Till now, you have started making peace with the idea that your grand photography is not enough in itself. You have added a clear introduction to your homepage. You have started naming your images like an adult. You have also done the end of your site to fail with some Alt text. It is very large – a high five. Now let’s crank it on a rung.
Next, you will sit to write something real – a service page, a blog post, perhaps a bio update – and immediately hit the wall. Because all this talks about the SEO and keywords until you are staring on a vacant page, thinking how to work for Google to write something without making a knockoff wedding blogger like a knockoff wedding blogger.
Here is the truth: Most keyword advice is written for the abolition, not for photographers. And that is the problem.
You do not need a 47-table keyword planner or spreadsheet color-coded by the search volume. You need to understand how to talk about your customers – and to ensure how your website makes it clear, clearly, naturally, and without mourning your soul to its existence.
Let’s break it in the way it should have been explained with everyone.
Keywords are not marketing tricks, they are just general knowledge
Forget what you have heard about “keyword density” and “SEO juice”. We are not here to play an algorithm here. We are here to add dots between the offer you offer and your customers are already searching.
Think about the way people actually use Google. They do not type in a-term requests such as vague, “photography”. They type exactly the same at that moment, such as “family photographers in Southern Idaho who shoot with natural light” or “What to wear for pictures of a decline in yosemite.”
This is the real gold-not chasing each photographer, but specific, human-ridden questions that reflect the intentions, pursue small, clear phrases. These are called long-tail keywords, and they are the easiest way for you to show in search results, which are trying to rank for all “Alabama Photographers” without trying to shout more than one million people.
If you have ever answered a customer’s question on email, what do you already have to start using better keywords. You have heard the questions, such as “how much you charge,” “Where do you shoot,” “What should I wear,” “What is the process.” All those real-world inquiries can be converted into search-friendly phrases-and if you create pages or blog posts that answer them, you are doing SEO, whether you mean or not.
Most photographer keywords are useless, forgive
This is the place where things are usually wrong. Somewhere, someone asked you to include keywords on your website. So you did something like the “photography SEO” and found a list of general phrases, which looked promising – “Family Photography,” “Wedding Photographer,” Portrait Sessions “.
Problem? Those words mean exactly everything and nothing completely. They are unclear. They are broad. And they are competitive with madness. If your goal is to rank for keywords like “photography”, you can try to out-sing Beyonse. Good luck – this is not happening yet.
Your job is to be more specific. More local. more useful.
This means that identifying real words is typing in your dream customers search bar and writing your site around them. Not a spamy way. Not by creating the same phrase in every paragraph. But being intentionally. direct. helpful.
Instead of “portrait photography”, talk about “senior photos in Snow Canyon” or “Natural headshots for creative in uta”. Instead of “Elopement Package”, “How to plan a Cion Elopement with less stress and more scenes.” Write about These are not just pretier phrases – they are search words. And people are using them every day.
Where there are keywords (and where they are not really)
Let’s clarify: Keywords are not seasoning. You do not sprinkle them over your homepage and hope for the best. They need to live inside the structure of your site, which is woven in your most important pages in a way that makes sense to both humans and Google.
Start with your homepage. The first few lines should include who you are, what you shoot, and where you are based. In the fake-tingling manner-not the basics, are clearly stated. Something like this, “I am a Southern California photographer who specializes in adventure family sessions and natural light pictures for joints, creative and wildly cute strange strange.”
He is working alone a sentence. This tells Google your location, your specialty and your target audience – without the sound of all robots. And this is the goal. From there, those keywords can take your service pages, your image caption, your blog post title and even your contact page.
Are they not a place? In a way, it is repeated endlessly that seems suspicious. If someone reads a sentence like you have written it for a robot, your readers will jump – and therefore will be Google.
Magic is in subtlety. Use the keywords like you will use the conversation. Believe that they will work better when they behave like language, not code.
How to know what people are really looking for
The best way to find out is what your customers are typing in Google, it is not by guessing – it is noted. For your email. For your DMS. People ask for the goods on a discovery call. They are your real keywords. Not the conditions that you think they are using, but they arrive for real phrases when they are trying to find a person like you. Like questions:
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“What is the cost of a branding shoot?”
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“Best Place for Family Photos in Southern Utah”
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“Zion photographer who Elopements”
You can also see Google’s automatic suggestions or “people also ask” the box that appears during a search. These are like cheating code – they show you what people are asking right now. ur job? answer them. On your blog, your FAQ page, or even in a standalone guide. You do not require a complete SEO strategy to rank – you just need to be the most useful option.
Keywords should never kill your voice
If you take one thing from it, let it happen: Your keyword should support the voice of your brand, not to strangle it. You can be warm, funny, sarcastic, intimate – whoever you like the best – and still speak in a way that Google considers Google. You can write like a real person and still rank in search. Trick is combining both: adding structure and strategy without losing authenticity.
You are not here to write clickbait. You are here to show as yourself and help people feel that when they land on your site. The moment someone thinks, “I get this person,” you have already won. Google can bring them to you, but your voice is what they get to live.
What will happen next?
Now when you understand what the keywords are, how they work, and why not to cut it, it is time to start putting it in action. You do not need to deal with everything at once. Start with a service page. Update a blog post. Rewrit your homepage intro so that it really shows what you do, who you serve, and where are you located. This is not correct – it is just clear.
In Part 3, we will dig in the structural side of things: how to build a website that guides people through the experience of working with you, by page. Because it is not just about being found. This is about what happens after they landed. We are not building a digital scrapbook – we are building a system.
And when you keep the right words in the right places? That system starts working for you, 24/7.
