9 SEO Mistakes We Made on Our Photography Website (And How We Fixed Them)

Mistake #1: Plastering Our Brand Name in Every H1 Title

This one stings a little because it felt so logical at the time. We were putting “Twig & Olive” in the H1 title of nearly every page and blog post, thinking it would reinforce our brand authority with Google. It didn’t. What it actually did was dilute the keyword relevance for the searches that mattered most, things like “Madison wedding photographer” or “Wisconsin elopement photography.”

Here’s the reality: your H1 is prime real estate. It’s the single strongest signal telling search engines (and now AI models) what your page is actually about. Filling it with your brand name is like putting your logo on a billboard and forgetting to say what you do.

The fix: We stripped our brand name out of every H1 and replaced it with intent-driven, keyphrase-focused headlines. The brand still lives in our SEO title tags and meta descriptions, where it belongs. The H1 now does the heavy lifting for search visibility.

This one crept in because of how we naturally write. Descriptive, storytelling-style language lends itself to passive voice, and before we knew it, our blog posts were full of sentences like “The wedding was captured beautifully by our photographers.” That’s fine for a caption. It’s not fine for SEO.

Passive voice makes content harder to read, less engaging, and less authoritative. In the era of AI-driven search, this matters even more. AI assistants prefer pulling active, concise snippets because they sound more direct and trustworthy. Yoast’s recommendation of keeping passive voice under 10% of your content is a solid benchmark, and we weren’t anywhere close.

The fix: We rewrote our content to lead with action. “Doug and Courtney captured the wedding beautifully” says the same thing but hits harder. It’s clearer, more engaging, and exactly what search engines want to surface.

We had focus keyphrases picked out for most of our posts, but we weren’t being strategic about where they showed up. The keyphrase wasn’t in the first paragraph. It wasn’t in any subheadings. And in some cases, we were guilty of the opposite problem: awkwardly stuffing the same phrase over and over instead of using natural variations. Even worse, we were reusing keyphrases across different posts. Never do that. And avoid keyphrases that are overly broad (“summer wedding”) or have no real search intent (“forest family brown pretty”).

What Are the Best SEO Practices for Keyphrase Placement in 2026?

In 2026, semantic search is king. Google and AI engines don’t just look for an exact keyword match anymore. They understand context, synonyms, and conversational language. So the goal isn’t to repeat “Madison wedding photographer” twelve times. Instead, place it strategically in the first paragraph and at least one subheading, then let natural language variations do the rest. Google’s own SEO documentation reinforces this: write for users first, and make sure search engines can understand the content second.

The fix: Every post now has the focus keyphrase in the opening paragraph and in at least one H2 or H3. Beyond that, we use synonyms and related concepts naturally throughout the content. This isn’t just better SEO for photographers. It’s better writing.

Some of our older blog posts were essentially walls of text. No clear subheading hierarchy, no H2/H3 breaks, just long stretches of content that were hard to scan and even harder for search engines to parse.

Here’s why this matters so much now: in 2026, AI-generated “Answer Boxes” pull directly from content found under H2 and H3 subheadings. If your content isn’t structured in a way that AI can chunk into clean answers, you’re invisible in those results. Walls of text are one of the most common SEO mistakes photographers make, and they’re SEO poison. They increase bounce rates and make it impossible for AI to work with your content.

The fix: Every blog post now follows a strict hierarchy. H1 for the main title, H2s for key sections, H3s for supporting details. It’s better for readers, better for search engines, and critical for showing up in AI-generated answers.

We were sporadic with our internal links, and it cost us. Some posts linked back to our portfolio and contact pages, others didn’t. The result was a less intuitive user journey. People would read a blog post, love the work, and then have no clear path to actually reach out or see more.

Internal links are the roads that crawlers use to understand your site’s structure and authority. Without them, you’re leaving both authority and conversions on the table.

Our writing style tends to be punchy and direct, which we love. However, it meant we weren’t using enough transition words. Words like “however,” “therefore,” “in contrast,” and “as a result” might seem minor, but they’re readability markers that both Google and real readers respond to.

Yoast recommends that at least 25% of your sentences include transition words. We were well under that. As a result, the content felt choppy, harder to skim, and less polished than it should have been.

The fix: We’ve made a conscious effort to weave transition words into our writing naturally. The key word there is naturally. Forcing them defeats the purpose. When done right, they make content flow better and keep people reading longer, which directly improves engagement signals.

Our blog post slugs were a mess. Some were absurdly long, stuffed with filler words, and didn’t include the focus keyphrase at all. A URL like twigandolive.com/why-you-should-hire-a-professional-photographer-for-your-wedding-day is a mouthful, hard to share, and doesn’t help search engines understand what the page is about.

The fix: We shortened and focused every URL slug. That same post now lives at something like twigandolive.com/professional-wedding-photographer-benefits, which is short, clean, keyword-focused, and easy to share.

Some of our blog post titles were way too generic. Things like “Capturing Memories That Last a Lifetime,” which sounds nice but tells Google nothing about what the page actually covers. Our meta descriptions had the same problem: uninspired, not keyword-focused, and not giving anyone a compelling reason to click.

Here’s where 2026 throws a curveball. Google increasingly ignores your meta description in favor of AI-generated summaries. That means your meta description can’t just be a keyword summary anymore. It needs to offer something an AI wouldn’t generate on its own: a unique value proposition, a specific call to action, or a compelling reason to click your link instead of the ten others on the page.

The fix: Our SEO titles now lead with the focus keyphrase and are written to be both clear and compelling. Our meta descriptions go beyond summarizing the page. They highlight what makes us different and give readers a specific reason to click through. In a world where AI is writing its own summaries, your meta description needs to offer something AI can’t replicate.

If you’ve made it this far, you already know the answer: start with the fundamentals. Every one of these nine photography SEO mistakes was fixable, and none of them required a developer or an expensive consultant. They required attention, intention, and a willingness to audit what wasn’t working. Admittedly, we still have a long way to go on our own site. We haven’t yet touched our shop products (which sorely need this update) or some of the older portrait blogs.

SEO isn’t about gaming the system. It never has been. With AI engines now parsing, summarizing, and recommending content on their own, the rules have shifted toward clarity, structure, and genuine value. We’ll be diving into GEO, AEO, and the AI side of search in a separate article, but none of that matters if your SEO foundation has cracks in it. These nine fixes are the groundwork.

Every fix comes back to the same principle: align your content with what people are actually searching for, and make sure both Google and AI can understand what you’re offering. We’ve already seen the results, with higher rankings, more organic traffic, and better engagement across the board. If you’re a photographer (or any small business owner) who hasn’t audited your site recently, consider this your sign. The SEO mistakes photographers make are fixable. The payoff is real. And the best time to start is right now.

Want to see what our work actually looks like? Browse our photography portfolio or reach out and let’s start a conversation.