SEO for Photographers: Back to Basics From Someone Whose Website Fell Off Google
SEO for photographers comes down to one thing: making it easy for Google to understand exactly what you do and where you do it, so the right clients can find you.
That's it. Not code, not dark arts, not a monthly retainer to a mysterious agency. And I can tell you this with some confidence, because in September 2025 my own website, the one that had fed my family for years, fell off page one of Google. And I had to learn what actually matters the hard way.
So this is the post I wish I'd read before it happened. What went wrong, what fixed it, and where to start if your own website is sitting on page three doing absolutely nothing for you.
Why isn't my photography website showing up on Google?
Usually for one of three boring reasons: Google can't tell what you do, Google can't tell where you do it, or someone else is simply answering the searcher's question better than you are.
In my case, it was something sneakier. I'd been making changes to my website to optimise it for AI search, and without realising it, I'd undone years of solid SEO work in the process. Right in the middle of a Google-wide re-evaluation. My traffic roughly halved, my most important keywords slid from page one to pages two and three, and the enquiries dried up with them. Nine years in business and I was suddenly invisible.
The lesson I want you to take from that isn't "don't touch your website". It's this: check your rankings regularly. I didn't notice for months, because business was busy and checking Google felt like a job for another day. Google Search Console is free, it takes ten minutes to set up, and it would have shown me the slide the week it started.
Where do I actually start with SEO?
When I finally asked for help, I got it from Lee Fletcher, an absolutely brilliant photographer and SEO expert in Scotland. I booked an hour with him fully expecting to be blinded by science. Instead he said: "You're not bad at SEO. You just need to go back to basics."
And the basics, for a photographer, are gloriously unglamorous:
One page per service. If you offer family shoots, proposals and headshots, that's three pages, not one page trying to rank for everything. Google matches pages to searches, not whole websites.
Say what you do in the words people search. You might call it "capturing your story in golden light". The mum looking for you is typing "family photographer in [your town]". Your page title, your headings and your opening paragraph need her words, not just yours. (Fifteen years as a journalist drummed this into me: write for the reader, not for yourself. Google reads exactly the way a busy stranger does.)
Name your places. Location is half of every photography search. The towns you cover, the parks you shoot in, the landmarks behind your favourite sessions... they all belong on your pages, naturally, in sentences a human would write.
Claim your Google Business Profile and gather reviews. Free, hugely underused, and those reviews get quoted everywhere: by Google, and increasingly by AI tools when someone asks them to recommend a photographer.
If you're on Squarespace (I am), use the settings you already have. Every page and blog post has its own SEO title, SEO description and URL slug tucked away in its settings. Fill them in every time, with your service and your place. Give your images alt text that describes what's actually in them. It's five minutes a page, and it's where a lot of Squarespace photography sites leave easy wins on the table.
None of this is clever. All of it works. My rescue was an eight-week plan built on exactly these foundations, and I spent a school half term buried in my laptop putting it into action (my children were THRILLED). By June 2026 my key rankings were confirmed back on page one, and they've held.
Here are the numbers from my own Google Search Console. Across June to August 2026, my clicks from Google were up 29% on the previous three months, and up 11% on the same three months last year. My average position went from 33.7 to 12.6. The odd bit? Over the same period my site appeared in 38% fewer searches. Fewer appearances, more clicks. My read is that Google stopped showing me for things I don't do, and started showing me higher for the things I do.
What keywords should a photographer target?
Your service plus your place, in the words your clients use. "Family photographer in [your town]". "Newborn photographer [your county]". "Wedding photographer London". That's the core of any photography SEO plan, and it belongs in your page title, your main heading and your opening paragraph.
Then add the questions clients ask on the way to booking: what to wear, where to shoot, how much it costs, what happens if it rains. Those make brilliant blog posts (more on that below).
Two SEO tips for photographers that took me years to learn. First, don't chase big numbers. The best keyword for you is often one that only a few dozen people search each month, because every one of those people wants exactly what you do. Second, the best keyword tool you've got is already free: the Performance report in Google Search Console shows the actual searches people used to find you. Start with the ones where you're sitting on page two, and make those pages better.
Does SEO work for wedding photographers?
Yes, and the same basics apply. I don't photograph weddings myself, but I teach photographers across every genre, and SEO for wedding photographers runs on exactly the same foundations with one twist: your places are your venues.
Couples often start their planning with the venue. So name the venues you've worked at, in plain sentences, and write up real weddings with the venue in the title and the opening paragraph. Answer the questions couples type while they're planning: how far ahead to book, what's included, how the day runs. And ask every couple for a review, because a review that mentions the venue and the day works hard for you on Google and in AI answers.
Do photographers need a blog for SEO?
Honestly? It's the single best long-term move most of us aren't making. Your service page can only answer so many questions. A blog answers all the others your clients are typing into Google: what to wear, where to shoot, what things cost, what happens if it rains. Every helpful post is another door into your website.
