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ForegroundWeb Newsletter
YOUR WEEKLY DOSE OF PHOTO WEBSITE ADVICE & INSPIRATION.
IN TODAY’S EMAIL:
⚡️ 3 Quick tips: hiding a service from your menu, renaming your blog to Guides, refreshing your homepage gallery
🧠 Main Topic: Google's official AI search guide is mostly a list of things to stop doing
📷 Website Spotlight: Ina J Photography, a pet photographer routing three audiences
🔍 SEO: Rebranding without tanking your rankings
🌐 From the Trenches: narrowing your niche to get picked (Philip Morgan)
🎙️ My NEW interview on the PhotoBizX Podcast: "Why photographers need to be picked by AI, not just ranked by Google"
I went back on the PhotoBizX podcast (third time now) to answer the AI-and-SEO questions Andrew's premium members keep posting. If you've felt even a flicker of anxiety about whether SEO is finished, this one's for you.
A few things we got into:
The numbers behind the panic. All AI tools combined are still only about 3% of desktop search. Google is still around 75%. The hype is much louder than the data.
What's actually shrinking. It's informational blog traffic, not local or booking-intent searches. Those still send you real clients.
The shift that matters. Your website used to be the destination. Now it's also the source AI reads to decide whether you're worth recommending.
Being picked beats being ranked. When a client asks AI for three photographers, why would you be one of them? That question is mostly about positioning, not tricks.
(or find it on your podcast platform of choice)
QUICK TIPS
Some services you want to grow. Some you just want to stop touching.
Here's the tell: a handful of repeat clients keep coming back for one type of work you'd never advertise for more of. Yet every booking still routes through you. The back and forth on dates, the invoice, the "did you get my payment" email. You're a switchboard operator for a service you don't even want to expand.
You don't fix that by putting it front and center. You fix it by getting yourself out of the loop.
Build one page for it. Keep it off your navigation menu entirely. Drop a scheduling tool on it (Calendly, Acuity, whatever) with payment turned on, so booking and paying happen in the same step. Then hand the link out only to the people who already use the service.
The page exists so you have somewhere to send them. "Here's where you book and pay." That's the whole job.
A corporate photographer I worked with had law firms sending him new hires for headshots on repeat. He didn't want a louder headshot offer. He wanted to stop being the bottleneck between a returning client and a slot on his calendar. An unlisted page with a self-serve scheduler did exactly that.
Hidden pages get almost no organic traffic, which is usually a problem. Here, that's the point. You're not hoping strangers find it. You're handing the link to people who already know they want it.
Which of your services would run fine without you touching every booking?
2. 🧭 If "blog" makes you freeze, delete the word
A photographer told me last week she'd never blog. "It'll be news now, and in 10 years none of it will have changed. I'm not doing it."
She was right to refuse. The problem wasn't the writing. It was the word.
"Blog" implies a treadmill. Post, post, post forever, or the page rots. Most photographer blogs I audit are either empty or three years stale, sitting there like a missed dentist appointment.
So I told her to drop the label and build a Guides section instead.
A blog has no finish line. A small set of guides does. You write one short piece per common pre-shoot question, then you stop.
How to prep your house for a real estate shoot. What to wear for a corporate headshot. How to plan a wedding timeline that still leaves room for photos.
Don't chase keywords. Write each one to be useful enough that you'd hand it to a client before they show up. "Read this before you come in."
Five evergreen guides you'd actually send beat a blog you abandon by March.
