The imposter syndrome is wearing off. You now view your pile of camera bodies and lenses as business expenses; your time scrolling Instagram is ‘marketing’ and ‘business development.’
It’s a new era. You’re a wedding photographer, and you need a wedding photography website. But where do you start?
But First, Strategy.
Begin thinking about how your website will function for your business. How does it fit in? Is it an online portfolio? Is it an integrated part of a bigger marketing strategy? Or is it there to be a resource for people once they begin checking you out for their wedding?
Think of who you want to serve and what photography website they need to visit to solve their problem. I know you have heard of your ‘ideal couple’ and have a hidden Pinterest board of who you want to work with.
Well, this is the time to dust it off and bring it out again. Think back to your favourite weddings you have ever shot and those awesome couples:
- What questions did they have when you were discussing their wedding?
- How do they approach your packages and pricing?
- What style did they have that you could reflect in your website?
- What hints did they give of other photographers they looked at?
- Why did they go with you on their wedding day?
This will help you identify your audience, allow you to write website copy, and make design choices that will be helpful to couples.
Why A Website Strategy is Important
What you decide will inform the rest of your decisions for your website. You need a direction so you can always answer, ‘Why am I making this decision?’.
A website strategy will keep you motivated and be a guiding light when it’s 2 A.M. and you’re fighting with margins and paddings to get something to fit just right. A strategy ensures you have a website that works for you and helps your business grow.
Three Possible Approaches
I’ve worked on many websites and have found wedding photographers fit into one of three scenarios:
- Develop a website simply. A website that can function as an online portfolio and a place to introduce yourself, lay out your fees, and be contacted.
- Create a website with Google Searches in mind, so it places you in the results when someone searches for ‘wedding photography in (fill with your local town or city).’ This will require reviewing other sites that currently rank on that search and aiming to be a better solution for searchers.
- Invest time in writing and publishing free tools and create a rich website with pages that showcase different services, niche projects, and resources for couples that you can update regularly and grow.
In my business, I work on websites in three phases, not unlike wedding photography, when you prepare and plan, shoot and then edit and deliver. We are going to look at how you can use your strategy to:
- Plan your website
- Design your website
- And launch your website
Planning Your Website Build
First, you want to plan your website with a sitemap. A sitemap shows the different pages you will have on your website and how they connect. Octopus.do is an excellent, free tool for this, and they even have a guide you can use to Plan a Website.
Most wedding photographers will have a homepage, services or packages page, contact page, galleries or sample photos page and a contact page in their sitemap, but you may want to include a blog, resources, or develop individual pages for each service offering to boost your chances of ranking on Google for those searches.
How many pages you have is up to you and your strategy. But whatever you choose, they need to relate well to one another and be helpful to your website’s users.
Be Helpful to Couples
There’s a lot of information about search engine optimization, or ‘SEO’ as it’s called, which is the things you can do to improve your search ranking on Google for targeted keywords.
Conventional wisdom will tell you to use your keyword or related keyword as often as possible in any application you can. And believe me, that was my approach when I first optimized websites; every URL, description and heading was Wedding Photography in Toronto this and Toronto Wedding Photographer that.
But Google has changed the way they look at websites now.
Initially, Google’s ranking system relied heavily on keywords and backlinks, but as search behavior evolved, so did the algorithm—shifting towards quality, authority, and user experience.
- Panda (2011) – This update targeted low-quality, thin, and duplicate content, rewarding websites with well-researched, original content.
- Penguin (2012) – Aimed at cracking down on spammy link-building tactics, ensuring that backlinks came from reputable sources.
- Hummingbird (2013) – Introduced semantic search, allowing Google to understand user intent rather than just matching keywords.
- RankBrain (2015) – Integrated machine learning to interpret search queries more effectively and deliver more relevant results.
- BERT (2019) – Focused on understanding natural language processing, making search results more contextual and accurate.
- Helpful Content Update (2022) – Encouraged content that provides genuine value rather than content created solely for SEO purposes.
- EEAT (2022-2023) – Google introduced an extra ‘E’ to its Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EAT) framework, now emphasizing Experience as a key factor. Websites ranking well today are those created by real experts with firsthand experience, demonstrating credibility and deep knowledge in their field.
As Google continues refining its algorithm, websites that focus on quality, authority, and user experience—rather than outdated SEO tricks—will continue to rank higher.
Google’s spider bots crawl every word on your website and in its code to see who you are and if you can supply what that person searching those keywords is looking for. Therefore, you need to focus on your primary offering or keyword and create everything to support that one search intent from your couples.
I created this sample destination wedding photography website that shows what I mean. The keyword “destination wedding photographer” is not stuffed in every section, but every part supports that idea. Even the way the bio is written.
