SEO For Photographers Made Simple
More than likely, your photography business is a local operation, right?
You’re not looking for clients from other countries or even those who live too far away to drive to your studio.
Instead, you want to attract people who live in your city, town, or local community.
One way to direct those people to your website is through Google and the other search engines, and to do whatever you can to make sure your pages show up in the search results whenever someone searches for a photographer in your area.
While many of the tips, strategies, and best practices for general SEO still apply, there’s also an additional layer of SEO you can do to improve the likelihood of appearing in the local search results…
What Is “Local SEO”?
Here’s an example of what I mean by a local search.
In this screenshot, I searched Google for “wedding photographers in Memphis”. In fact, Google knew that’s where I was located and suggested “in Memphis” as a natural addition to the “wedding photographers” keyword.
Remember that it will most likely do the same for anyone else searching for a photographer in your city.
An example of the local search results for “wedding photographers in Memphis”
Note that I removed the sponsored ads from the top of the search results for the sake of clarity.
At the top of the page, there’s a small map together with 3 local listings and a “More Places” link. This is what we call the “Local Pack”, and getting listed here can be a great boost for your business.
Below that, we have the regular organic search results. The folks listed here have done a good job with both their general SEO and local SEO elements.
Next, here’s a screenshot of what you see if you click on the “More Places” link at the bottom of the local pack listings.
A detailed look at the “local pack” map of local businesses.
As you can see, there are more businesses listed here, and they all feature their contact information (address and/or phone number) as well as opening hours and the number of reviews they have.
This information is powered mostly by their Google My Business listings, which I’ll talk about in a moment.
To get you started, here are the 4 things to focus on most.
#1: Optimize Your Google My Business Page
The first thing to do is to make sure you claim your Google My Business page for your photography business.
Here’s a video that shows you more about how to do this.
Just remember to include the following:
- Provide a meaningful and long description of your photography business, together with some links to relevant landing pages on your website.
- Make sure you choose the proper category for your photo business.
- Add your local phone number.
- Add your business address and make sure it’s identical to what’s on your website and other local directories.
- Choose a high-resolution profile image and cover photo.
- Be sure to specify your opening hours.
- Choose the very best examples of your photography for the page.
#2: Maintain Consistent Business Listings Online
When researching local SEO, you’re likely to encounter the acronym “NAP”. This refers to “Name – Address – Phone number”, and these 3 things together act like a digital fingerprint to identify your photography business.
In order to get your local SEO right, it’s CRITICAL to make sure that all references to your NAP across the web are fully consistent (i.e. identical).
If possible, you should also make sure that the address you show on your website (for example, in the page footer) is written according to the proper markup schema (a fancy term for meta data that gives Google more information about the content being displayed).
You can find out more about the postal address markup schema here.
#3: Get Genuine Reviews From Clients Via Google And Yelp
Reviews, like testimonials, are a great source of social proof for potential photography clients.
They’re also incredibly useful for building up the authority of your local SEO.
The obvious thing to do here is to encourage your clients to leave a review for you, either on Yelp or on your Google My Business page.
You can easily do this by sending your clients a link to where they can leave a review on your Google business page.
Here’s how.
First, visit your Google business page.
The URL will look something like this:
- https://plus.google.com/+{YourBusinessName}/posts
Copy the URL into a text editor, and replace “/posts” with this:
- /?hl=en&review=1
You should end up with something like this:
- https://plus.google.com/+{YourBusinessName}/?hl=en&review=1
Simply email that link to your customers (don’t forget to replace “{YourBusinessName}” with your actual Google business page name).
When they click the link, they’ll see a handy box where they can type in their review.
#4: Add Local Keywords To Landing Pages
You can also use normal SEO practices to rank your content for local search keywords, so (where appropriate), you can add your city or area to landing pages and other resources on your website.
Don’t go crazy with this, just do it on those pages where it makes sense. For example, you don’t need to do local SEO on blog posts or frequently asked questions pages.
You should consider doing it for pages that talk about your services, specific venues and locations in your area, or where you feature other related businesses etc.
Here’s where to add your local keywords on any given page or piece of content:
- At the end of the SEO page title.
- In the meta description (as long as it remains readable and enticing).
- In the file name for images.
- In the ALT and TITLE text for images.
- In image captions.
- Page headings and sub-headings (“H1”, “H2” etc.).
- In the page URL (permalink).
If you follow these basic guidelines, as well as many other local SEO ideas you’ll find in other articles online, you should be able to make a big difference to your local search rankings.
