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ForegroundWeb Newsletter
YOUR WEEKLY DOSE OF PHOTO WEBSITE ADVICE & INSPIRATION.
IN TODAY'S EMAIL:
🎙️ Your vote: which podcast topic should Ilise Benun and I record?
⚡️ 3 Quick tips: website maintenance, search scent, scannable content
🧠 Main Topic: Why a downturn is the best time to fix your website
📷 Website Spotlight: Headshots by ZootShoot
🔍 SEO: A traffic drop that flattens is a break, not a trend
🌐 From the Trenches: my new feature in Professional Photo, cinematic video on a small budget, and two AI changes to your Google Business Profile
Which topic would help you most?
Soon I’ll be recording a podcast episode with Ilise Benun for her Marketing Mentor Podcast, and we’d love your help voting for which topic you prefer.
Ilise and I will record the episode on the topic that gets the most votes.
So tell me, which conversation would be most helpful for you right now?
To vote, just click the button for the topic you want us to cover:
1. Will AI find and recommend me?
These days, potential clients use AI tools to help them choose who to hire. Ilise and I will share simple changes you can make to your website so AI tools can more easily find, understand, and recommend you.
2. Is my website actually helping me get hired?
Just because your website looks good doesn't mean it brings in clients. Ilise and I will discuss what makes a creative's website truly effective, and point out common mistakes that may be costing you work.
After you vote, you'll have the chance to get notified when the episode is live.
Thanks for your help!
QUICK TIPS
🧾 Ask whoever maintains your site to name what changed in the last 90 days
Not "are you keeping an eye on things". Names of the actual changes, with rough dates.
I've been trading emails with a headshot photographer this week and ended up sending them 5 things I'd spotted on their site: a missing letter in the big headline of the homepage stats band, right next to the certification badges, plus years of experience and client counts that disagreed with each other across 3 different pages, and a homepage title tag built around a word they don't compete on. Nothing clever about any of it, and it had all been sitting there a long time.
They pay someone for maintenance every month.
Somewhere along the way maintenance became plugin updates and backups, which is worth paying for, it just isn't anybody looking at the site. If nobody has read your homepage as a stranger this year, then nobody is really maintaining anything.
So ask them. If what comes back is a shrug, or a list of plugin versions, at least you know what you've been buying.
What has your web person actually changed on your site since spring?
🐾 Visitors arrive carrying a scent. Your headline either matches it or loses them
A visitor lands holding the exact words they just searched. Your first line either echoes them or it doesn't.
This is the part most homepage advice skips. People don't read your hero and reason their way to a decision. They scan it for the scent of the thing they came for, and they do it in a second or two, mostly below conscious thought.
They searched "fine art portraits" in a place. Or "fashion photographer" in a country. They carry that phrase onto your page like a dog carries a track. If the first line gives off that scent, they relax and keep going. If it gives off something generic, the trail goes cold and they leave, and they will not be able to tell you why.
Here's the cruel part. The bounce feels like nothing. No anger, no thought, just a quiet swipe back to the results. You never see it happen.
What kills the scent most often isn't ugly copy. It's a headline that names your craft instead of their search. A role, a vibe, a clever line. All cold trails.
I won't re-explain the fix, because I already laid out the three-question hero structure (location, specialty, transformation) in a longer piece. This is the why underneath it. Match the scent the visitor walked in with, in the first line, and the rest of the page gets a chance to work.
When you last landed somewhere from a search and bounced in two seconds, what made the trail go cold?
