How to Optimize Your Photography Blog for SEO

Your photography blog plays an essential role in the success of your photography business.

From a branding standpoint:

Your blog gives voice and personality to you as a photographer, improving the overall percentage of leads to clients.

From an SEO standpoint:

Your blog is an opportunity to drive “top-of-funnel” traffic that will trickle down to your core service pages, a.k.a your “money” pages.

This means more traffic, and more bookings!

Well in this guide, I’ll be covering 5 tips to optimize your photography blog on your website.

These are the same exact tips and steps I use when optimizing photography websites in my Photography Blog SEO Service.

Now, I know a thing or two about blog optimization for SEO.

In fact:

I’m an SEO consultant and a photographer and I rank #1 if not top 5 for many photography-related keywords due to optimizing the blogs on my websites:

And there’s a lot more!

What is a Photography Blog?

A photography blog is a blog that exists on photographer’s websites where they publish articles.

The articles can vary in topic.

They can range from behind-the-scenes articles, how-to articles, personal insights, opinions, etc.

Here’s the thing:

With the right strategy, your photography blog can turn into a money-making machine!

Why Should Photographer’s Optimize Their Blog?

As I mention in my Keywords for Photographers Guide, each keyword has its own search volume and difficulty.

Your blog is an opportunity to rank for keywords that drive “top-of-funnel” traffic that will trickle down to your core service pages, a.k.a your “money” pages.

For example:

Let’s say you are a portrait photographer in Orange County.

An example of writing a blog to “funnel” traffic to your “money” pages would be creating an article titled “Places to Take Pictures in Orange County.”

You might be thinking:

Why would this article be good?

Think about the intent behind someone searching for “places to take pictures in orange county.”

When someone searches that keyword, they are looking to take pictures and in a specific location.

If you are an Orange County Portrait Photographer, you want to be showing up for this keyword and promoting your portrait photography services!

In fact:

I did just that.

It ranked on the 1st page of Google and this article was one of my top drivers in getting new clients:

Other example keywords that would work in this case would be:

• What to wear for a portrait in Orange County
• Best beaches to take pictures in Orange County
• Best portrait photographers in Orange County

Now these are just a few examples.

During my Photography Blog SEO Service, I would create a blog strategy tailored specifically for your photography business.

The beauty of writing blogs, is that they target keywords that often have a lot more volume than your core service page “money” keywords.

This means you would be able to both drive more traffic to your photography business while also producing thought leadership content!

Don’t know if you can benefit from these optimizations?

→ Get a Free Photography SEO Audit!

5 Tips for Optimizing Your Photography Blog for SEO

Here are the 5 Photography Blog SEO tips and common errors I find on photography websites.

This is not an exhaustive list of everything encompassing Photography Blog SEO.

There are a lot more SEO optimizations and errors that you and I can find during my Photography Blog Optimization.

For the following tips, I’ll be using my article “What is Portrait Photography?” which as of right now, ranks #1 on Google for “what is portrait photography”:

Two things to mention:

First, the tips I’ll be mentioning in this guide revolve around having an understanding of how keywords work.

So if you haven’t read my Keywords for Photographers Guide, be sure to read that first then come back to this guide!

Second, if you’ve read my guide on optimizing your Photography Core Service Pages for SEO, you’ll find lots of overlap with these tips.

This is because the strategy of optimizing your Blog and your Core Service Pages is essentially the same in terms of optimizing your page for its target keyword.

The only difference between the two will be the goal of the keyword.

For Core Service Pages, the goal will be to get people reading the page to book a photography session.

For the Blog, the goal will be to educate and add voice to your brand as a photographer, adding credibility to your brand, leading to more bookings.

Of course:

The strategy we tailor for your site during my Photography Core Page SEO Service and Photography Blog SEO Service is more refined than that, but that’s the gist of it.

1. Fix and Optimize Blog URL Structure

The first tip to optimize your photography blog for SEO is to fix and optimize your URL structure.

This means your target keyword should be in the URL.

For example:

In my article, “what is portrait photography” was my target keyword, so that needs to be in the URL:

The URL itself was “https://photofocus.com/photography/what-is-portrait-photography-the-importance-of-portraits/”

As you can see, I made sure to include the target keyword in the URL.

This maximized my chances of ranking well in search engines for this target keyword.

2. Fix and Optimize Blog Heading Tags

The second tip to optimize your photography blog for SEO is to fix and optimize your heading tags.

The heading tags on the page are your H1 header, H2 header, H3 header, etc.

If you aren’t familiar with these terms, HTML tags are used to define the headings of a page.

They’re written like this in HTML:

<h1>This is an H1 Header</h1>
<h2>This is an H2 Header</h2>
<h3>This is an H3 Header</h3>

This is how they would look:

The headings/heading tags act as signposts that help structure your articles/pages.

