Let’s take a look at what categories are used for. Essentially they are a means to file your blog posts into separate “drawers” if you will. That way if someone wants to view all your posts on wedding photography, they could click the “Wedding” category and see those related posts.

Now the way they are displayed is dependent on the theme you are using. Themes will display categories in different ways, but typically categories will show up as some kind of link list in a sidebar widget or as menu items in your navigation bar. So while it would be great to have a category named…

“Memphis Senior Photographer”

that would look funny in a menu. So the alternative is to have a category called “Seniors” but to have the slug for that category to be “Memphis Senior Photographer”. The slug is what is used in the URL if you have the category displayed in your permalinks.

I set my permalinks to:
/%year%/%monthnum%/%category%/%postname%

This will then include the year, date, category slug and postname in the URL for that particular blog post.

If I made a keyword specific slug for that category, then that keyword will appear in the URL which will help that blog post in the search engines.

Okay, that was a lot of background. So what you really want to know is what to do. Well here is what I recommend.

1-Determine what keywords you want to rank for. You should include what people will search when looking for your services. This means most likely your city + type of photography + photographer. Example would be “Memphis Senior Photographer”. Would you like to rank #1 in google for that term? Then that should be a keyword of yours. Don’t try for a single word such as senior because it is highly unlikely you will rank high for that term in google due to competition and the traffic searching for that term is not likely looking for your services.

2-Create categories based on the types of photography you offer. (Weddings, Seniors, Families, etc). When you blog about a session, choose the category that it would fall under.

3-When creating the categories, don’t use the default slug which would be a lower case version of your category title. Add your city before and photographer after the category name. That will create a keyword based slug such as: “memphis-wedding-

4-Set your permalinks to /%year%/%monthnum%/%category%/%postname%. That will include the category slug and your post in the URL. The year and month are optional but if you post a lot it provides efficiencies for WordPress itself.

As photographers we tend to think that we know a lot about how to make things beautiful.  And to a large extent that is true. But sometimes that can actually hurt us with photography website design.  Too often photographers want to make a website for their business that is amazingly beautiful and captivating. Like the artwork that they produce with a camera. What they tend to forget is that the website should have one purpose and that is to get new clients. This is often at odds with what the photographer has in mind for their website.

Below are some of the problems that I often see with photographer’s websites.

-          Music.  Have you ever visited a website that immediately started playing a song that you hated and made you scrambling for the mute button on your speakers?  You may think that everyone will love that song you placed on the home page of your website as much as you do but don’t count your business on it.

-          Splash Pages.  Imagine how frustrating it is for your clients to make it to your homepage to find out that they have to click another link just to get the information they are after?  Why make it any harder than it has to be by adding just one more useless step?

-          Flash.  Many photographers love to use flash websites because they can include amazing beautiful transitions and effects.  But do your clients really want to wait 5 to 10 seconds between each photo to see that amazing transition again?  Not to mention that Flash websites are not indexed by Google well if at all. What this means is that if you are using Flash, don’t expect to compete in the search engine rankings.

-          No Call to Action.  Each page of your website should have a call to action for the visitor. Think about what action you want them to take. Do you want them to call you and schedule an appointment?  Do you want them to send you an email? This action should never be more than one click away.  Make it easy for them and you will greatly increase your new client list.

-          No Keyword Optimization.  You should have a list of keywords that you want to rank high for in the search engines. Beyond that, your WebPages should include these keywords in the proper places in order to be indexed by Google and show up in the top of the search engine rankings.

Those are just a few of the more common mistakes that I see when reviewing websites for fellow photographers.  All of these problems can be fixed relatively easily with the right knowledge and training so don’t worry if it seems overwhelming.  My Photography Internet Marketing Course is designed to help those who know nothing about the internet to get an effective website for their photography business built and working for them.  If I can be of any assistance to you in your own photography business endeavors, please let m e know and best wishes to you!