’t overdo it just to make Google happy. Google knows you are unnecessarily using links it is going to affect your standing on Google searches.

Make sure all these links are relevant and or of high quality. You should always link to a credible source of information. Just the way we want it in real life.

As wedding photographers, we generally don’t write big blog posts. So in that case, we should be mindful of the number of internal or outbound links.

5. Mobile-Friendly: We all are living in the era of smartphones. As per Google, the majority of traffic is coming from mobile phones. So it would be a big mistake if our website is not mobile-friendly. ?

A mobile-friendly website not only helps you in SEO but also helps your visitors go through your content hassle-free. If you don’t have a mobile version of your website, your SEO is bound to suffer.

Most of the WordPress templates are by default mobile-friendly. Make sure you specifically look for this option before choosing a template.

6. The Speed Of Website: Imagine you open a website and it is taking time to open. The chances are you might close the window and open some other website.

It’s very rare for us to actually wait for the website to open.

We generally tend to wait for those websites which are very popular or when we are sure of what we are looking for. But if a website has been referred by a Google search, and it doesn’t open up all takes time to open. We are surely not going to wait for it to open. It will be a frustrating experience for the visitor.

Google cares a lot about the user experience. And if your website is not providing an ideal experience, it would not rank you higher on Google.

Whether your visitor is using the standard version or a mobile version of your website, it needs to have a decent speed. The faster it opens, the better it is.

In my opinion, if you take care of the above 6 tips, you will surely rank better on Google. These above are quite basic mistakes, but I have seen them being regularly repeated. Whatever you post online, always think from the perspective of the visitor or end-user. If you can take care of this whenever you post something. It is surely going to get noticed by the brides as well as Google.

Learn More About SEO

As we have reached the end of the article. Here are two options for you to enhance your knowledge of SEO.

1) SEO Ebook

If you are serious about generating organic traffic without any ads, check out my SEO Ebook for Photographers, it is also available on Amazon.