Shawn Talbot is an architectural photographer based in Kelowna, Canada. He recently reached out to us for an SEO Audit of his website, hoping to boost his organic traffic and SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings. Wonderful Machine offers a photographer SEO audit service to those who want to drive more traffic through search engines. Our team of SEO experts is ready to tackle any challenge, and in this case study, we will show you how we conduct one of these audits.
Our photographer SEO audit starts with a questionnaire for the photographer. In this case, we wanted to learn more about Shawn, his photography business, and his target audience. We also asked about any previous SEO efforts and his SEO goals. This helped us identify key points to focus on during the audit. A vital part of this was the list of keywords that the photographer wants to rank for. In Shawn’s case, these were primarily the keywords related to his specialties and the cities around him.
After we went over the questionnaire and had an informative meeting with Shawn, we proceeded to the next step.
Shawn’s website is a WordPress website. While WordPress might not be as simple to use as Squarespace or as visually appealing for photographers as Photofolio, it is the best way to build a highly customizable website. From an SEO standpoint, there is no better option than WordPress.
We conducted an in-depth audit of his website covering various aspects of SEO, including domain authority, links, indexing, metadata, image SEO, and performance.
We decided to start our photographer SEO audit by looking at links, crawling, and indexing the pages on Shawn’s website. We found some errors in his URL structure and recommended he focus on fixing these errors and improving his internal linking structure to make it easier for search engines to crawl and index his website. Additionally, we identified some orphan pages. Orphan pages cannot be accessed from other pages on the website, making it difficult for search engine crawlers to find and index them, which is not ideal for a website.
During this part of the audit, we also took a look at his sitemaps, robots.txt, SSL, and other technical settings, and we found no issues with them.
Good metadata is essential to improve a website’s visibility in organic search results and drive more qualified traffic. Over the years, we noticed that photographers tend to undervalue meta descriptions, especially when compared to something like image alt tags.
We analyzed Shawn’s meta titles and descriptions. We found that, while they were adequately written, many of them were either too long or too short and others were missing altogether. This can significantly impact the number of people who click on a site in Google.
Properly done image SEO is one of the most essential requirements of any photographer’s website. We often find that photographers ignore image SEO completely, which can significantly impact the overall effectiveness of their websites. So it is important that photographers prioritize proven image SEO methods early on to avoid fixing a problem that is several hundred images big.
Image SEO involves optimizing the file names and alt text of images to include relevant keywords and phrases, while also optimizing the size of the images and considering proper image formatting and placement on the site.
Generally, Shawn’s image SEO efforts were not bad. His alt text is well-written, but we suggested standardizing capitalization and avoiding repetitive words. The same is true for his filenames. However, the image size was another story. Some images were over 1 MB, which negatively affects SEO and loading times.
It is recommended that the image file size should be kept under 250KB. This ensures fast loading speed and contributes to a positive user experience. Large image file sizes can be reduced without compromising image quality through image compression.
Content is a crucial aspect of SEO. However, photographers often struggle to create enough written content as their main focus is on their images. But having text on a website is essential to target specific keywords and provide information to users.
During the audit, we found that some of Shawn’s content was not properly optimized for SEO. This included missing header tags and duplicate header tags. We recommended that Shawn adjust his header tags to improve the structure and readability of his content. Also, we suggested he increase the amount of text on his website while keeping keywords in mind to better target his audience. Additionally, we emphasized the importance of proper author attribution to establish credibility and authority. This is something Google has been pushing for lately. And when Google speaks, we should listen.
One of the things we always recommend to photographers is having a high-quality, up-to-date blog. Regularly posting blog content is an effective way to keep a website fresh and increase visibility, engagement, and link-building opportunities. Shawn does have a great blog, but we highlighted several issues with his posts that needed improvement.
Having a user-friendly website improves the overall user experience. This can result in a lower bounce rate and increased time on site, both of which are strong indicators of a website’s relevance and authority. We analyzed Shawn’s website and identified some areas for improvement, including navigational structures and image optimization. So we suggested that Shawn improve his navigational structure to make it easier for users and search engine crawlers to navigate his website. Also, we emphasized the importance of having a mobile-responsive website, as most users access the internet on their mobile devices.
Website performance is important for SEO because it affects the user experience. Search engines take website speed and performance into account when determining search rankings. While Shawn’s page size was good, his page speed needed to be addressed. As discussed previously, the size of his images was significantly impacting his speed and performance. So we recommended he optimize his images to improve page speed. As well as providing Shawn with specific instructions on how to reduce image size, we identified the pages that had too large images that need to be optimized.
High-quality backlinks from reputable and relevant websites can signal to search engines that the website is valuable and trustworthy. This can help increase visibility and search engine rankings. On the other hand, low-quality or irrelevant backlinks can have a negative impact on the website’s search engine rankings.
Shawn has a good number of backlinks of decent quality, which is definitely beneficial to his website. However, there is still room for improvement. A good backlinking strategy will go a long way in improving his domain authority and SERP rankings.
Google Analytics and Search Console are essential tools for tracking SEO. They provide valuable data and insights into a website’s performance and audience. We examined Shawn’s Google Analytics and Search Console data and highlighted ways he can leverage the data to identify key issues that need fixing. We also suggested that he focuses on improving his click-through rates, bounce rates, and session duration by improving his content and user experience and tracking the results.
Domain authority is an important metric that measures a website’s overall strength and trustworthiness. We analyzed Shawn’s domain authority and found that it was in the same range as many other photographer websites of the same size, but there was still room for improvement. To enhance his domain authority, we recommended that Shawn focuses on improving the quality of his backlinks and creating high-quality content that attracts natural backlinks.
SERP rankings indicate a website’s visibility in search engine results pages. We evaluated Shawn’s SERP rankings for some of his target keywords and found that there was also room for improvement here. By implementing all of the recommended fixes mentioned in this audit, we are confident that Shawn’s SERP rankings will significantly improve.
Our SEO audit of photographer Shawn’s website revealed several areas for improvement. We identified opportunities for optimization in areas such as image SEO, content SEO, usability, performance, backlinks, domain authority, and SERP rankings. By implementing the suggested improvements, Shawn can significantly enhance his website’s user experience and search engine visibility, leading to increased traffic, engagement, and conversions. We recommend that Shawn prioritize the fixes and implement them gradually, tracking the progress using Google Analytics and Search Console. Overall, we are confident that the recommended changes will have a positive impact on Shawn’s photography business in the long run.
Further Reading
Expert Advice: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Photographers
Expert Advice: SEO Terminology
Expert Advice: Google Analytics Setup