Montreal Photographer
Look, I’ll be honest. This is an SEO experiment. The only reason this page exists is because I don’t rank well for one of the most search-volume-heavy keyword phrases in my area, and that’s not good.
But before I bang on about the reasons why that might be, let me give you the opportunity to avoid that and give you ways to find what you came for.
Yes, I am an experienced event and portrait photographer in Montreal – you can read more about me here – and I shoot portraits, and corporate events. The links to those photography portfolios are below.
So, what are the reasons I don’t rank well for ‘Montreal photographer’? A keyword phrase, by the way, that has between 14 – 72 times (!) the amount of volume of any keyword phrase I currently rank for?
Two reasons: time, and content.
Time
Because in relation to other Montreal photographers who have either been here for longer than I have, or the entirety of their career or life, my website, though 15 years old and nicely SEO-optimized, is a relative baby in Canadian terms. Simply put, search engines know I have only been here since 2020 and therefore rank me ‘less-reliably in Montreal’ than business based here longer. Search engines worry (if they are able to worry) that I might still be wholly or partly in Germany, or even Vietnam, where this website was born. This is not the case. I am definitely here, in Montreal.
There’s nothing I can do about time, but there is something I can do about the second reason.
Content
These days, Google, and the other search engines rank sites higher that contain pages that load quickly (mine do), have SEO-optimized images with keyword-rich Alt Text (mine do), and contain well- naturally-written, grammatically-correct, relevant text of ideally 2000 words or more.
This last bit is the problem. I can rank well for niche photography keyword phrases, like ‘event photographer Montreal‘, because it’s a business page and there’s quite a lot I can say about why someone might need an event photographer, how that photographer works, what kind of events they cover, etc, but when it comes to targeting something more vague or more of an umbrella-term like ‘photographer Montreal‘ or ‘Montreal photographer’, it’s more difficult. These terms are juicy, but harder to zone in on, especially when you are, like me, also a fine art photographer and photography purist who believes both that images should be able to stand alone. and that photography sites and portfolios look best when they’re clean, minimalist, minimal text, and with the images front and centre.
Like, for example, my homepage. Look at it. Clean and simple; a gateway. A couple of images from one of my current or recent personal art projects, two lines of text, the menu, and that’s it.
That’s how I like it. But that’s not how the search engines like it. And because they don’t like it, they won’t let me drink any of that sweet ‘Montreal photographer’ SEO juice. Hence this page.
Let’s see how it goes.
If you made it this far, thank you, and apologies. Make sure to visit those photo portfolio links I put further up the page to show you what kinds of photography I do here in Montreal (and further afield), and please enjoy a few more of the photographs I’ve taken in Montreal down below, before this page runs out of road, time, and content.
