Section 1
I need to tell you something that no web designer will: your beautiful, minimal, image-forward website is actively repelling Google.
I've spent years studying what separates photographers who dominate search results from those who drown in them. The pattern is painful in its consistency. The photographers with 'design-forward' sites — the ones that win Awwwards nominations — almost universally rank terribly. Meanwhile, photographers with frankly ugly sites, loaded with text, rank on page one.
This is the Portfolio Paradox. You are so good at your craft that you assume the work speaks for itself. And to humans, it does. But Google isn't human. Google is a text-processing machine that has gotten better at understanding images, but still fundamentally relies on words to determine relevance.
When I audit a photographer's site, I don't look at the images first. I right-click, select 'View Page Source,' and see what Google sees. Usually? A wasteland. Div tags. Image URLs. Maybe a footer link. No text that says 'wedding photographer in Austin.' No content that signals expertise. Nothing.
Your site could be the most beautiful photography portfolio on the internet. If Google can't read what it's about, you don't exist.
Section 2
I'm about to give you the most valuable strategy in this entire page — something I've never seen another SEO talk about publicly. I call it Venue Arbitrage, and it works because it's based on genuine reciprocity, not manipulation.
Think about your last 20 shoots. How many unique venues did you photograph? Each of those venues has a website. Each website has a 'Preferred Vendors' page or a blog or a gallery. Each of those pages could link to you — if you gave them a reason to.
Here's the play: Create a 'Complete Guide to [Venue Name]' post on your site. Make it the most comprehensive resource about that venue on the internet. Include your best 10-15 images from shoots there. Write about the lighting conditions, the best spots for portraits, the time of day that works best, tips for couples considering that venue. Make it genuinely useful.
Then reach out to the venue: 'Hey, I just published a guide to your space and included some of my best work from shoots there. Feel free to use any of the images in your marketing. I'd love it if you could share the guide with couples who book with you.'
What happens? They share it. They link to it. Some add you to their preferred vendor page. You've just earned a high-relevance, locally-connected backlink — the exact signal Google uses to determine local authority.
I've had photographers acquire 15+ venue backlinks in 3 months using this method. No cold outreach. No awkward link requests. Just strategic reciprocity.
Section 3
Pull out your phone. Search 'wedding photographer' plus your city. See that map with the three businesses listed below it? That's the Local Pack. And if you're not in it, you're invisible to roughly half your potential market.
Here's what most photographers don't understand: the Local Pack plays by different rules than regular search results. It's powered primarily by your Google Business Profile — not your website. This is why I see photographers with terrible websites ranking in the Local Pack, while photographers with stunning sites are nowhere to be found. They optimized the wrong asset.
My approach to Local SEO is obsessive. We optimize every field in your GBP — including the ones most people skip. We implement a review acquisition strategy that gets clients mentioning specific keywords naturally ('best newborn photographer,' 'so patient with my toddlers,' 'stunning photos at [venue]'). We upload images with embedded location data. We answer questions in the Q&A section before anyone asks them.
The goal is to make Google so confident about who you are, what you do, and where you do it that showing you in the Local Pack is an obvious choice.