Quick reminder that this month's live Q&A is tonight, Tuesday 5th May at 8pm UK. Free for all SEO for Photographers paid course members. Bring your questions about the course, your site, your rankings, or anything marketing-related - I'll work through as many as we can fit in. One change going forward: sessions will no longer be recorded. Two reasons: 1. So you can speak freely. I want everyone to feel comfortable talking openly about their business, numbers, and challenges without worrying about where a recording might end up. 2. Because recordings create the illusion of progress. Most people who ask "will this be recorded?" never actually watch it back. Saving a link feels like action - but it isn't. Showing up live is. So if you've got a question burning away, tonight's the night. See you at 8. Simon

Most photographers pick their website based on how it looks. That makes sense. But there is a technical factor happening under the hood that determines whether Google — and AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity — can actually read your site. It is called your rendering model. And it could be the reason your SEO is underperforming even when you are doing everything else right. Two types of websites exist: SSR (Server-Side Rendering) The server sends a complete, fully readable HTML page instantly. Google reads it. Bing reads it. ChatGPT reads it. Done. CSR (Client-Side Rendering) The server sends an empty shell. The browser has to run JavaScript to build the page. Many crawlers never execute that JavaScript. They see a blank page and leave. Here is how photographer platforms stack up: ✅ WordPress (self-hosted) — SSR — Gold Standard ✅ Webflow — SSG — Excellent 🟡 Squarespace — Hybrid — Mostly fine 🔴 Wix — CSR — Weak 🔴 Showit — CSR (canvas-based) — Very poor for SEO 🔴 Pixieset — CSR — Poor Why does this matter right now more than ever? Google has always had a JavaScript rendering pipeline — it can usually get there eventually. But it is slower and less reliable than reading plain HTML. The bigger issue is AI search. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are becoming a major way clients discover photographers. These tools rely on basic web crawlers that do not execute JavaScript. A Showit or Pixieset site is essentially invisible to them. A WordPress site is fully readable from the first byte. If you are on WordPress with Kadence or a similar solid theme — you are already on the best possible SEO foundation. Every page you publish, every location page, every service page — instantly readable by every search engine and every AI tool the moment it goes live. If you are on Showit or Pixieset and organic traffic is part of your strategy, this is worth knowing. You are working against a structural disadvantage that no amount of keyword research or backlinks can fully overcome.

I'll be running the next Q&A session on Tuesday 7th April at 8pm UK time. After running 4 free sessions previously, they will now be limited to course members only. See you on Tuesday. Simon

Hi everyone Apologies but I need to cancel tonight's Q&A session. I'm having some medical treatment at the moment and it's just wiped me out and I need to rest up. I have rescheduled for next Tuesday 10th March at 8pm UK time and hope to see you all then. Thank you for your understanding Simon