3 Tips for How to Design Your Website with Search Engine Optimization Strategies
- Part 2 of Designing a Website Series-
~for photographers and basically everyone else.~
Originally I created one entire blog post for what to know when you design your website, and it was WAYYY too long. I knew the chances of people reading all of it were very minimal. So I decided to split it into two blog posts. If you haven’t read part one, 11 Things to Know (and Use) When Designing Your Own Website (Including SEO Tips), you can do so here. ↓
This blog post can stand alone if you haven’t read the other one, but you will definitely benefit from both so go check the previous one out when you have a chance!
As a reminder before you jump in reading, I learned these tips for SEO from the point of view of a photographer creating a website, however these tips stand for all industries. Some tips should be more heavily focused upon in certain industries and some can be less so, but overall they’re applicable for all websites.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
Before I dive into tips for Search Engine Optimization (which might sound like a scary subject), I wanted to first explain what search engine optimization is. For short, people call it SEO. It can sound a bit overwhelming if you’ve heard people talk about it before and don’t know what it is so I am going to simplify it a bit and hopefully make it feel more approachable and less scary.
I have heard it said like this: Search Engine Optimization is basically free marketing. However, it is even better than “free marketing” through platforms like social media because after you make changes to your website and you set it up well, IT DOES ALL THE MARKETING ITSELF with no financial cost! Social media requires your continual attention and effort: posting carousels, reels, followers, the whole bit, but search engine optimization is much more of a one-and-done deal.
Catalina Jean described SEO in a way I will never forget on a podcast that you can find here (you can also find it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts). This podcast is by Heart and Hustle (some of my favorite photography educators ever) in partnership with Catalina Jean who knows SO much about search engine optimization, so I highly recommend listening. She also pops up to talk all things SEO with another of my favorite podcasters Nathan Chanski (a Michigan wedding photographer and educator) here!
Catalina Jean essentially says (I’m paraphrasing) “SEO is like little invisible tech spiders that crawl the internet and are able to see everything on your website from pictures to text and determine how relevant it is to someone searching a specific keyword in Google”.
For example, if I search for a Bay Area California wedding photographer, a bunch of websites will pop up from photographers in the Bay Area. How is that? SEO. The goal of search engine optimization is getting your website to pop up in search results for people looking for information or services you provide. Maybe that information comes up in the form of a blog post because you have used keywords such as “Bay Area” “Wedding” “Couples photography” and “venue”. Or, maybe you posted a gallery of pictures, tagged (invisibly through your website) keywords, and put a title for the gallery on your website like “Danville California East Bay Area Mount Diablo Client Wedding Gallery”.
SEO also ranks based on the ease of your website and how people flow through it. If links are broken and not functioning, you get “docked” on your SEO score. If footer links don’t work, you get docked. And the reverse is true: if you have clear URLs, your website will rank higher. If you have relevant information in blog posts, Google is like “Hey! This person and their blog could be helpful!” And hence it ranks your site higher.
My description for SEO above is simplified down a bit and pretty short, so look into some courses or YouTube videos to start understanding Search Engine Optimization more.
Helpful Courses
Here are two courses I took through Coursera, an online learning platform that walks you through topics in a hands-on way and gives you certificates after finishing. (Bonus points if you live in California because you can sign up for free Coursera through the California public library system here).
-Search Engine Optimization with Squarespace
With all that being said, there are kind of 3 types of Search Engine Optimization.
1. On Page - Search Engine Optimization
On page SEO is a fancy way of saying anything you do yourself to your website. Let’s dig in.
Keywords
I will say this a million times because of how important keywords are: figure out what keywords are most used in your industry and which ones are most relevant to you, and USE THEM A LOT on your site! I’m talking about headers on your website, body text, and blogging (for more description on this, keep reading). The SEO “spiders” like reading words and matching them to what people search the internet for and are guessing they want to see.
Header and Title Tags
Front load your headings with keywords people might be searching.
Ex: 30 Best Bay Area Engagement Photoshoot Locations. Also, keep your title tags (the HTML code tag that allows you to give a web page a title) under 60 characters because anything else will get cut in Google search results.
High-Quality Images and Videos
I mention this on #3 (Mobile Friendly) as well but make sure you are using high-quality images on your website. If your photo has horrible resolution and is stretched oddly, don’t bother including it.
NO STOCK IMAGES
If you’re not a photographer, I know this one will be a bit harder to navigate, but you should know that using stock images on your website hurts how you rank. Google knows! (*imagine “how are they gonna know” tik tok meme*).
Image Optimization
Give every image on your site a descriptive file name and alt text. The SEO spiders can see these and can better direct relevant people to your site.
Blogging
As I mentioned before, blogging is an incredible way to stock your website full of keywords and helpful info that Google will in turn use to make your website pop up higher in search results. It is also a great way to keep your website up to date (which if you read my previous part 1 blog, you will know how important that is).
Check URLs
Use short but descriptive URLs with keywords and put dashes in between keywords.
-Example: DO use “couples-photography” and DON’T use “photosofcoupleshere”
Check Meta Descriptions
These are the couple sentences that will show up as the “Description” for any given page when searching in Google, so they can be the life or death to whether someone clicks on your site. Include a short description, keep it under 160 characters because that is all that will show up, and do not forget a call to action!
Internal Linking
Link from high authority pages on your website to pages that need a boost.
2. Off-Page - Search Engine Optimization
In contrast to On-page SEO, Off-page is one step removed from your actual website. Off-page SEO is really just the name for things you can do to get people to your website that aren’t related to the structure of your website at all.
Backlinks to your site
Guest blogging: Go find some partnerships with other people in your industry and offer to write a guest blog. If you are cited on other websites with links, more people are driven to your website!
Podcasts: If you have a podcast and can link your own site, awesome. Otherwise, similar to guest blogging, go hop on a podcast, and when the other business/individual posts about it, have them link back to your site!
Social media
Linking through social media is a great way to drive traffic from your social platforms (where you are likely active daily or weekly) to your website! Utilize this by throwing links into your Instagram stories or social bios!
3. Make it mobile-friendly - Search Engine Optimization
The third “type” of SEO is basically making your website “mobile friendly”… What does that mean?
-Use high quality images with good resolution.
Make sure your images are large enough for good resolution but not so large that they slow down the loading page of your website. Not only is that annoying to people visiting your website, but it actually effects how your website ranks in google.
-Don’t use too many redirect pages and avoid fragmented URLs!
There are so many other ways to make your site google friendly so I am going to refer you to this good article Google has on getting your website more mobile-friendly here!
You made it!!! Now is SEO still so scary?? (And if it is still a bit intimidating, that’s ok. Step by step.)
It is absolutely ok for you to still be a bit intimidated by search engine optimization. It has gotten easier over time for me. The great thing to know is that any amount of search engine optimization helps. You don’t have to be a guru and know everything for SEO to make any improvement in how your website ranks in Google or other search engines.
Again, as I mentioned in Part 1 of this blog series on Designing a Website, when you improve things related to Search Engine Optimization for your website, you can track improvements in how you show up or what keywords people search to find your site.
I love analytics (aka numbers) because you can tangibly see the impact your website changes make on how/who finds you on the internet! For programs to check analytics, check out that blog post I linked above. All those resources are totally free!
Let me know in the comments below what you are going to start with regarding SEO for your own website as well as what still overwhelms you a little bit!
Feel free to DM me on Instagram @brynpower.photography with any questions you have about SEO. We’re in this together!