My proposal photography blog is the proof. It sits at an average position of 6.6 on Google and has brought in 335 clicks from Google over the last 16 months, from people who were planning a proposal and wanted help.
The catch is consistency, and this is where most photographers (me included, for years) fall down. Writing takes time we don't have. It's also exactly the problem I now use AI to solve, but that's a story for another post... you can watch me testing the whole system in public over on my From 0 experiment if you're curious.
Do I need to pay someone to do my SEO?
Not at first, and please don't hand money to anyone who cold-calls you promising page one. (I've had those calls. I only listened so I could tell them to get lost.)
The foundations above are completely doable yourself, for free, without touching a line of code. Where an expert earns their fee is diagnosis: when something's gone properly wrong, the way it did for me, an experienced pair of eyes will find in an hour what you'd spend months guessing at. I am NOT an SEO expert, and I've never needed to be. I know enough to get my website ranking highly on Google, and that's the level every working photographer can reach. (And if you'd like the exact method rather than months of guessing, that's precisely what my SEO Success for Photographers course teaches: nine lessons, no code, £99.)
How long does SEO take to work?
Longer than you want, sooner than you fear. Small fixes (page titles, headings, your Google Business Profile) can show movement within weeks. The bigger authority-building work, like blogging, compounds over months. My own recovery took a focused eight weeks of foundations plus a few months of patience.
Which is exactly why the best time to start is now, while things are fine. SEO built in the good times is what catches you in the bad ones.
Do photographers still need SEO now that clients ask AI?
Yes, more than ever. More and more of your future clients aren't googling "family photographer near me" at all. They're asking ChatGPT, or Claude, or Google's AI answers, and booking whoever gets recommended. Getting your business into THOSE answers is called AIEO (AI engine optimisation), it's the thing that tripped me up when I did it wrong, and almost nobody in photography is teaching it yet. I've written a whole post on what AIEO is.
But it sits on the same foundations. When ChatGPT searches the web, it's reading the same public pages Google can see. And in May 2026, Google made it official that its spam policies apply to its own AI answers (AI Overviews and AI Mode) too. So there are no shortcuts there either. Good SEO is still the base that everything else sits on.
Can ChatGPT recommend your photography business?
It can, and it's recommended mine. In my own monthly check, ChatGPT named me for five out of five client-style questions on 31 August 2026, up from one out of five on 21 July. That's a single run each time, logged out, and it can answer differently tomorrow, so I treat it as a direction of travel rather than a result.
And it's already brought me a booking. A dad asked ChatGPT for a photographer who was good with small children, and it suggested me. Here's what my website said that matched him, and how you can do the same.
Want help getting found?
If you'd rather have all of this laid out step by step, my SEO Success for Photographers course walks you through the whole thing in nine lessons, no code and no jargon, built from the work that took me to the top of page one and held me there. Get Found by AI does the same for AI search. Both live alongside the rest of my photography business courses, and if you're not ready for a course yet, my free guides for photographers are yours, no strings.
And if you want your whole marketing sorted, Google, AI search, your numbers and your content, with me alongside you every week, that's Finally Found and Actually Booked, my twelve-week live programme for photographers starting in January 2027. Applications for the founding run close on 31 October.
Because the brilliant photographs are the part you've already mastered. Being findable is the part of marketing for photographers that nobody taught us. And it's SO much more learnable than it looks.
Good Questions, Honest Answers
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SEO (search engine optimisation) is the work of making a photography website easy for Google to understand and rank: clear service pages, locations named in plain language, page titles that match what clients search, reviews, and helpful blog content.
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Start with the foundations: one page per service, page titles and headings using the words clients actually search (service plus location), your locations named naturally on the page, an active Google Business Profile with reviews, and regular helpful blog posts.
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Your service plus your location, in the words clients use: "family photographer in [your town]", for example. Put that phrase in your page title, main heading and opening paragraph, then use blog posts to answer the questions clients ask before they book. Google Search Console shows the searches you already appear for, which is the best place to start.
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Yes. Wedding photographers need the same foundations as any photographer, with one addition: name the venues you've worked at. Write up real weddings with the venue in the title and opening paragraph, answer the questions couples ask while they're planning, and ask every couple for a review.
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The foundations cost nothing but time: Google Search Console, Google Business Profile and on-page fixes are all free and doable yourself. Paid expert help is worth it for diagnosis when something has gone wrong, not as a monthly retainer sold by a cold-caller.
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It's the strongest long-term SEO move a photographer can make. Every helpful post answering a real client question (locations, costs, what to wear, weather) is another way for your website to be found on Google and quoted in AI search answers.
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AIEO (AI engine optimisation) is the practice of making a business findable and recommendable in AI search tools like ChatGPT, Claude and Google's AI answers, where a growing share of clients now look for photographers.
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Yes: SEO Success for Photographers (£99) is Kirsty Hamilton's nine-lesson course teaching photographers to run their own SEO, from keyword research to service pages, blogging and Google Business Profile, with no code or jargon. It's built from the method that got her website back onto page one of Google after the 2025 core update.