How to Run Your Own SEO Audit as a Photographer (Before You Call In Help)

Somewhere between "I should probably look into SEO" and "I need to hire someone for SEO" is a step most photographers skip entirely: actually looking at your own website first.

You do not need to be technical to do this. You need about 45 minutes, a notepad, and the willingness to look at your site the way a stranger, and Google, actually sees it. Here is the audit I would run if it were my site.

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Step 1: Check Your Title Tags

Your title tag is the blue clickable headline in Google's search results. Open your homepage, your main service page, and one blog post. For each one, ask if the title tag says what you do and where you do it.
A weak title tag says something like "Home" or just your business name. A strong one says "Newborn and Family Photographer in [Your City] | [Your Business Name]." If your title tags are vague, that is fix number one.

Step 2: Check Your Meta Descriptions

The meta description is the sentence sitting underneath your title tag in search results. It does not directly boost your ranking, but it is your ad copy for the click. A blank or generic meta description is a missed opportunity every time someone searches.
Read your top three pages' meta descriptions out loud. If you would not click on your own listing, rewrite it.

Step 3: Check Your Alt Text

Alt text is a short description attached to every image on your site, and it is one of the biggest opportunities photographer websites leave on the table, since your whole site is images. Click into your homepage gallery and check the first ten photos. If the alt text is blank or says something like "IMG_4521," Google has no idea what is in that photo.

Step 4: Check Your Site Speed

Run your homepage through Google's free PageSpeed Insights tool. A slow site loses visitors before they ever see your work, and Google factors speed into ranking. If your score is low, the most common culprit is oversized images that were never compressed before uploading.

Step 5: Check Your Internal Linking

Open three of your blog posts and see whether any of them link to your service pages or to each other. Most photographer sites have blog posts and service pages that never reference one another, which tells Google those pages are not connected. Descriptive anchor text like "our newborn sessions" does far more work than a bare "click here."

Step 6: Check Your Google Business Profile

Search your business name on Google and see what shows up in the map pack on the right side of the results. Is your profile fully filled out, with your correct categories, service area, hours, and recent photos? An incomplete or outdated Google Business Profile quietly costs local photographers a steady stream of inquiries.

Step 7: Check Your Blog for Content Gaps

Pull up your blog and list your last ten post titles. Do they answer real questions your ideal client is actually searching, or are they mostly session recaps with a family's name in the title and nothing else? Session recaps are wonderful for connection, but a blog that never answers a searchable question is missing half its SEO potential.

What to Do With What You Find

If you found one or two small issues, fix them this week using the 5 Free SEO Fixes post as your guide. Small, consistent fixes genuinely move the needle over time.
If you found a longer list, or you are not sure whether what you found is actually the problem versus a symptom of something deeper, that is exactly when it makes sense to bring in a second set of eyes. A DIY audit is great at catching the obvious stuff. It is not built to catch things like duplicate content, crawl errors, or a site structure that is quietly working against you.

Frequently Asked Questions

How often should I audit my own photography website? A quick version of this audit is worth running every three to six months, or any time you notice a drop in inquiries. Search engines and your own site both change constantly, so what was working a year ago may not be working now.
Is a free tool enough, or do I need a professional audit? A free tool is a great starting point for catching surface-level issues. The Light Meter is built to give you that snapshot in about two minutes. A professional audit goes further, looking at technical issues, competitor gaps, and a prioritized roadmap a free tool cannot generate on its own.

Want the deeper version of this audit, done for you, with a 90-day roadmap attached? A Full Exposure Audit picks up exactly where this checklist leaves off.

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