8 Squarespace SEO Tips for Photographers

April 9, 2020 Lauren Taylar

Are you a photographer looking to increase the search engine ranking of your Squarespace website?

Well I’m proud to say you’ve come to the right place.

If you’re not familiar with SEO, it stands for search engine optimization. It’s the process of giving your website the best possible chance of ranking high in search engines like Google.

If you’re a total SEO newbie, this post all about SEO basics is perfect for you.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a very long time. That’s because I’ve seen A LOT of spammy SEO on photographer websites and it leads me to wonder who is spreading this misinformation.

I worked in the SEO industry for a couple years, which is why I now offer Squarespace SEO services for photographers as well as coaches and other service providers.

In this post, I’m breaking down 8 Squarespace SEO tips for photographers to help you improve your search ranking.

1. Include keywords at the top of your homepage

On any website, you always want to introduce what you do and who you do it for.

This is known as your tagline (not your marketing slogan).

As a photographer, you want to state:

What kind of photography you offer (wedding, couples, newborn, etc)
The style of photography if it’s unique (ie bohemian style)
The kind of people you work with (ie adventurous couples, families, high school seniors)
The location that you service (whether it’s local or destination)

In this area you want to use Heading 1 or 2 formatting because it has more authority over paragraph text.

Feel free to break up this area with the different formatting. You want it to be straightforward, easy to read and not overwhelming.

You can see in the examples below how you can use a couple different headings and a paragraph font.

2. Add keywords to your homepage title tag

In Squarespace, this is known as your SEO title. The title tag is what appears in Google.

This is how it looks in Google for my website.

You can find this under Marketing - SEO.

This is another area where you want to be concise. I see keyword stuffing here a lot. Do not mention a word more than once.

I cannot stress that enough. Google can read the words, so adding more does not help you.

Here, you want to keep your title tag to 60 characters and under. Anything more will cut off in the search results.

Common title tag formats…

1. Name | [location type of photography]

Example: Alice Photography | Brooklyn Wedding Photographer

2. Name | [type of photography] | [location] or Name | [type of photography] in [location]

Example: Kelly Photos | Weddings, Couples and Family Photography in NYC
Example: Adrianna Photography | Engagement Photographer in Chicago

3. Name | [type of photography]

Example: Kaci Photography | Adventure Wedding Photographer

I’ve seen photographers put their business name last and I wouldn’t recommend this. When I was working in the SEO industry, we never did this. Your brand should come first. Moving your keyword to the front of your site title is not going to give you a massive advantage.

Here’s an example of a title tag that is missing the business name.

3. Rename all your images

This is an important Squarespace tip for photographers.

Most images will download as ‘IMG_2328.”

This is bad for a few reasons:

Google can’t read it
You’re missing out on ranking potential
People who are visually impaired won’t know what the image is

That’s why you always want to rename your images before uploading them to your Squarespace website. You can change the file name after you upload it, but I find it easier to do this all at once with your photos to save time.

You want your images to have a clear description and to be concise. This is not a place to include 10 different variations of your keyword.

A good format to follow is: [keywords - what image is]

For example: “Dallas wedding photography - bride and groom kissing, holding flowers”

I’ve included many examples in this post all about how to rename your images for SEO, so definitely check it out for more detailed examples.

4. Condense your image file sizes

This is a super important step you cannot skip over.

If you are uploading full images to your Squarespace website, between 5 and 15 MB, you will severely slow down the speed of your website.

Why is this important?

Because people don’t stick around for 5+ seconds to wait for websites to load. And uploading large images is a big reason why this happens.

Large photos, like banner images that span the full width of the page, should not be more than 2500px x 1500px.

What you want to do is:

Manually condense the file
Condense it with Jpegmini
Condense it again with Tinypng or Tinyjpg (the both allow png and jpg file formats).

Make sure that you are following this process for every single image you upload to your website.

I walk through this entire photo optimization process with step-by-step photo instructions in this post.

5. Don’t keyword stuff all over your website

A quick Google search of Los Angeles wedding photographers returned a list of many websites that are using black-hat spammy SEO to get their website to rank higher.

You can clearly see from the example below how many times “Los Angeles” and “Los Angeles wedding” were included on the page. It’s obvious that these photographers added in fluff content and headings to be able to include their keywords more.

