The previous article covered “How To Choose Your Photography Domain Name,” but if you remember, we told you guys to hold off on purchasing your domain name because your hosting company may offer it at no cost. The next step is deciding which website builder to choose. Note: You’ll hear website builder and content management system used interchangeably, and while they are not technically the same thing, for our purposes, you can think of them as such.
Note: If you’re looking for the Best Web Hosting for Photographers, be sure to check out our popular article comparing the services.
The following is the bonus section of the Photography SEO and Web Marketing Ebook by SLR Lounge. In the three-part e-book series, we cover content creation, site structure, link building, local SEO, social media, and more. In the bonus chapters, provide online in these articles, we explore “Creating Your Website” and “Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools.”
Free Website Builders for Photographers
Blogger.com, WordPress.com, and others offer the ability to create a custom blog for free on their publishing platform. There is no cost to creating the site, customizing the site, or hosting the site. In addition, since the domain is going to be a subdomain of each of these sites, you don’t have to register a domain either. While 100% free always sounds great, this is not the best option for the serious photographer. Here are the primary reasons:
Limited customization – While WordPress.com and Blogger.com offer the ability to customize your website, you are going to be limited to customizing via templates and the options available within their existing framework.
Unprofessional domain name – While it is possible to customize your domain name, it’s going to be registered as a “.blogspot.com” or “.WordPress.com” website. This makes your business seem like a hobby rather than a serious business.
Lack of SEO Tools – With a custom website, there are more SEO, marketing, and analytics tools available to help in marketing and growing a website. So while it will cost you more to set up a custom website, you are going to be better off in the long run.
WordPress or Squarespace
For those reasons, we recommend using either WordPress or Squarespace. There is no clear winner between the two and very strong pros for each. We’ll be discussing each in the next sections, 1) WordPress for Photographers and 2) Squarespace for Photographers.
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