The lovely thing about photography is that people buy it with their eyes. They’ve seen your work, they’ve fallen for your style, and now they want their own photos to look like that. The frustrating thing is that none of it counts for anything if they never find you in the first place. When someone’s planning a wedding, expecting a baby or sorting headshots for the team, they open Google, type a genre and a town, and book from the handful of names that come up. SEO is about making sure yours is one of them.
Get found for the genre, not just “photographer”
Nobody searches “photographer” on its own — they search the exact thing they need. “Wedding photographer [town]”, “newborn photographer [town]”, “family photographer near me”, “commercial photographer [town]”. Each of those is a different person with a different budget and a different reason for looking, and each deserves its own page written properly around it. If weddings are what you want more of, the wedding searches are what we chase — not a vague catch-all that ranks for nothing and speaks to no one.
The searches that happen a year out
Weddings are their own strange market. Couples book a photographer twelve, sometimes eighteen months ahead — long before most of the day is planned. That’s a gift, because there’s a steady stream of people searching well in advance. But it also means you have to already be there when they look, because the good photographers get snapped up early. I build the wedding side of your presence to catch that long, patient run-up, so you’re in front of couples while they’re still shortlisting rather than after they’ve booked someone else.
The map that decides “near me”
For family, newborn and event work, a lot of the searching is local and quick — “family photographer near me” tapped out on a phone, then a tap on whoever shows up on the little map at the top. That map pack is its own game: your Google Business Profile set up properly, categorised right, the towns you cover made clear, and a genuine trickle of recent photos and reviews. It’s also the fastest-moving part of SEO, which is why I start there — the deeper ranking builds over months underneath it while the map brings in the early enquiries.
Reviews are the tie-breaker
Choosing a photographer is emotional and a little nervy. You get one shot at a wedding day or a newborn’s first fortnight, and you’re trusting a near-stranger with it. So people read reviews closely before they ever fill in your form — looking for the ones that mention how relaxed you made everyone feel, not only the photos. Recent, plentiful reviews lift you in the local results and reassure the person reading, so building a gentle habit of asking happy clients goes into the plan from the very start.
The honest version of what I do
No jargon and no baffling monthly report. In plain terms: your Google profile sorted, a proper page for each genre you want to grow, the technical groundwork tidied so your image-heavy site still loads fast, and a steady flow of reviews coming in. Then it’s kept ticking over, because the photographer two towns away won’t sit still either. The one thing I won’t do is promise you the top spot for “wedding photographer [town]” by a set date — nobody honest can, because SEO is months of steady graft, not a switch you flip. What I can promise is more of the right people finding your work: the ones already sold on your style, just looking for who’s behind it.
If you’d like to be the photographer your area finds first — for the genre you most want to shoot — let’s have a chat about the quickest wins for you.