Your SEO Guiding Principal
Be helpful to your couples and write to them. Give them the information they need and be there when they have questions as they browse your website. And this begins by knowing them well.
Create a Copydeck
With a written website strategy and sitemap, you are ready to start writing. Create a Google document with all the words you want to use for your couples, broken down by the pages in your sitemap.
When I write copy for a website, I start writing key information down in a Google Doc. Not even knowing where it will go. But knowing it’s critical information for the audience. This practice also helps get your words flowing; deleting unneeded text is far easier than forcing yourself to fill in gaps later.
This Google Doc is called a ‘copy deck,’ you want to have all your ideas and a well-thought-out description of each package, a bio for yourself and the keyword you will target. Once you have filled out the doc, you can start moving ideas around until you’re happy each page has enough content to help your couples navigate them.
Double-check that all the sections and pages you have written support your main keyword and that each page has its focus keyword. Your website may target ‘destination wedding photographer,’ but your contact page should be ‘contact Jenny.’
How to Design a Wedding Photography Website
Before designing your website, you should have written down a sitemap, a copy deck, a chosen keyword, and a good sense of who you want to help. In the web design world, we ‘freeze’ the web copy and sitemap to focus on design and not review every detail throughout our design.
But you know what will go on the site; now you just need to make it!
Your website strategy informs how you approach design.
Suppose your website has a lot of functions within your business. In that case, you will need a website that can grow and integrate with many plugins and extensions. Or your website is going to be a portfolio and contact. In that case, you can choose a simpler approach or not worry about finer details.
Choose a Website Design Platform
There are a lot of platforms available to you. I recommend choosing between Wix, Squarespace and WordPress. We use these platforms at Novella Creative Co. as they are SEO-friendly, easy to use and well-established with plenty of support.
A great way to see if a platform can work for you is to know if it integrates with your photo-sharing app or other business tools. WordPress, for example, works well with Pixie Set, SmugMug and many others. You can also Google common issues and see the level of support for issues; try ‘Squarespace, my website isn’t showing up.’
Squarespace or Wix
Both platforms are drag-and-drop builders that use templates as a starting point.
Squarespace works well for creative businesses with many images. You can browse their library, find a design you like, and begin fitting in your content. When browsing, focus on fonts, colours and feel. All the images will change as you start, but the fonts and feel will remain.
Once you have selected a template, start by figuring out how you can fit your web copy into the different text sections. Then, choose appropriate images.
Squarespace and Wix offer templates that look great because they are professionally designed. However, they can look less appealing if you manipulate or alter them too much.
You can create a website quickly and beautifully by simply designing your content and images to fit within the template.
WordPress
Now, if your website strategy is more demanding or you’re reading this and thinking you want to make more choices for your site, you can choose WordPress. WordPress requires some know-how on the back end and will require you to install plugins to improve site speed and images. You can search for this on Google or YouTube to discover the latest and most effective plugin, though it will require some setup.
Understanding WordPress Themes
WordPress is built around the theme you choose. The theme becomes the structure or frame of your website. By default, you have the WordPress theme, a light theme with a simple design. You can stick with this or choose another theme.
There are two types of themes you can get for your website:
- Builder themes: Drag-and-drop builders with presets and designs that allow for easy designing a lots of freedom.
- Pre-made themes: like Squarespace or Wix, they are pre-made, and you plug your content into them.
Web designers use builder themes as they always opt for a clean slate to design from. If you choose a custom approach, design in a more manageable format first. This way, you can make changes and see what it’ll look like without editing blocks, dragging things, and dropping them on the site.
I recommend using Canva, Photoshop, or Figma to create a web design that you can copy when you’re doing it in WordPress. The Studio Nomad website is designed in Figma and can be easily copied to WordPress using a builder theme.
Whatever you choose, think of your first pass as a draft design. Don’t worry much about exacting details until you’re happy with how the website looks and can ‘lock in’ the layout.
Launching Your New Website
Before sharing your new site, you want to optimize it for search results. There are many great resources when it comes to SEO online.
- For WordPress, check out https://yoast.com/seo-blog/
- For Wix or Squarespace, head to YouTube; you can find many great tutorials that are easy to follow.
Remember, no matter what design platform you choose, the guiding principle discussed in this article is to focus on your audience and be helpful to be intent behind their search.
Next, you will want to set up Google Search Console. This involves verifying the ownership of your website with Google, which can be done through the Google Plugin on WordPress or the settings in Wix or WordPress. Google Search Console allows you to review how your site is performing, and you can also see what Google searches your ranking for and how well you’re doing in search results.
You’ve done it
Congratulations, you now have a website strategy and a plan and are well on your way to a wonderful wedding photography website!
Caitlin Dyk
Esther Fraser