SEO is one of the most important things you can do for your interior and architectural photography business. The work you put into it now, will pay off exponentially with time!
While social media is what most people focus on, your website is the most important online calling card for your photography business.
Why? Because you have much more control with your website.
- You can fully control what's visible to visitors,
- there are no algorithms to limit visibility,
- it's a more permanent shelf life (unlike the super short shelf life of social posts!), and
- you can do things to make it easy for Google to find you.
SEO matters
Let's talk about how your website can get found. Because you can have a gorgeous site with amazing photos, but if nobody sees it then there's no business! This is where SEO comes in.
SEO is Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, it's tactics and tools that you can implement on your website (and off your site) to help search engines - mainly Google - find you more easily. And if Google can find you more easily, then your future clients can find you more easily!
Meet Lauren
Lauren Engel is part of the duo Arturo + Lauren, who specialize in architectural videography and photography. They are also the founders of Shiftercom, another wonderful community for architectural photographers. Lauren knows firsthand the power of SEO. She has a background in digital marketing for large brands like Disney, and she has used the power of SEO to grow hers and Arturo's business. In fact, SEO is such a big factor in their success, that they created a course specifically for SEO for architectural photographers!
Here's a bit about the impact of SEO straight from Lauren:
I became a duo with Arturo in 2021, who’s been behind the lens for 15 years. When he was living in Spain, his leads mostly came from referrals and social media, but my background in SEO from working with Disney's Hulu, National Geographic, and ABC brought a new twist.
When Arturo landed in the US, I gave his website a makeover. We made sure to shout out our forte—architectural videography—front and center. There's a whole tab dedicated to videography and we dropped hints about it on the homepage too. Thankfully, his website had some history, and that interview with Apalmanac? Gold! Backlinks from credible sites like that gave us a boost.
Surprisingly, the SEO magic happened fast. In no time, we bagged a few five figure jobs—a home decor photoshoot, a video gig for a luxury watch store, and a $70K deal for shooting an office building in New York. Can you believe it? Arturo just touched down in the US, and these high-profile jobs came knocking thanks to SEO. We didn’t have any insider connections in architecture or development, but SEO opened those doors for us.
SEO Tactics for Success
So let's look at what you can do for your website to see similar results in your business! Lauren's walks us through her top tips for how to do SEO on your own photography website:
Essentially, you always have to think about how to rank higher on Google. Keeping this goal in mind, your best methods for good SEO are:
- Quality Content Creation: Turn your top projects shot into case studies. Write about the goal for the project, objectives from the client, strategy of how you accomplished the shoot based on the client objectives and the outcome of how you nailed what they are looking for. Make sure to have at least a few paragraphs per case study. Make sure your projects have text! That will help Google understand what your site is about.
- Keyword Research: Lauren uses SEMrush (a keyword research website) to check which keywords to use related to architecture, interior and hospitality photo video and sprinkle on their site. Do some research on your own to find keywords that are a good fit for your target audience. Shiftercom's new SEO Course for Architectural/Interior Photographers also includes a list of pre-vetted keywords!
- On-Page Optimization: Make sure to optimize title tags, meta descriptions, headings, and URL structures with relevant keywords. Also make sure that each URL includes main information about the project, including the architect name and location.
This is Lauren and Arturo's SEO title: Arturo + Lauren | Los Angeles Hospitality, Architectural and Interiors Photography Videography.
This is their site description: Arturo + Lauren are a Los Angeles, California based architectural and interior photographer and videographer duo with over 15 years of experience. We shoot hospitality, residential, commercial photo and video projects for architects, interior designers, hotels, developers. Published in Architectural Digest, Dwell, Travel + Leisure, Conde Nast, Elle.
- Mobile Optimization: Make sure your website is mobile-friendly. More users are accessing the internet via mobile devices, and search engines prioritize mobile-responsive sites. When you're laying out your website pages, there are typically options to preview the page in mobile view as well as desktop.
- Internal Linking: Link related content within your site. It helps search engines understand the structure of your website and improves user navigation. For example, in Lauren and Arturo's videography page they link to the individual case studies.
- Backlinks: Acquire high-quality backlinks from reputable and relevant websites. They signal to search engines that your site is trustworthy and authoritative. For example, Lauren and Arturo have been interviewed in Apalmanac and their work has been published in Harper’s Bazaar, Arch Daily etc. Make sure you ask for credit! And if possible for them to link to your site.
- Social Media: Think about sharing your case studies on stories and have them link to your website! It’s also a signal to Google if people from social media are coming to your website.
- Regular Updates and Maintenance: Keep your site updated with fresh content, remove broken links, and stay on top of technical issues that might affect your SEO. As soon as Lauren has a project that she can go live with and that is something she wants to showcase, she gets that case study writing done and uploads the project to the site!
- Analytics and Monitoring: Use tools like Google Analytics to monitor your website's performance. When Lauren worked for HYPEBEAST, she was living in Google Analytics! Spend some time to make some custom reports to narrow down segments you want to focus on. The searches who come to your website and who are living in LA, what are they searching for example? Are a lot of people going to a specific section of your website? Put more effort into updating that one. Are there some areas of your site that aren't driving traffic, why? Can it be improved?
Conclusion
SEO is an ongoing process, but the sooner you start working on it, the sooner you'll see results. Make sure to spend a few days and update your website, then schedule in time to regularly do updates, check analytics, and add in projects. Lauren continues to always tweak their website to make sure that the site is up to date with new projects and press, but a majority of the SEO is there! The inquiries will continue to come in, with the power of SEO building over time. Now let's raise that Google rank!
