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178 - The 10-Minute SEO Audit for Photographers · The Nerdy Photographer Podcast

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  Casey Fatchett: Welcome back to the Nerd Photography Podcast.
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  I'm your host, Casey Fatchett. Today we're stepping away from
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  the camera settings and getting into something that makes a lot
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  of creative people's eyes glaze over immediately: SEO, search
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  engine optimization. I know it does not sound sexy and
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  glamorous. It doesn't feel like photography, but here's the
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  reality: you can be an exceptional photographer with a
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  stunning portfolio and still be completely invisible to the
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  potential clients who are actively looking to hire someone
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  exactly like you, not because your work isn't good enough, but
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  because Google or other search engines don't know you exist,
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  and the frustrating thing is that for photographers
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  specifically, fixing that is not nearly as complicated as the SEO
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  industry wants you to believe. About 90% of what moves the
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  needle for a local photography business comes down to a handful
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  of concrete, learnable things. We're going to walk through all
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  of them today, and most of them you can start fixing within the
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  hour after we're done. Let's talk about how Google and other
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  search engines actually work, and then let's audit your site.
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  Google and other search engines, at their core, are sophisticated
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  librarians. Its entire job is to match a person's search query
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  with the most relevant trustworthy content on the
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  internet, and it does that by sending out automated programs
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  called crawlers or spiders that read the text on your website
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  and build an index of what your site is about. Here's the
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  critical thing to understand: Google crawlers are functionally
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  blind. They cannot look at your photographs and understand that
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  they're beautiful, or that they were shot at a destination
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  wedding in Tuscany, or that the light was extraordinary. They
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  read text, they read the words on your page, the labels
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  attached to your images, the structure of your headings, and
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  signals about how fast and how trustworthy your site is. So,
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  when a bride in Austin types wedding photographer Austin,
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  Texas, into Google or any other search engine, the algorithm is
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  scanning its index for pages that clearly, credibly, and
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  specifically signal relevance to that phrase. If your website's
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  text doesn't contain those signals, you're not in the
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  running, regardless of how great your photos are. This is the
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  fundamental reframe. SEO for photographers is not about
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  tricks or hacks. It's about making sure that the text
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  surrounding your beautiful images actually tells Google and
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  other search engines what you do and where you do it. The first
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  thing to audit is your H tag. This is the main headline on
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  your web page, the largest, most prominent text, and it carries
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  significant weight in telling search engines what a page is
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  about. There's typically 1h per page, and Google treats it as
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  the primary signal of that page's topic. Go look at your
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  website's homepage right now. What does your h say? If it says
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  something like capturing moments that last forever, or light,
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  love, and laughter, that's a problem, not because it's bad
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  writing, but because nobody is typing those phrases into
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  Google, they are typing wedding photographer in Denver, or
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  family portrait photographer Seattle. Your h1 needs to speak
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  the search engine's language, not just your brand's language.
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  The fix is straightforward. Your H should clearly state what you
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  do and where you do it. Austin Wedding and Portrait
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  Photographer is not the most poetic headline ever written,
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  but it is doing real functional work for your business, you can
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  still have a tagline underneath something evocative and
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  personal, but let the h handle the practical work of telling
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  Google who you are. If you have multiple pages, a weddings page,
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  a portrait page, a commercial page, each one of have should
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  have its own specific h targeting the relevant service
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  and location, next image alt text. This is probably the most
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  severely overlooked SEO lever for photographers, which is
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  ironic, because photographers have more images on their
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  websites than almost anyone. Alt text, short for alternative text
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  is a written description attached to an image file. It
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  was originally designed as an accessibility feature. Screen
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  readers use it to describe images to visually impaired
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  users, but it also serves as the primary way Google and other
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  search engines understand. What an image depicts when you upload
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  a photo straight from your camera, it typically has a file
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  name like underscore mg underscore 54222 jpeg or dsc
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  underscore 0089 dot jpeg, that tells Google nothing, but if you
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  rename that file Golden hour bridegroom portrait Austin,
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  Texas, dot jpeg, and give it an alt text of bride and groom
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  photographed at golden hour in Austin, Texas. Now the search
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  engine has something to work with, that image becomes a
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  candidate to appear in Google image search, where someone
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  looks for exactly that. The practical workflow before
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  uploading images to your site, rename the files descriptively
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  using hyphens between words. Then, within your website
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  builder, whether that's WordPress, Squarespace, whatever
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  you're using, find the alt text field for each image and write a
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  one-sentence description that includes the relevant keywords,
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  location, style, subject, occasion. You don't need to
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  keyword stuff or make it sound robotic. Write it as if you're
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  describing the photo to someone who can't see it, and naturally
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  include the location and context. That's good alt text.
