WordPress themes for photographers: how to find and buy the best WP themes for your photography website
WordPress themes have come a long way in recent years. Premium WP themes are now incredibly flexible and powerful, they're mobile-friendly and SEO-friendly, and they often include a slew of powerful plugins that extend their functionality even further. Here are my recommendations.
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8 things to do after installing WordPress – a list of actionable tasks for any new or existing WP site
After setting up your hosting account and installing WordPress, you need to configure a few details first, before starting to add the content to the site, things like: staging area, user and search engine access, sample content, settings, permalinks, security & more.
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Best WordPress tutorials to learn how to build and manage your WP site
Even if you have a developer building the WP site for you, you should learn how WordPress works and how to manage the site content in the future. This is a curated list of good introductory (and free!) WordPress resources for beginners.
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Best WordPress hosting for photographers: budget vs premium providers, what features to look for, and how to migrate your photo site
If you've decided to choose WordPress for your photography website, the hosting provider is critical to the well-being of your site, and to your SEO and marketing efforts. Put your photography website on a quality WP hosting service from the beginning, it's the foundation that everything else sits upon.
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WordPress vs. photography-specific & other platforms: deciding where you should build your photo website
How do you decide what platform to build your photography website on? WordPress has become very popular, but photographer-specific tools have their own strong features. This article will help you decide which best fits your needs.
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Don’t obsess over SEO: 10 things you should be taking care of on your photography site before doing advanced SEO work
SEO procrastination is too common among photographers, often times actually damaging their business. There's a time for SEO work, of course, but other website changes should be taken care of first. Make sure your website completely nails these issues before worrying about traffic and SEO.
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Q&A #12: Google Analytics, retina images, protecting high-res images, Yoast focus keywords
Answering your questions about filtering your own visits in Google Analytics, the balance between retina image quality and website performance, selling high-res images while still protecting them, using Yoast's focus keyword feature.
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[▶️] Photography website user experience
I was recently invited for a live Facebook event (hosted by Julie Christie from Togs in Business) where I shared some insights into what photographers like you should be thinking about when it comes to photography website user experience.
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Big SEO news: you can now write longer SEO meta-descriptions
Google now displays longer description snippets in their search results. Learn what means for SEO, how to take advantage of the longer SEO meta-descriptions, and how to track your results in Google Search Console.
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Copywriters for your photography website & 10 tips on improving your own writing
Great copywriting has become an important piece in any online business these days, and can considerably improve conversion rates, you shouldn't neglect it. These are 10 tips to help you improve your writing, plus a list of professional copywriters for photographers.
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New Google Search Console design and user interface: here’s what changed and which reports are most useful
The Google Search Console SEO tool has been redesigned from scratch, with indexing and search performance reports will provide even more insights into how you can improve your website (both in Google's eyes and for your human visitors). Here's what new and how to get useful insights from it.
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SEO is a long-term game: how long does it take to rank high on Google? [infographic]
SEO is not something you can crank out in a few weeks or months, and then just expect a traffic deluge to come. Better rankings require patience, dedication, and, of course, a commitment to quality content.
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The importance of WordPress maintenance: what types of problems you can have if you don’t care for your WP site
WordPress' popularity leads to complexity as well. Combining this with poor hosting services, improper management, security attacks and negligence, and you get a slew of possible errors. The solution is prevention: properly manage your WordPress site to avoid security and functionality problems down the line.
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Curated links #3
Time for another set of curated articles that I discovered in the past few months. Skim through this reading material to find the stuff that's most relevant to your photography business.
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In-depth guide: Photography website planning guide: find the clarity you need before building a strong online business
It's important to dedicate some time to do research and to strategize before building a new photo website. Follow these guidelines to gain more clarity.
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Complacency is risky: 7 signs that it’s time to redefine your photography business
Too many photographers feel stuck in a photography niche that they don't love anymore. Don't be afraid to tackle hard business decisions, that's where the key is. Because being complacent will hold you back from success.
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Organizing your images into galleries & collections to help people navigate your archive
How you structure your galleries will help users navigate your site more easily. For a small portfolio site, just a few galleries and you're done. But with a large image archive, creating (nested) collections is important.
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DPI & PPI are irrelevant, only pixel dimensions matter on your website
With everything related to your photography website, only image pixel dimensions matter. You can ignore DPI/PPI, that's just a piece of metadata, only relevant for printing and scanning.
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Custom website case-study: unique WordPress design for award-winning photographer Chris Dei
See what website design you can achieve if you use the right WP theme and if you let yourself be creative along the way. When the type of photography you shoot demands something special, it's OK to step outside of the norm and creating something unique to showcase it online.
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In-depth guide: How to create & improve your Google My Business listing to attract new clients
Make your photography business more easily discoverable on Google Search and Maps by creating a free Google My Business listing and getting reviews.
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In-depth guide: Image SEO essentials: How to optimize for Google Image search to drive more traffic to your photography website
Image SEO guidelines for ranking in Google Image search, along with explanations of why you'd want to rank in Google Image search, how it different from regular SEO, how to track your image SEO results and what the future brings.
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Q&A #11: website caching, WordPress hosting, paid links and image sizes
Answering your questions about website caching, good WP hosting providers, paid/affiliate links and how to size images on your site (for good performance).
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Google Chrome to show security warnings on your site if you don’t have a SSL certificate
Google is really making a push towards HTTPS recently, and this is just the next step. You should really take some time to get an SSL certificate and move your site to HTTPS.
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Single-page websites: when are they a good idea for your photography business?
If you just want an "online business" card (a bio, a short portfolio, some info about your services, and your contact info), then a single-page website might be a great fit for you. But you have to learn their pros and cons first.
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