As a photographer, you hold a lot of different jobs within your business. One of those jobs includes having and maintaining your website. A website is your business’ online home. Does creating a website feel completely overwhelming? Well, the good news is that you don’t have to add “website designer” to your list of responsibilities. Website templates are a fantastic way to create an amazing website for yourself without having to start entirely from scratch.
The goal of your website is to have a professional online presence, get more eyeballs on your business, and generate inquiries. So how can you ensure that investing in a template will help more ideal clients find you online? I’m going to share my top three tips for choosing an SEO friendly website template that’s already primed for great SEO (search engine optimization).
What is SEO?
Here’s a quick explanation of Search Engine Optimization: SEO is the practice of making your website more visible to potential clients that are searching online by improving its ranking in search engines like Google.
I like to break SEO up into four categories: Technical SEO, Content SEO, User Experience, and Link Strategy. All of the parts and pieces within these categories work together to create strong SEO within your website and blog.
What to Look for in a Website Template
I’ve helped several of my SEO clients select their website template from a list of favorites before we do an SEO audit together. They tend to have trouble making that final decision. Once I take a closer look though, there’s usually one that stands out from the rest. Here are three things that I would recommend looking for so that you also get an SEO friendly website template!
Mobile Design
As of late 2023, Google primarily uses the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking in its search results, rather than the desktop version. This means that a strong mobile experience is significantly more important to great SEO than it was previously. Also, when looking at traffic data for my photography clients, about 50-60% of their website traffic (at a minimum) comes from a mobile device.
Most website building platforms allow you to create both a mobile and desktop version of your website. While yes, you could adapt a desktop-only template to work well on mobile yourself, why should that be your job to do? If the template that you’re looking at only offers a desktop design, I would not purchase it!! I would do a preview of the template’s desktop and mobile designs and make sure that you love them both.
Individual Service Pages
Google loves clarity. If you are trying to house all your service info, galleries, pricing, frequently asked questions, etc. all on a single page, Google is going to get confused. What keyword are you trying to get found for in search? What problem are you helping with? That is very difficult to determine if you have a one-page scrolling website.
Ideally, each service or product that you offer should have its own dedicated service page. Free website templates can be very tempting, but most of them have this problem. Look for a template with a separate Home page, About Page, Contact Page, and main Service page. You can easily duplicate this service page to create additional service pages.
Lots of Copy
As a photographer, it’s understandable that you’ll be heavily focused on the use and incorporation of images within your website. But we can’t forget about copy: words on the page. Google loves copy!
While we can make use of SEO image optimization to explain the photo to Google, search engines primarily understand the purpose of a page or post from its word-based content.
Personally, I love website templates that have swapped Lorem Ipsum placeholder text for copy prompts! These prompts can speed up your new website design even more by helping you brainstorm what you should talk about within each section.
At the end of the day , your website template should do more than just look pretty; it should help you get found by the clients you most want to work with. Choosing a template that’s mobile-friendly, allows for clear service pages, and gives you space to share your words will set you up for SEO success from the start. Before you buy, just pause and think: will this template really help me grow my business online? Picking the right one now means less stress later and more dream clients landing in your inbox.
Christy Hunter is an SEO specialist for creatives and other small businesses. She offers several types of SEO audits as well as Done-for-You SEO services. Her tips and education have been featured by publications like GoDaddy and Marketer Interview as well as by photography educators like Katelyn James and Hope Taylor. She is passionate about helping business owners finally understand SEO and helping them grow their business with organic search.
Always cheering you on,
Christy
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