This makes it easier for both users and search engine crawlers to understand the structure of the page.

Remember this:

The most important part to remember is that you should only have one <h1> per page and it should have your target keyword in it.

For example:

In my “What is Portrait Photography” article, I made sure to include that target keyword in my H1 Header:

You might be wondering:

What would you put in the other headers such as the H2 or H3?

You would put secondary keywords into those headers.

Secondary keywords would be keywords we identify together that align with your primary keyword.

For example:

If you target keyword is “what is portrait photography,” then secondary keywords could be:

• “what does a portrait photographer do”
• “why is portrait photography important”
• “why do we need portrait photography”

And as you can see, I targeted these secondary keywords in my H2 and H3 headers:

Identifying which secondary keywords to include and where to fit them in naturally is different for each blog and target keyword.

In my Photography Blog SEO Service, we would identify the best target keyword and secondary keywords per blog and tailor the strategy to your specific business goals.

Not sure if you would benefit from this?

→ Get a Free Photography SEO Audit!

3. Fix and Optimize Duplicate, Missing, and Truncated Blog Title Tags

The third tip to optimize your photography blog pages for SEO is to fix and optimize duplicate, missing, and truncated title tags.

The title tags are also referred to as the meta title.

The title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of your article.

It can be written in HTML with the title tag attribute like this:

<title>Title of Page</title>

The title tag is also the title displayed in the search engine results page (SERP).

For example:

This is the meta title I had for the article:

When it comes to the title tags/meta titles, you’ll want to make sure:

• You have your target keyword in it
• You don’t have duplicate title tags across your photography blog
• Your title tag is not truncated

Truncation is an issue with title tags because if it’s too long, then it will show the ellipsis (…) on the search results page, leading to a lower click-through rate.

If this happens, this means:

Less traffic, less revenue, less everything.

If you take a look at the blog article below me, you can see that their meta title is truncated.

Not only does it look less appealing, but it leads to less clicks to the article:

How to edit the meta title:

If your website is designed with custom coding, you have the ability to modify the HTML directly.

However, it’s likely that you use a CMS (Content Management System) such as WordPress or Squarespace, rather than a custom-coded site.

In this case:

For those using Squarespace, it offers settings to adjust the meta title for each page.

If your site is on WordPress, a free SEO plugin is necessary to alter specific HTML elements on your page.

I personally use RankMath for this purpose.

As part of my Photography Blog Optimization process, I will conduct a thorough review of all the meta titles on your blog and optimize them to enhance your traffic potential.

4. Fix and Optimize Duplicate, Missing, and Truncated Blog Meta Descriptions

The fourth tip to optimize your photography blog for SEO is to fix and optimize duplicate or missing meta descriptions.

The meta description is another HTML element that summarizes the blog article.

The purpose of the meta description is to provide the main idea of the content that exists within the page.

It’s written like this in the HTML:

<meta name="description" content="This is the meta description.">

Within the search engine results page, it is displayed underneath the meta title of the page:

Similar to the title tags, for the meta descriptions, you’ll want to make sure:

• You have your target keyword in it
• You don’t have duplicate meta descriptions across your photography blog
• Your meta description is not too long which will cause truncation

You can edit the meta descriptions in the setting where you can edit the meta titles.

During my Photography Blog Optimization, I’ll scan and check all the meta descriptions across your blog and then optimize them for you!

5. Fix and Optimize Blog In-Content Keywords

The final tip to optimize your photography core services pages for SEO is to fix and optimize your in-content keywords.

Throughout this guide, I’ve mentioned how you need to have your target keyword within:

• URL
• H1 Header
• Meta Title
• Meta Description

Lastly, we need to ensure your target keyword exists within the content of your article.

Now here’s the thing:

You might think that repeatedly incorporating your keyword into your content will boost your SEO.

This approach has already been considered and identified as “keyword stuffing“.

Previously:

SEO professionals used this method, but search engines have become smarter over time.

They’ve implemented new updates and algorithm changes to detect and penalize such overuse of keywords in content.

In fact:

Excessive use of keywords can now adversely affect your ranking, potentially resulting in penalties from Google and other search engines, which leads to decreased web traffic.

From my experience, maintaining a keyword density of approximately 2% is optimal.

For example:

In my “What is Portrait Photography” article, it’s about 1,000 words and I list my main keyword “portrait photography” about 20 times which is around the 2% mark:

However, it’s important to use a variety of keywords and ensure that your content remains natural and conversational.

By achieving this balance, your photography blog will be fully optimized.

Congrats!

Now:

If all of that sounded like too much work, then feel free to reach out to me and my Photography Blog SEO Service!

I can help you optimize your blog articles to receive as much traffic as possible so you can make more revenue.

If you aren’t sure whether you even need these optimizations, then be sure get a Free Photography SEO Audit first!