It’s unnatural looking and therefore hurts the user experience. Your website’s primary goal is to serve your audience, not include as many keywords as possible to boost your Google search rankings.

I cannot stress this enough that providing an amazing user experience for your ideal clients is your #1 goal.

If you have done something similar on your website because you saw someone else doing it, that’s okay. Just go back and edit your content so it’s more streamlined.

Only include keywords on your website where it makes sense.

I’m going to be walking through what matters most when it comes to ranking in Google later on in this post.

6. Don’t keyword stuff in your website footer

This is a mistake I see on a lot of DIY websites. The last thing you want to do is find random places to add a bunch of keywords related to your offering.

Here’s a couple of examples…

Again, both of these are hurting the user experience on your website.

You do not need to list out every single city and town that you could shoot weddings in. Keep your focus on the region, county or city that you serve. That is going to have the higher search volume, therefore be more impactful.

If you definitely want to add keywords in your website (which is totally okay), then keep it short and concise. Only use your keywords once, not variations of them.

Here is an example of a footer that is clean and to the point.

Here are more spammy SEO examples to stay away from when optimizing your website.

7. Write blog posts about your clients

Want to rank your photography website higher in search? Publish content to your Squarespace website in the form of a blog.

Instead of adding keywords throughout your website (which will have little to no effect on search), put your focus towards creating blog posts.

Why?

1. From a user experience, potential clients want to see your work. So consider this to be an extension of your portfolio where you can dive into an individual client’s story through a blog post.

For wedding photographers….How did they fall in love? What special moments happened on their big day? What was important to them? Show that you took the time to get to know your clients and that you truly care about them and their big day.

2. From an SEO standpoint, publishing content that includes your keywords will help you move higher in the search results. I do have to stress, however, that the most impactful way to do this is to include the keywords naturally.

Optimize the URL

Optimize the URL by removing any fluff or transition words (to, the, for, and, etc).

You only want to include your keywords. Take the keywords from your blog post title and include them here.

Do not add additional variations of the keyword you want to rank for.

Perfect example: yourdomain.com/blog/saratoga-wedding-photography-canfield-casino

Bad example: yourdomain.com/blog/saratoga-wedding-photography-canfield-casino-saratoga-springs-weddings-engagements-albany-photographer

You can change this under the settings of your blog post.

Write short and concise blog post titles

Going off of my last point, your blog post titles are the same way.

You want to include:

The type of photography
Location
Couple / family name

It shouldn’t be longer than 60 characters or else it will cut off in the search results.

Example 1

Bad: Saratoga Wedding Photographer | Saratoga Weddings | Canfield Casino | Engagement Sessions | Saratoga, NY | Lily and James
Good: Saratoga Wedding Photography | Canfield Casino | Lily & James

Example 2

Bad: Skaneateles Wedding Photographer | Syracuse, NY Engagement Sessions | Conor and Shannon | Downtown Skaneateles
Good: Engagement Session in Skaneateles, NY | Conor & Shannon

Example 3

Bad: Wedding Photographer in Albany | Molly & Scott | Albany, NY Engagement Sessions | Wedding Photography | The Hollow
Good: Albany, NY Wedding Photography | The Hollow | Molly & Scott

Why the bad examples are not recommended:

They mention locations more than once
They mention variations of the keywords
They say “photographer” instead of “photography” - the actual subject of the blog post

8. Don’t add more than one keyword to your page URLs

Typically, an investment page would simply be:

yourdomain.com/investment

Sometimes it can make sense to add the primary keyword for the page to the URL.

Let’s say your keyword for your wedding investment page is “dallas wedding photographer.” Your URL should be something like:

yourdomain.com/dallas-wedding-photographer-investment

But let’s say you also do family photography. You should not be adding that additional keyword in, like this example:

yourdomain.com/dallas-wedding-photographer-family-photography-investment

You want to keep your URLs clean and concise.

There you have it! Those are top tips when it comes to SEO for photographers.

Check out my SEO tips specifically for photographers on the Showit platform here.

As mentioned above, I offer Squarespace SEO services for photographers. Want to rank higher in Google so you can fully book out your weddings?

After implementing SEO strategies for billion dollar global brands, celebrities, and lawyers, I know what it takes to reach page 1 of Google.

Looking for more Squarespace SEO tips? Check out these blog posts: