Why should a photographer have a website?

My photography website generates on average 250,000 page views per year and at a time when Instagram is seeing photographers jumping ship from frustration with the social media platform which now favours videos, a photography website is still as relevant as it’s ever been.

Why should a photographer have a website?

1 - A website escapes trends

A website is freedom from Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Flickr, Vero and the rest. Social media platforms are time-consuming and many people put in a lot of time in them for often very little return. Especially when for example Instagram makes it hard to be visible with its st*pid and constantly changing algorithm. Personally, I’ve given-up dreaming of Instafame, I’ve better things to do.

Spending the time you’d spend on social media on a website, I can guarantee you’d see more returns.

2 - Stand out from the crowd

When everyone sends emails soliciting this and that, sometimes, the best way to get through to someone is sending a written letter through the post, that letter will stand out since nobody else sends letters anymore.

Instagram is the place where every photographer thinks they have to be seen. If you are not on Instagram, dude you’re not real. People put so much blood, sweat and tears into Instagram that they neglect the most efficient promotion tool there is for a photographer, a website. Do you think there are more Instagram profiles created by photographers or more websites?

There are way fewer websites of course and that means one thing: The opportunity to stand out better.

3 - SEO baby

A website alone won’t actually stand out, especially a photography-centric one, you need words and all the right ones.

SEO is a lot more complicated than just inserting a ton of keywords everywhere. If you take away one thing today it should be that Google just wants to ensure that the web pages they suggest in search results are the right ones to suggest so the end user is happy, gets what they wanted and comes back to Google for future searches. That way Google’s business model is preserved and advertisers keep coming back with juicy ad budget.

With this simple thought in mind, you can make all the decisions surrounding your website based on user experience. The more people like your website, the more Google will recommend it.

When I say “like your website” this is measured by Google in terms of how long people spend on the website before leaving, how many pages they visit across the website in one visit, etc… It’s a set of metrics.

So what can you do?

  • Update your website often and regularly. A static website is a dead website in the eyes of Google.

  • Offer fast-loading pages and that means consideration when loading photos, they must be compressed and really not huge. Sucks for a photography website, but it’s key.

  • Make sure the content you offer is of value and that people want more of it. If people enter and leave your website faster than the blink of an eye, it signals to Google that it’s not good and best avoided.

  • Improve each page so that navigation is easy and logical. Make it easy for visitors to navigate through all the good stuff. Who likes to sift through a website without success… it’s frustrating.

  • Be patient: A website’s authority in the eyes of Google will increase with age. Because many websites are created and shut down after failing within 5 years, Google needs to see websites as established.

  • Write well and write a lot. The best way to do this is through a blog. If you write from experience and write original content that helps people, you’re going to attract Google searches. When you write, ask yourself who you are looking to attract and why. Ask yourself “What would they search for if I write about this subject?”. Use these likely search terms as keywords throughout your article, without overdoing it or making the whole thing sound over the top.


I would love to giveaway all my SEO and website knowledge accumulated over 12 years running a website, analysing traffic metrics through Analytics and redesigning it multiple times but that’ll have to wait a bit.

What I want is to demonstrate that a website is a very powerful tool for photographers, able to highlight your photography work way above the competition, to make it more visible rather than a profile/feed lost on that giant hamster wheel that is Instagram.

To finish with, I must say that 99% of all jobs I’ve ever had, that includes Adidas, Heineken, Jose Cuervo, Amazon, Beavertown, McLaren F1… have all found me online, through Google search.

And if that’s not enough, my upcoming book, How to take amazing photos, all came together when my publisher found my photography-learning blog while searching via Google and asked me to write the book.

If that doesn’t show the potential of a photography website, what will?

Until next time,

Nico