Crafting a Professional Photography Website: My Story
Social media was my most used way of sharing my photos, either on Facebook or Instagram. I would shoot, edit, share, and then hope for good engagement on the social media platforms. It was good in the earlier days, but now social media platforms are over saturated with photos and now with the push for Ai generated photos and videos across social media it can be a struggle to have a voice in photography.
So back in February 2023, I felt there had to be a better way to display my photos. With lots of online research I felt a Squarespace website would suit my needs. As I have no coding experience, using the drag & drop features of Squarespace to create a website would work well for me.
I signed up for a basic website, I also got Google Workspace free for the first year as an addon. This allowed me to create a professional email to be used on my website. Over a couple of months, I created my website including designing my own Logo. My website went live in September 2023. In March of 2024 I upgraded to the basic ecommerce website, this gave me the ability to set up a store to sell prints and digital downloads, this has been a way of adding value to my website.
During the winter of 2024 I then started looking at my ranking on Google and felt it was ok, but the SEO of my website could be improved. I signed up to SEO Space which is an addon to Squarespace. I currently have the free version and have the browser plugin so I can scan every one of my pages on my website. This gives the page a ranking out of one hundred and gives suggestions on what changes need to be made on the page to increase the ranking on Google. This has been a game changer for me as I saw engagement on google increase, coupled now with writing regular blogs. I think the next phase of increasing the SEO of my website is to sign up to a paid plan of SEO Space. This will give me the ability to have the right keywords attached to my website.
Now that I am writing regular blogs, as I share them to Facebook, it’s quite noticeable in the analytics of Squarespace that the clicks on my blogposts on Facebook trend to zero after three days, whereas the clicks on google searches continue to increase, this does now make me wonder how long my photos that I post are viewed on Facebook. Knowing this I have had a complete change in focus. I still post photos to social, but I’m no longer focussed on likes and comments.
When I now review my photos on the computer, I ask myself are the photos good enough to go on my website first, or do I share one to social media and use the rest in a blogpost. Sometimes I review the photos and feel I need to go back and reshoot the photos instead of sharing them.
Having a website I now have my own sense of space, and I have my own voice in photography. I believe I have grown more as a photographer by having my own website instead of continuing to chase likes and comments on social media.
By continuing to upload fresh content, my website will continue to grow.
Autumn Colours in the Vineyard