Creating Content for Your Photography Blog
When you’re creating posts for your blogs, you want to do so in a way that creates value for potential clients and also improves your position in search results and the number of impressions your website gets in search results. This doesn’t need to be complicated and, contrary to popular belief, you do not need to write paragraphs of information for every single post.
I work with a number of photographers to help build their websites and everyone thinks they need to write at least 300 words for each post. Google does not look at word counts. It looks at the quality of information. If you can say what you need to in only 50 words, that’s awesome. In fact, that’s my personal preference. Most of the posts on my websites are mostly images, with hardly have any words at all. But they do include some text and that text contains some key information.
Create Evergreen Content
The best way to create content for your website, and your blog especially, is to write and structure it in a way that anyone at any point in time can read it and find it useful. This type of content is called “evergreen,” because just like evergreen trees, the content is always in an active state. It’s always relevant.
A few things you can do to make sure your blog posts always look relevant and up-to-date are:
Don’t display the date of your posts.
Frequently update the date of the post to make it appear more recent. This is also helpful if you can’t disable the date of your posts and don’t know CSS to hide the date.
Write in a way that is timeless. Don’t use slang references that will make a post sound dated in a year or two years or five years.
Give information that will always be relevant to someone who lands on the post from a search.
What to Create
You should also create a blog post for every single session you have done.
Commercial photographers might choose to call their blog something other than “blog,” such as “Projects” or “Articles.” But “blog” also works. Personally, I like the term “projects.” Consumer photographers should stick to the term “blog,” as that’s a term most consumers already understand.
Another excellent way to get started creating evergreen content for your website is to look at the emails your clients have sent. What questions have they asked? Take each question you’ve been asked and create a list. Convert each question into its own blog post.
Similarly, if you have a Frequently Asked Questions section on your website, convert each question into a blog post. Write a few paragraphs that answer the question. Don’t get rid of the FAQ. Instead, link each answer directly to the relevant blog post.
What to Include in Your Posts
Each post on your blog should include:
A title that has good long-tail SEO value.
Images showing relevant work.
Words that include keyword phrases relevant to the subject of the post.
Think of the keyword phrases someone might use to search for this particular post.
How to Title Your Photography Blog Posts
Starting with the title, you want your title to be structured simply and include relevant information people might be searching for.
For consumer photographers, this could include:
Time of day (all morning)
Type of Session (such as a family shoot)
Location of the shoot
Possibly, a unique identifier, such as weather conditions (rain/snow), season (fall colours), or a frequently requested type of shoot (mountains, vineyard, cherry blossoms)
Do not include:
Month or year of the shoot (I’ll address this in a minute)
Example: Say “Fall family session” instead of “October family session”
For commercial photographers:
Name of the person, company, product, or brand might be all you need.
If it’s an ad campaign, include the name of the campaign.
If it’s an editorial, include the name of the publication.
What Image to Include in the Post
If the post is about a particular project or session, obviously, you’ll want to include highlight images from that session. They could include an establishing shot of the location, a brand’s logo, sketched you’ve made to pre-visualize the project, or BTS photos.
Examples:
“Fall family session at Ravine Vineyard,” could include images from the session, as well as establishing shots of the vineyard and an image of bottles and wine glasses
If the post is more informative, such as one that answers a Frequently Asked Question or is informative to illustrate your expertise, use your images to illustrate your point.
Examples:
“How to prepare for your maternity session,” could include a variety of maternity images, as well as studio shots of your wardrobe closet or dressing room.
“Best locations for engagement photos in Pheonix,” could include one hero image of an engaged couple in each location
If you don’t have the extra images, the pre-vis sketches, establishing shots, BTS photos, etc., don’t worry about it. They’re not necessary but are great bonuses to include. Moving forward, work to make sure you’re shooting those images at every shoot.
As photographers, we tell stories through images, so start documenting more than just what the client purchases. Start documenting the whole client experience. When you do this, you’re photographing and creating brand assets for your business to use in your marketing for things like social media… or on your website… in a blog.
Text to Include in each Post
Now that you have a title and the key visuals for each post, you’ll want to have some text. A paragraph about the shoot that is descriptive and includes your primary keyword phrase for the genre of the shoot, such as “family portraits” or “cosmetic product photography” or “personal branding photography.” Think back to your navigation tree and keyword phrase hierarchy. Use your website’s primary keyword phrase in the text, and the keyword phrase relevant to that shoot. Write in a normal human-readable manner and don’t stuff your blog post with keywords.
For example, your brand’s keyword phrase might be “wedding photography” and the keyword phrase specific to the shoot might be “engagement photography,” so you might write something like:
When Chidi and Eleanor hired us to photograph their upcoming wedding, they talked about how much they loved hiking and camping, so I suggested we capture their engagement photos at sunset along the stunning cliffs of Bruce Peninsula National Park in Tobermory. Here are some highlights from their engagement session.
That one sentence ticks all the boxes. It is exactly 50 words. It’s tight, and contains all the keywords we want to include: the type of session, the location, time of day, our primary and secondary keywords, and even some extras that might be useful if people are searching for something like “engagement photos hiking,” which is pretty common here in Southern Ontario.
You do not need to write an essay for every blog post. If you like writing and want to write more text, that’s up to you. If you hire someone to do this, that’s also up to you. If you shoot only a few projects or sessions a month, you might have time to do this for every shoot. If you shoot dozens of sessions a month, you might want to stick to a bare minimum of text.
No matter what you choose, be consistent.
Tagging and Categories
The way I do this is simple. I treat the type of session as a category, so “acting headshots” is a category and “business headshots” is a separate category. Genre category examples would include weddings, engagements, portrait, families, product, cosmetics, editorial, boudoir, sports, entertainment, etc. If it’s a genre, it’s a category. Other categories might be things like updates, articles, how-to, FAQ, etc. There may be some overlap in genres and that’s fine.
As for tagging, I tag every post extensively. I tag every single post with the year, the month (and those are separate tags), the time of day (sunrise, sunset, mid-day), how many people are in the session, the brand name, the venue it was shot at, the type of setting (beach, vineyard, city park, historic village), special identifiers (fall colours, cherry blossom), the city, the province or state, the names of the models, the names of the couple, all of the vendors at the wedding,
Why do I categorize and tag each post in such detail? Well, I’ll explain in greater detail in the next episode. In the meantime, continue working on your blog and get ready to have your mind blown when I tell you how to create blog posts that update themselves.
