I look at a lot of photographer websites. They are some of the best-looking sites in any industry, and some of the worst at getting found. It is almost always the same handful of mistakes. Here they are, and what to ask if you decide to hire someone to fix them.
Mistake 1: Instagram is the website
Instagram is great for showing your work to people who already follow you. It is terrible for being found by a parent who does not. Google rarely shows Instagram posts for “family photographer [city].” A website with real pages is what ranks. Keep posting, but point Instagram at your site, not the other way around.
Mistake 2: print-size photos on every page
Your site is slow because every image is huge. Google ranks slow sites lower, and a parent on a phone gives up before the first photo loads. Resize for the web before uploading. This is the easiest fix on this list and the one I see most.
Mistake 3: no words
A slideshow, a logo and a form. Google cannot read a photo. It needs a heading, a paragraph and a page title that say what you shoot and where. Even three sentences under the slideshow change what Google can see. The website pages guide shows where the words go.
Mistake 4: one page for every genre
“Portfolio” or “Services” with everything on it ranks for nothing. One page per genre, with the genre and your city in the title, ranks for each. See the genre pages guide.
Mistake 5: hiding prices
People search for cost before they search for you. A site with no price range loses them to a site with one. You do not need a full price sheet. A starting price per session type is enough.
Mistake 6: no Google listing, or a half-finished one
“I do not have a studio, so I cannot have one.” You can. The Google Business Profile guide shows how. A finished listing with fresh reviews is the fastest win in this whole industry.
Mistake 7: changing the business name
“Jane Doe Photography” becomes “JD Photo Co.” becomes “Golden Hour Studios.” Every rename splits your reviews, your listing and your links. Pick a name and keep it. If you must change, change everywhere at once and keep the old web address pointing to the new one.
Mistake 8: a blog about nothing
“Five tips for your fall session” is fine, but nobody local is searching for it. A gallery page titled with the park and the town is searched for every week. If you only have time for one, build the gallery page.
Mistake 9: hiring the wrong help
A lot of SEO companies sell photographers the same package they sell everyone else: a blog post a month and a report nobody reads. Before you hire anyone, ask these:
- “Can you show me a photographer you rank?” Not a screenshot. A site you can search for yourself, on your phone, right now.
- “What are the first three things you would change on my site?” If the answer is vague, so will the work be.
- “Will I own everything you build?” Pages, listing, logins. If they keep it when you leave, walk away.
- “Is there a contract?” Good SEO shows up in a few months. You should not need a year-long contract to find out if it is working.
- “Who does the work?” The person on the sales call, or someone you will never meet?
Honest answers to those five questions tell you more than any sales deck. If a company cannot answer the first one, nothing else matters.
What good help looks like
They fix the listing first, because it is fastest. They build genre pages and town pages, because those rank. They set up a review routine, because that is what moves the map. They show you the search results on your own phone, not a chart. And they tell you plainly when something will take months, because some of it does.
Want this done for you?
I run a photography site in Tampa Bay myself, so I can show you one, and there is no contract. If you want to know which of these mistakes your site is making, the audit is free.