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ForegroundWeb Newsletter
YOUR WEEKLY DOSE OF PHOTO WEBSITE ADVICE & INSPIRATION.
IN TODAY'S EMAIL:
⚡️ 3 Quick tips: About page openers, blog ideas that don't run out, hero image reuse
🧠 Main Topic: Count the exit paths on your contact page, then start cutting
📷 Website Spotlight: new WordPress site I launched last week
🔍 SEO: The security toggle quietly blocking ChatGPT
🌐 From the Trenches: Google's AI images, Alan Schaller, and buying back your time
QUICK TIPS
1. 🔍 The first three sentences of your About page give you away
Open your About page. Read the first three sentences out loud. Count how many times you say "I" or "my."
That number is your diagnostic. The order signals who the page is for. If "I" wins those opening lines, the page is an autobiography wearing an About hat.
A bride scanning your site doesn't care that you've shot 200 weddings until she trusts that you understand her wedding day anxieties. A family looking to book a session is wondering if you'll keep things calm with a toddler who refuses to sit still. A brand director wants to know if you can shoot to a creative brief without ego getting in the way.
Front-load empathy. Back-load credentials.
The first half of your About page belongs to the visitor: their biggest concerns in your specific niche, and a sentence each on how you handle them. The second half is yours, the bio and awards and publications. Same content, different order, completely different message.
Whose page does yours read like in the first ten seconds, theirs or yours?
2. 🔍 The month-three blog wall, and the autocomplete fix
Most photographer blogs die around month three. Same wall every time.
You've covered "what to wear", "how to choose a photographer", "10 tips for your engagement session". Now the well feels dry and the cursor blinks at you.
Here's the misread. You ran out of photography topics. You did not run out of topics.
Your client is a whole human with a calendar full of decisions, only one of which is hiring you. A wedding couple is also picking venues, navigating in-laws, debating who pays for what. New parents are deep in sleep schedules and the first six weeks of survival. A family booking sessions has school transitions and a kid who hates wearing collars. A senior is choosing a college. A brand client is wrestling with their own positioning before they ever think about photos.
That whole adjacent world is your content pool, and almost no other photographer is fishing in it.
Here's the move. Open a Google search bar. Type the broadest phrase that describes your client's life right now, not their photography need. "Planning a wedding in", "newborn first month", "senior year checklist", "small business launch". Read the autocomplete. Each suggestion is a post that pulls in the exact reader who would later book you, without fighting the over-saturated "Top 10 Wedding Photography Tips" pool.
The post itself doesn't have to mention photography. Your byline and one CTA at the bottom do that work.
What's the broadest phrase your ideal client is Googling this week that has nothing to do with cameras?