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  Do that consistently across your portfolio, and you will see a
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  meaningful difference over time, the third audit item is site
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  speed, and this one has a direct documented impact on Google
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  rankings and other search engine rankings. Google has explicitly
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  stated that page loading speed is a ranking factor,
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  particularly on mobile, and photographers are almost
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  universally the worst offenders when it comes to slow sites,
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  because we upload huge unoptimized image files directly
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  from our editing software. A photo that comes out of
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  Lightroom might be 810, 15 megabytes, that is completely
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  appropriate for printing or archiving. It is also completely
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  inappropriate for your web page. When a potential client on their
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  phone tries to load your portfolio, and each image is 12
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  megabytes. They're going to be leave before the page finishes
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  loading. And Google, Google notices that the target for web
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  images is generally under 500 kilobytes per file, and ideally
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  under 300 kilobytes for images that aren't hero shots. You can
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  get there without visibly quality loss using tools like
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  Squoosh, which is a free and browser-based software, or
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  Lightroom Zone export settings, where you can constrain file
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  size directly. If you want a dedicated app, there are things
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  like JPEG Mini. I did not have a good experience with JPEG Mini.
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  It was the sizes were actually larger than what I was getting
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  from Lightroom itself. Here are the things I would suggest:
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  consider using WebP size files that will dramatically decrease
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  the size of your images, especially for like large images
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  that are kind of appearing in the background of pages, where
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  there's text over it, so that way you can have a big photo,
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  but it's like they'll be less than 100 kilobytes for a like
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  large size images. Run your site through Google's free Page Speed
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  Insights tool. Just search for it, paste your URL in, and it
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  will tell you exactly how your site is performing, and it will
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  flag the biggest issues for you. If images are your main problem,
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  it will tell you that explicitly. Now, let's talk
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  about local SEO, because for most photographers, this is
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  where the biggest wins are hiding. When someone searches
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  for portrait photographer near me or newborn photographer in
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  Chicago. Google often shows a map with three local businesses
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  prominently featured before the regular search results. That
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  section is called the local pack, and getting into it can be
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  more valuable than ranking on the first page of regular
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  results, because it shows your location, your reviews, your
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  phone number, and a direct link to your website, all immediately
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  visible without the user even clicking through. The primary
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  way to get into the local pack is through the Google Business
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  Profile, which was called Google My Business until 2022 so you
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  may have heard it referred to that way. It's a free listing
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  that tells Google you are a real operating business in a specific
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  location. You claim it, verify it, fill out your business
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  category, service area, hours, photos, and start collecting
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  reviews. Reviews matter enormously here. Google weighs
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  both the quantity and recency of reviews when deciding which
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  businesses to surface. If you don't have a system for asking
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  clients to leave a review after a shoot, now is the time to
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  build one, either in person or in your post-session follow-up
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  email with a direct link to your Google business profile review.
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  Page will generate far more reviews than hoping people find
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  it on their own or just telling them to leave a review for you
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  on Google. Give them the link. One important clarification: a
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  Google business profile works best if you have a physical
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  location or clearly defined service area. If you're a fully
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  mobile photographer who works across a wide region, you can
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  still use it. You just set service areas instead of a
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  single address. It's still absolutely worth having. So,
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  let's bring this all together. Google is a text-based librarian
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  trying to match searches with relevant content. Your H needs
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  to tell it what you do and where you do it. Your image alt text
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  needs to describe your photos with a real searchable language.
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  Your site needs to load fast, which means optimizing your
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  images before you upload them. And a Google Business Profile is
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  one of the highest leveraged things a local photographer can
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  set up completely free. None of this requires a computer science
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  degree, it requires about an hour or so of attention and a
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  habit of doing it consistently as you add new work to your
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  website. Today's homework is what I call rename and replace.
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  Go to your website's homepage and gallery, pick your 10
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  strongest images. If they have generic camera file names,
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  rename them using the format location style subject,
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  something like Portland Outdoor Summer Wedding Portrait dot
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  jpeg. Reupload them with the proper alt text. Then look at
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  your homepage h and make sure it contains your location and your
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  photography niche. Finally, search for your own business on
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  Google, make sure your business profile is claimed, verified,
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  and filled out completely. Do those three things, and you'll
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  be ahead of the majority of photographers in your market.
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  Until next time, folks, stay safe and stay nerdy. Hey folks,
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  it's Casey. I'm back. There's a couple things I forgot to
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  mention. One, please be sure to subscribe to the show. Two,
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  please leave a review for the show. Reviews help us with
• 12:11
  discoverability, new people finding the show. So leave a
• 12:15
  review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you can leave
• 12:19
  a review for the podcast. It is greatly, greatly appreciated.
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  And finally, I would love to hear what you think of these
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  short little nerd lit episodes that we're doing. Do you like
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  them? Find me on social media at The Nerdy Photo on pretty much
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  everything: Instagram threads, Reddit, Tick Tock, Blue Sky.
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  Find me there, mention it. Let me know what you think of these
• 12:44
  episodes, whether I should continue doing them, whether you
• 12:48
  are enjoying them, and if there's a different topic you'd
• 12:52
  like for me to cover in a short episode. I would love to hear
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  about it. And now, without further ado, stay safe. Stay
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  Nerdy. See you next time. Bye.