Is having talent and creative vision enough to become a famous photographer?

These two qualities are definitely crucial for creating great works of art, but they are not enough to get you noticed. To become a popular, successful photographer, you also need to know how to promote yourself. 

And, with access to social media and other online platforms for photographers, it might seem easy to achieve global success really quickly. In theory.  

In reality, in addition to photography and editing skills, you also need to know how to be your own PR manager. 

Exploring the Importance of Marketing and SEO for Photographers

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. 

Of course, high-quality content remains one of the top requirements for successful SEO. However, you need to go the extra mile to ensure that your content is visible and accessible. 

Promoting your works requires an outstanding copy of either your online portfolio or your social media. 

But, no matter which platform you choose for your marketing strategy, search engine optimisation will be the primary skill you will have to learn to have your works appear at the top of search results. 

It’s a lot to learn, but don’t be discouraged! The best way to get these skills is by practicing. To help you started, here are a few useful marketing and SEO tips for photographers who want to promote their works more effectively. 

1. Start with a Target Audience Persona

Developing a target audience persona is a staple in every marketing strategy. 

As a creator, you, too will have a target audience, who you will target with your content whether on social media platforms or through your online photography portfolio. 

You might even already have an idea who these people are going to be. But let’s help you make your target audience persona more organised. 

A target audience persona is a typical member of your target audience. Of course, other members of your target audience might have different characteristics, but all of them should be more or less united by the following criteria:

• demographics and professional background

• identifiers (interests, hobbies, channels of communication0

• goals 

• challenges

Let’s say you want to channel your marketing strategy towards helping others learn and improve their photography skills. 

Here’s what the target audience persona would look like in this case:

Having this information organised will help you not only get some useful content ideas and develop a structure for your online portfolio but also will help you during keyword research. 

2. Develop an Extensive List of Keywords

Speaking about keyword research, here’s how you should approach it to make sure that you’re not stressing out over trendy keywords all the time. 

You might be wondering: do photographers need keywords? I mean, keywords are for text, right? Not exactly. 

While optimising your works, you will need to describe elements of your photos, which Google will later crawl to rank your content higher. 

The best way to do keyword optimisation is to build an extensive list of keywords that you will later use to optimize your content. This way, you won’t have to do keyword research for every single piece of content you’re producing. 

Here are a few photo keyword optimisation tips you can follow:

• Start with the literal description of the photo. What can a person see in your photo? Define the subject of the photo and the elements it involves. People, their age, gender, traits, animals, or other objects – give as many details as you can. 

• Keep search intent in mind. Search intent helps you define the purpose, why your target audience would look for your photos. Try to include at least 2 of the following types of keywords based on intent: informational (what is sepia?), navigational (beginner’s guide to wedding photography), transactional (buy ZV1), or commercial (Mountdog vs. AIXPI ring light kits). 

• Include location-based keywords. If you employ digital marketing to get new clients, it’s important to include location-based keywords in your content on all your marketing channels. 

Here’s how the keyword-optimized caption looks like

Image source: Unsplash

Caption: Color, wide-angle, beginner photography, urban, suburbs, summer, sunny, bike, bicycle, transportation, blue, woman, female, young, African American, relaxed, dress, pattern, St. Luis, Missouri, United States. 

How many keywords should you include?

Ethan Jefferson, an SEO specialist at Studicus says, “There are no limitations as to how many keywords you should use in the captions of your photos. “The optimal range is about 25 keywords per caption; it allows Google to obtain enough details about visual content.”

Remember that the main goal is not the number of keywords but using them for the right intent. You don’t want to clickbait your visitors. 

To become a popular, successful photographer, you also need to know how to promote yourself, with SEO and using a server log analyser for your site.

3. Optimize Content

Let’s talk more about image optimisation. 

When crawling your photography works, Google not only pays attention to the keywords in captions but also to a few other factors. 

What are they?

Let’s take a look. 

• Filename. It should contain your primary keyword that directly describes your image. So, if you post a photo of the sunrise over the sea, your file name should reflect that: sunrise-over-the-sea.jpeg. 

• Format. Different visual content requires different file formats. For instance, for uploading photos and illustrations, you should use JPEG, while for logos, it is better to use the SVG format. 

• Image size. The size of your photos can negatively impact the page load speed, which negatively impacts your SEO. Size your photos how you want them displayed on the page. 

• Alt text. Adding alt text is important for SEO. This text will appear in place of your photo in case it doesn’t load. Use your primary keyword for alt text.

To learn how to optimize your photos better to preserve their quality, you can check out GoDaddy’s video on image optimisation:

Video credit: GoDaddy

This video contains information from SEO professionals on why and how to optimize images for online portfolios and how Google ranks this content. 

4. Repurpose Your Content

So, let’s say you already have a well-optimised photography portfolio, a decent number of followers, an active social media strategy, and enough content on your platforms. 

What else can you do to improve your marketing strategy even more? Repurpose your content!

As a creator, you have already built a strong photography skill to share your knowledge with others, so one of the ways you can repurpose your content is by launching an online photography course. 

For example, Phil Ebiner, a well-known American photographer and film director, launched his successful photography master class together with other photographers to help others learn this skill. 

Image credit: Instagram

Since its launch in 2018, the course taught over 175,000 people photography and editing skills and is now a bestseller on Udemy. 

Another idea to repurpose your content is creating a podcast. There, you can educate your listeners on the go, without having to develop too many studying materials. 

Is repurposed content effective for SEO? Google expects you to deliver value. 

If you re-use your content in a way that brings new value to your target audience, it will definitely help you rank higher in search results. 

Over to You

Learning how to do marketing and SEO for photographers takes time and practice. 

With time, you will figure out who your target audience is and the keywords, with which you can target them. 

You will also see how optimising images impacts search engine optimisation, and how different representations of your content can re-engage your target audience. 

Hopefully, our tips will give you a good start in learning how to do marketing and SEO as a photographer and inspire you to learn even more, how to get more people to discover your wonderful works.