Whether you’re looking to attract clients or grow your audience as an artist, having a photography website is an excellent way to showcase your work. You can use several website builders to design what you need these days, and social media is another popular place for photographers to grow their audiences.
WordPress is one of the most established website-building platforms, but you might be worried about it not being as user-friendly. Fortunately, it’s very easy to use both WordPress.com and WordPress.org as a photographer.
1. Great SEO Tools
Search engine optimization is a useful way to build your audience as an artist without social media. Several factors can influence where you rank in Google and other search engines, including your domain authority and the keywords you use. WordPress offers a good suite of SEO tools that can help you get onto page one more quickly.
When using WordPress to share your photography work, you can use several tools to better optimize your site. One of the most popular features is Yoast SEO, which offers feedback on improving your page’s ranking. For example, if you’ve forgotten to add internal links, you can see a notice telling you that.
You can also use AIOSEO, which shows you which pages and articles are well-optimized—plus those that need improvement. Both tools have premium plans, but the free versions are more than good enough for beginners.
2. More Website Customization Options
Photography is a competitive space, and thinking about how you’ll stand out is crucial. The easiest way to do so is by being your authentic self, and your website should reflect your personality. WordPress is one of the best choices for customizing your website as a photographer.
When using WordPress, you can customize your website brand colors, along with your logo and what your menu looks like. On top of that, you can choose whether you want sidebars and where your social media profiles feature.
WordPress also allows you to customize a broad number of themes. We’ve got a full guide that discusses how to customize your WordPress theme if you want to learn more about that.
3. Choose From Several Responsive Themes
Perhaps the biggest thing that WordPress is known for is the different themes available. You can choose from a broad selection on its marketplace, and there’s a good suite of both free and paid options. Some themes also have free tiers, with more choices available if you purchase them outright.
As a photographer, aesthetics are naturally important. However, you’re putting yourself at a huge disadvantage if your website isn’t responsive. If your pages don’t load properly and people have to wait a long time before everything appears as it should, they’re probably going to click elsewhere.
The good news is that WordPress has several responsive themes available. You can look at what others have said about the themes to make a better decision, and WordPress itself has released a variety of responsive themes for photographers.
You might need to experiment, but try and find something that balances looks and functionality. If you have programming experience, you can make your website responsive with CSS and JavaScript.
4. More Room for Learning Useful Skills
While you need to take good pictures as a photographer, that’s only one part of the jigsaw if you wish to achieve success. Stacking up useful skills is crucial for anyone looking to build their online presence as a creator, and WordPress offers a lot of room for learning useful skills.
Perhaps one criticism some people may have of WordPress is that the learning curve is often steeper than with other website builders. While this is true, you’ll reap the benefits in the long run because you’ll have learned handy skills.
When running a WordPress site as a photographer, you’ll need to think more carefully about SEO and what good website design looks like. And while it’s no longer necessary, you can even build up some coding experience—which might be useful if you want to later expand your services.
Thankfully, there are several online courses to learn WordPress. So, you should have the basics under your belt quicker if you’re willing to learn.
5. eCommerce Options
As your photography presence grows, you might want to go down the route of selling your prints. You may also wish to sell other products, such as guides and books. If you’re willing to do the extra work required to run an eCommerce website, WordPress is a great choice.
Although you’ll need to pay more for a subscription, some of the higher WordPress plans feature online shopping capabilities. You can also choose from numerous plugins to help connect your website to a number of stores, such as WooCommerce. There are also some great WooCommerce alternatives for WordPress if you want to look elsewhere.
6. Affordability
When building your photography website, pricing is an important aspect to consider. WordPress is the winner compared to many alternatives in this respect.
If you want to use WordPress.com without a custom domain, you can do so for free. Similarly, WordPress.org also doesn’t cost money in and of itself—and as mentioned previously, you can pick from several free templates.
You will, of course, need to pay extra for custom domains and other features—such as domain protection. Nonetheless, you can get these for a reasonable price. Bluehost and SiteGround are two hosting platforms you can look at.
7. Utilize WordPress Plugins
You can use several WordPress plugins to help your photography website run more efficiently. For example, you can download anti-spam software to block annoying and potentially harmful comments. On top of that, you can install cookie permissions so that you’re compliant with local data regulations.
Meanwhile, plugins like Elementor can make your site more user-friendly. If you don’t know where to start, consider looking at these WordPress plugins that all beginners should install.
8. WordPress Is More User-Friendly Than It Used to Be
You might recall WordPress being clunky and difficult to use. That’s no longer the case, however. One tool that you’ll find especially useful is the block editing feature, which lets you add individual images and galleries to your pages without too many problems.
The block editing feature also makes it easy to add paragraphs and headings, and for many themes, you should also hopefully not see weird spacing that you didn’t intend.
WordPress Is Effective and Scalable for Building a Photography Website
Although you can always change your website builder later, picking the right platform as a photographer will avoid a lot of manual work down the road. Each service you choose has both pros and cons, but WordPress is one of the most scalable options you can try.
With WordPress, you can install several plugins and customize your themes more than is possible in many other places. Moreover, you can utilize various SEO tools and integrate eCommerce options when needed.
This content was originally published here.