The SEO checklist for photographers on any platform. Go through this with your own site open. Most photographers find at least three issues in the first five minutes.
Most photography websites are invisible to search engines not because they look bad, but because of a handful of fixable mistakes. Go through this list with your own site open.
Page Titles
Google uses your page title as the primary ranking signal for local search. If your wedding page title says "Wedding Photography" instead of "Myrtle Beach Wedding Photographer" you are invisible in local results. Every person in your market who searches for what you do will see your competitors instead of you.
Use this formula for every service page: Keyword + City + Brand. "Myrtle Beach Wedding Photographer | Pasha Belman Photography." Keyword first, always. Under 60 characters so it displays fully in search results.
Headings
Your H1 is the main heading on the page and one of the strongest on-page ranking signals Google reads. Most photography websites use creative headlines like "Love Stories" or "Timeless Moments" in their H1. These look beautiful and mean nothing to a search engine. Every service page gets exactly one H1 and it needs to contain your primary keyword clearly and directly.
Every service page gets one H1 that mirrors your primary keyword. If your wedding page targets "Myrtle Beach Wedding Photographer" your H1 should say exactly that, or a close natural variation like "Wedding Photographer Serving Myrtle Beach and the Grand Strand." Clear beats clever every single time.
Google Business Profile
Your GBP is the most powerful free local SEO tool available and most photographers set it up once and never touch it again. Missing categories, no service descriptions, inconsistent address format, zero photos, and no posts all suppress your local pack ranking. The map pack is where most of your potential clients click first.
Fill in every field. Add 20 or more photos named descriptively before uploading. Write service descriptions with keywords. Post twice a month. Your name, address, and phone must match exactly everywhere online.
Image Alt Text
Alt text is one of the few places Google explicitly looks for keyword signals on photography sites. "IMG_4823.jpg" tells Google nothing. "Myrtle Beach wedding ceremony at sunset" tells it everything. Photography sites have more images than almost any other type of website. That means more ranking opportunities being left on the table with every blank alt text field.
Write a descriptive, keyword-relevant alt text for every image on your service pages. Keep it natural and honest. Describe what is actually in the photo and include your location and service type where it fits naturally.
Keyword Cannibalization
If you have multiple posts targeting the same keyword, Google splits its attention between them and often ranks none of them well. This is called keyword cannibalization and it is the most common silent ranking issue I find. The photographers most likely to have this problem are the ones who have been blogging the hardest. More content without strategy makes it worse.
Open Google Search Console. Filter by your primary service keywords. If multiple pages appear for the same query you have cannibalization. Add canonical tags on blog posts pointing to your main service page. One strong hub page beats ten scattered posts every time.
Location Pages
If you serve multiple cities but only mention them in passing, you are leaving entire markets unranked. Every city you actively shoot in is a separate search term with its own monthly volume. A photographer serving Myrtle Beach, Pawleys Island, Murrells Inlet, and Conway has four separate ranking opportunities they may be completely missing.
Build a dedicated page for every market with meaningful search volume. Each page needs its own primary keyword, 800 words minimum, a unique H1, and internal links back to your main service pages. Do not duplicate content across location pages.
Mobile Page Speed
Google uses mobile page speed as a direct ranking factor. Photography sites are the most common offenders because of large uncompressed gallery images. If your site takes more than three seconds to load on a phone you are losing rankings and clients at exactly the same moment. The person who found you in search bounces before they ever see your work.
Compress every image before uploading to Showit. Tools like Squoosh or TinyPNG reduce file sizes by 60 to 80 percent with no visible quality loss. Check your Core Web Vitals in Google Search Console under the Experience section.
Site Architecture
When your homepage targets weddings, families, seniors, and headshots all at once, it ranks for none of them well. Google needs to understand what a page is specifically about in order to rank it for a specific search. A homepage that covers every service dilutes its relevance for every service. Your homepage should establish brand. Your service pages should do the ranking.
Give every service its own dedicated page with its own primary keyword. Wedding page. Family page. Senior page. Each one focused, each one distinct, each one with 800 words minimum of real content covering what you offer, where, and who it is for.
Schema Markup
Schema is structured code that tells Google exactly what your business is, where you are located, what you offer, and how to display you in search results. Most photography sites have none of it. Photographers with schema get star ratings appearing directly under their page title in search results. Their listings take up more space and get more clicks before anyone even visits their site.
Add LocalBusiness schema to your homepage, Service schema to each service page, and FAQPage schema to any page with questions and answers. On Showit add schema via a DIV embed element with a JSON-LD script. Verify at search.google.com/test/rich-results.
Google Search Console
Search Console is the direct line between your website and Google. It shows you exactly which pages are indexed, which keywords are bringing people to your site, which pages have errors, and how many people are seeing and clicking your listings. If you have never set it up you are making all of your SEO decisions completely blind. It is free. It takes ten minutes to configure.
Go to search.google.com/search-console and add your property. Verify ownership and submit your sitemap. Check the Performance report monthly. Note your positions for your five most important keywords. That is your baseline and everything improves from there.