Optimizing Your Photography Portfolio Website for SEO and UI/UX
One of my portfolio pages
You’ve decided it’s time to create your online photography portfolio or maybe you have one, but feel like it leaves something to be desired. Your first instinct might be to focus solely on image selection, but that leaves so much unaddressed.
I’ve done SEO, copywriting and marketing consulting in addition to photography. So taking that experience, I want to provide some unique insights to optimizing your photography portfolio and probably your website overall.
Sidenote: This is from a sales and marketing perspective. If your website is just to display it artistically, this may be a bit boring.
Photography website SEO: Domain Selection (url)
I don’t want to get too technical here. But there’s the idea of keyword competition. If you haven’t already bought a domain or url for your website, consider this first.
Who is your client?
How do they look for photographers?
How do you plan on being found?
If Google plays into this at all, then don’t name your business something generic resulting in a url that’s a variation on something or is easily lost in search. For example, if you think “How about ‘Awesome Photography’” and you find out awesomephotography.com is taken (BASTARDS!) but then think “I can still name my business ‘Awesome Photography’ and just make the url ‘awesome-photography.com’”
Just…don’t.
People will never be able to find you on Google without a bunch of extra effort because popular, short, and generic names are highly competitive. Additionally, the query “awesome photography” would return a bunch of random stuff from higher authority sites like BuzzFeed and your photography portfolio website would be buried in search results. This really happens. Sometimes, I meet people and try to look up their website afterwards, but it turns out there are 5 businesses with the same name and I don’t know which one is theirs especially, if there’s no photo of them. There often isn’t. Secondary tip, have a photo of yourself on your website. (I’m behind and haven’t done it yet myself)
It’s worth mentioning although it may go against your creative sensibilities that one of the easiest ways to rank for local searches is to just choose a domain/business name that’s a combination of your city+niche like if I were a moving company in my hometown of Lake Charles, and it weren’t already taken, I’d buy the domain
lakecharlesmovingcompany.com
Alternatively you can buy several domains based on what you think people will search and redirect them to your real domain. It’s not particularly frowned upon either. Google has suggestions about when it makes sense to here.
Title Tag and Meta Description: SEO Description
Put simply, title tags are the big blue text and meta descriptions are the little text you see as Google search results. Here are some things to keep in mind.
Use keywords such as your photography niche in the first few words as they get bolded by Google as in the example above
Click through rate affects rank long term and that’s another reason the text on here is important to consider
You’re limited to around 80 characters for title tags and 155-160 characters for meta descriptions before they get cut off (I normally write my meta descriptions in wordcounter.io to make sure they don’t get cut off)
SEO for your Portfolio Page Slug
If your website is like most, you’ll have a homepage and the portfolio will be a subpage with a slug at the end. A url slug is just the bit that goes on the end after the slash and main url.
I’ve outlined the slug in my Portraits at Night page as an example in the photo above.
For your slug, use whole words and if you can, ones that pertain to your niche and locale if you’re targeting local searches. So if I were a local wedding photographer back in my hometown, my url and slug for the portfolio page of my website might look something like this.
welkintangphotography.com/lake-charles-wedding-photos
UI/UX for photography websites
This might seem a little complicated and tedious, here’s the reason why UI/UX is important. People will stay on your website longer and are more likely to contact you if your website is easy to use. Additionally, that will also provide you better metrics on Google. Here are some dos and don’ts.
DO NOT make someone CLICK TO ENTER
It makes your website load slower because of the big splash image, and it means you add steps to your site navigation which makes it less SEO compliant. A good site navigation means you can reach any part of the website in 3 clicks.
Don’t have elements that look clickable and turn out not to be. For example, big things draw attention so if you have a module with a large non-interactive photo and a small button to click through, that’s a bad user experience that will cause more people to leave your website thus hurting sales and SEO. Google “bounce rate” for more info. In the example below, I thought you could click through the photos above the headings, but you have to scroll down and use the “more” button on this website.
In the template below, the pictures don’t click through. You have to scroll down and use the “more” button, which is less than ideal for a good user experience.
Don’t Use small photo slideshows, especially ones where you cannot click to expand. It seems like these are used by photographers who don’t want to pare down their portfolio and also want to make sure people don’t save a high quality image of theirs. It’s misguided. When your prospects are interested in your work and you only let them see one, tiny, low resolution photo at a time, you are costing yourself opportunities.
DO Use a simple design and let the photos speak for themselves. Photos are already visual so any extra visuals will only take away from them. Excessive badges or design elements can just overwhelm users and when they have multiple portfolios or websites to look at, it’s another reason to move on.
DO add alt text to photos you upload. Alt text is what Google shows when your photos won’t load. It’s something Google has to crawl and another opportunity to use your keywords. Renaming your files can also help your images to show up in more image searches, but I find it more useful for other industries.
DO Upload images in an optimized resolution. Photos in too low of a resolution will look blurry and photos in too high of a resolution will cause your pages to load too slowly. Making the longer dimension around 1000 or 1200 pixels and you will be around the optimal resolution for a photography website portfolio. I’m suggesting this resolution because photography portfolios images will be viewed larger. Web images for things like ecommerce should use lower resolution.
DO Use restraint. The ideal number of photos that should be in your portfolio is depends on the type of photographer you are as well as how many niches you cover, but just remember. this is a photography portfolio and not a photo dump. If you have two hundred photos from the same session, something’s gone wrong. I would also consider having a time limit on how far back your work goes.
There are a few reasons why this is important:
Most of us progress in style and ability level. If you have a portfolio that spans a decade, older photos might not represent your current style or skill level. Mixing old with new photos can just make it harder for someone to know what to expect from you.
You want to make a good impression so just show your best work and don’t overwhelm your viewers. Don’t make them work too hard to figure out who you are. Mostly likely, they’re a stranger and you haven’t earned that from them.
Showing too many photos will overwhelm someone or cause them to lose interest. They’ll quickly leave your site and your SEO will be affected negatively.
Maybe this is a repeat of number 2, but it’s worth repeating. If someone is looking contact you, a carefully selected portfolio of your strongest, most-consistent work will show them who you are as a photographer, and what they can expect from you quickly and impressively.
SEO Next Steps
After all of the previous work is done, there’s still more to do!
Install Google Analytics on your website
Enable Google Search Console
Get familiar with how to use both to analyze and improve
Display social proof
If you’re catering to locals, write website copy that shows you understand the local area, their expectations and their needs.
Update your info on directories like Yelp, YellowPages, and Google Business. These links will be nofollow, but mentions of your existence are still somewhat helpful.
Paste your website url all over your socials.
Blog about your niche, the local area and other topics your audience is interested in. This can show your personality, establish your credibility and provide opportunities to rank for desired keywords.
Bottom Line
Basically, you need to consider more than photo selection although photo selection is a big part of building your photography portfolio and overall website. If you have more questions, feel free to get in touch with further questions. Did I miss something? Comment below and share.
