You Need to Stop Making These Mistakes When Designing Your Photography Website

One of the biggest mistakes photographers make is trying to reach a broad audience. Instead, you should narrow your focus by creating pages for each type of photography you provide, such as maternity, newborn, and family and providing resources to help establish you as an expert in your field.

Sound overwhelming? Well, we’ve already built out page templates for each photography niche to make it easy for you to build out a webpage to target your ideal clients.

Know your keywords—and use them

If you want to improve your ranking on search engines, you have to use the right keywords. KWFinder is an affordable tool that allows you to research keywords, build and import lists, and determine how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword. Compare variations on keywords, like “photographer” versus “photography,” to see which one people are searching more frequently.

If you serve multiple areas, then you will want to create different pages for each service area. For example, if you provide photography in both Dallas and Houston, those are different audiences and different keywords. In order to reach both, you will need two different pages using those keywords.

Don’t have time to do keyword research? No problem—we’ve done all the work for you with our keyword research and mapping blueprints.

Dive deeper

Have you ever gone looking for a specific photo and found yourself looking at more and more photos and reminiscing? An hour later, you may have found the photo you were looking for, but now you’re absorbed in happy memories.

You want to create a similar experience for anyone who visits your website. The goal is to present yourself as a one-stop shop and resource for all visitors. Through the content on your page, you give visitors the chance to take a deeper dive into the resources, galleries, and blog posts you offer. Use your experiences and stories to personalize the page and let visitors know more about you.

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Keep everything on the same page

Think of your page as the trunk of a tree from which you will branch out into a variety of different topics related to your main topic. Consider all the details of a newborn session, for example, such as poses, safety, how to prepare, what to bring, what to wear, etc. Create content for all of these topics and establish yourself as a resource.

The important thing is to avoid creating a dead end for visitors to your site. You want them to keep exploring and find more information that answers their questions and solves their pain points. Provide as much information as possible on your page by linking to additional content and incorporating galleries and testimonials.

The main pages of your website should have a clear path you want users to follow. Before you even begin creating a page, know who you want to reach and what your goals are for that page. Do you want visitors to fill out a form or download a piece of content? You should know what action you want users to take and create a page that directs them toward that action.

A good way to start planning your page is to research keywords and key phrases that users are actually searching for. Understanding the searcher intent for your users can help you create a page that provides the content they’re seeking and help them trust you as a resource and authority.

Don’t have time to do this research for yourself and plan out your main pages? Our Strategic Marketing Plan is custom-designed for your business needs. We will help you put together a plan that works and even build out three comprehensive competitor profiles to help create a strategy that will blow your competition out of the water.

Stop taking people to a pricing page

If you don’t want potential customers to focus on pricing, don’t take them directly to the pricing page. In fact, instead of having an investment or pricing page, if you want to include session fees and pricing, put them on the specific pages. For example, newborn pricing should be on the newborn page, maternity pricing on the maternity page, and so on.

Putting all your pricing information together on one page forces visitors to focus on pricing and can even be confusing. When you include your pricing for newborn photos specifically on your newborn page, potential clients know exactly what you’re offering, and they have plenty of other content to look at besides just pricing.

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Have something on your page that attracts attention

Every page you create should encourage visitors to take some sort of action. You can offer exclusive content like a free guide or other download or a discount on a session fee or free product when they book with you. While you definitely want people to explore your website, you also want them to do something, instead of just reading your content and never booking a session.

You can also create a pop-up when visitors have scrolled a majority of the way down. These types of pop-ups are less annoying because, by this point, the user has invested a significant amount of time on your site and shown interest.

Position yourself as an expert

When people search for a specific service or product, they are looking for an authority—someone they can trust to provide reliable information, someone who has proven expertise. That’s who you want to present yourself as: an expert in your field.

Check out these tips on how to answer your visitors’ questions and position yourself as an expert resource:

Offer something others don’t
One of the best ways to stand out from your competitors is to fulfill a need that they don’t. Look at what your competition offers. Are there gaps in their products or services? If you can fill those gaps and provide your clients with something they can’t get somewhere else, you will become invaluable.

Focus on a specific niche
Don’t go too broad with what you offer. It’s much harder to be an expert in every type of photography than it is to be the go-to resource for anyone interested in newborn photos, for example. While it’s great to offer multiple services, you want to focus your marketing and content efforts on specific niches and present searchers with all the information they need to know about that specific topic.

Know where your clients are
This is where analytics and data come in. You want to know where your clients are coming from so you can market to them where they are. Maybe you get most of your website traffic from Instagram. Maybe it’s Facebook. Maybe it’s local search. However users find you, market to them on those channels, and you’re more likely to reach people who are already looking for a business like yours.

Provide real value
People who visit your site want to know “What’s in it for me?” Offer them a variety of resources, such as blog content, downloads, videos, and infographics, to establish yourself as a resource. The more information and help you provide, the more users will come to see you as reliable and trustworthy—exactly the kind of person they want to give their business.

Explain your process

Break down for potential clients what they get when they book a session with you. Too often, people don’t understand the value in what a photographer does because they don’t see all the work that goes into their images. By showing what a session fee includes, from consultation to the shoot to editing to ordering, you can demonstrate the value of your services to potential clients.

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