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I’m answering your questions about photography websites, business, marketing, SEO and more.
You can ask me anything. I’ll try to answer within 24 hours, and the most useful questions get featured here on the newsletter too. Need any help with your website? Don’t hesitate to write, I’m all ears.
Thanks to George, Fabio, Jewel & Ricardo for these topics.
Check out my answers below, and jump in with your own thoughts by sending me a message or leaving a comment below.
“What are the shortcomings of using PhotoShelter or other similar portfolio hosts regarding SEO?”
Update: a more detailed response to this question can be found in this separate article: WordPress vs. photography-specific & other platforms: deciding where you should build your photo website
“I’m about to purchase a domain name for my new website. Should I include my City in the domain name for SEO benefits?”
You should think less about the SEO aspects and more about the future of your business.
If you include your local city in the domain name of your site, you’re kind-of restricting your site to that specific city. This also applies to including your specialty in the domain, like johndoeweddings.com
Many photographers have done that in the past. They choose a domain like that because they want to include keywords in there for SEO purposes, but then they expand. They either expand to other cities or areas, or they change their photography specialty (besides weddings, they also do families and portraits, for example, or they move away from weddings altogether). And they’re stuck with the old domain name.
That’s why most photographers choose the “firstnamelastname.com” domain, because it’s more flexible, they can put whatever they want on the site in the future.
For the actual SEO implications of changing domain names, read this new article: How to change your site’s domain name (URL) without losing SEO rankings (7 steps + FAQ)
“Can I use my blog to showcase recent events & projects that I shot?”
You could, but it might be better to also have a separate “Portfolio” area on your site.
Photographers usually use blogs for articles, for informational/education content for their target audience. And they place larger image-only galleries (with full-screen sliders sometimes) in a section called Portfolio.
The reason people do that, and not post all images in a blog, is because Portfolios are more visually impressive. You click on a thumbnail and it opens up large (whereas a blog is usually more narrow).
The George Vivanco website is a good example of this: the have wedding and engagement portfolios in the navigation (which expand to show specific couple names, but also a “best-of” wedding portfolio). And their Blog section simply contains a ton of useful articles and guides that brides & grooms might find useful (about wedding day timelines, choosing a venue, etc.). This is what a wedding blog should do, and how it would be different from the portfolio pages.
Blog posts are also excellent for sharing one simple image and writing the story behind it. Steve does a great job of this on his blog.
“Digital is a blessing and a curse.”
Following an opinion piece I wrote on the Newsletter about paid photography, a photographer replied with their interesting take on it:
Photographer 1: “Mass consumption is the blessing and the curse of the digital world.
I’m 48 years old and I began editing websites in 1995. Every site I built for the next 7 years was bespoke. Because editors were so bad when I first started, I coded in …Notepad! Yes, manually.
In 2002, I switched to Movable Type and used “skins” for the first time, but still heavily customized my site. At this point, I moved into other positions that did not require me to create a website, but I kept up my basic skills.
In 2006, I used my first theme from someone else, and merely changed the colors and added a logo for myself. In 2009, I moved to WordPress and haven’t looked back.
If you had told me even 10 years ago that in a matter of hours someone could set up an entire eCommerce site, I would have been amused. Those were hard to do and not have security leaks. Now, you have SquareSpace and Shopify, among others.
The blessing: anyone can set up an eCommerce site. The playing field has been leveled if you have $14 a month and some time, plus the ability to take a few decent photographs. Now, whether or not you will get found online or sell anything, that is another story.
I’ve seen something similar with photography. I learned on film cameras pre-PhotoShop, and to this day, I set up a shot if it is formal. I don’t PhotoShop out anything. The limitation to becoming a good photographer prior to 2000 was the ability to buy a camera, buy film, pay for the development of the film, or have your own dark room. PLUS, the most challenging of skills, having both an “eye” and being a “chemist”, too.
In other words, it wasn’t cheap.
Now, DSLRs are a wonderful thing and like web design/development and eCommerce sites, “anyone” can be a photographer. Pay for the camera, have a laptop, and a PhotoShop subscription. So, expensive, too, but less so than buying and developing 10s of thousands of negatives on film.
And now we have Way. Too. Many. Photographers.
Thank goodness for the wedding and engagement industry that keeps so many budding photographers busy. I blame the ease of photography tools on the plethora of “gender reveal parties”, and the rise of maternity photography. People have to make a living, so…make up events and charge for them.
Digital in all areas is a blessing and curse.”
Alex: Making up events and charging for them is probably a form of specializing (to avoid the flood of photographers). Carving a niche is obviously a way to survive.
The alternative is probably way harder: creating a different style, a higher lever of quality. Creating more unique work. It’s harder because:
- it requires having a gift/talent
- or at least having the courage to do things out of the ordinary, battling with the fears of success and/or the fear of failure
- it might also require better (and more expensive) gear, or more free time
And still, there are a few who do it. New photographers who rise above the noise and make a name for themselves.
Photographer 2: “It’s my understanding that some companies are creating stock imagery specific to their campaigns. The libraries they build can then be used for multiple projects, with the style and look that supports their brand.
If I bid on a commercial assignment for a campaign with the mindset that it’s bespoke work, invariably other creatives bidding will rationalize it as limited, or even worse, mass content.
My solution is to hold steady, and continue to create content and communicate value, in the midst of the race to the bottom.”
Alex: That’s really well said. Didn’t know that sometimes bespoke work gets redistributed like that.
Race to the bottom indeed. It sounds like climbing a mountain when the whole mountain is sinking in the sea.
Photographer 3: “Sometimes, no, oftentimes it surely feels as if the mountain is sinking…but thankfully there are still many, many gold nuggets to be found in the gravel. The digging for them, unveiling them and cultivating them however is significantly more cumbersome and time consuming than before. One has to continuously pierce through a tough curtain on the recipients / prospects side of gatekeepers, pre-occupation, lack of time and attention, competition, do it in house approach, “my niece has a camera and shoots for us…”, etc. etc. When once however these nuggets are polished, and shining, as gold does, they work rewardingly based on old standard well proven business principles.”
Your turn: ask me anything. I’d love for this to become a valuable “repository” of answers from the entire community of photographers.
You can help with that by getting involved:
1. Ask questions. Send them to me via email or on Twitter (@foreground).
2. Answer questions yourself. If you have anything to add to any of my answers (or can answer from a different perspective), jump right in! I’ll share relevant notes with other photographers so everyone can benefit.
