Working on optimizing your website as a photographer can be a daunting task. In addition to everything you must do to produce spectacular images, trying a DYI SEO plan without the proper tools is not recommended. In my experience even if you are great at web design and understand everything someone is communicating to you, not having the right tools can make the SEO experience a discouraging one. In order to dominate with Google Maps SEO (where local results are placed within search results), you need to do just a few things to start seeing some results.
Showing Up in Local Searches
So when you are ready to improve your rank in Google Maps, you’ll first want to have a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization. This is another reason for using the tool for SEO if you want to DIY SEO. So we have 2 HUGE reasons to use tools. First, it helps us understand SEO. If you don’t plug keywords in correctly to mapped pages, you’ll never get accurate information about keywords you’re targeting. This will communicate to you that something may be off and your thoughts on what you’re learning might need to mature.
The second reason for using the SEO software tools in our efforts is that algorithms are driven by computers. There is no human interaction, yet when you learn SEO you are learning most likely through human interaction. Since actual SEO just results in rankings (vs a feel good effort recognition), you can get discouraged quickly if you’re not seeing results. The other issue with algorithms is they don’t care how good your intentions are. Computers have learned what is correct according to them and that is the ONLY standard of correctness in the world of SEO. In other words, the search engine companies have done an amazing job implementing “the customer is always right”. With that in mind, you can make one change to your page and see your SEO optimization rate decrease by 20%. How is a human supposed to know adding a keyword to a header tag just dropped your rate by 20%? You can’t .. so I highly recommend purchasing some tools. The minimal tools would be rank tracker, website audit, technical seo audit, and content auditor. Having these minimal tools can greatly improve your SEO efforts and in addition your Local ranking.
Since local listings are on Google Maps and Google My Business, you’ll want to maximize your listings with your local address. All of the address information should be consistent across platforms. So make sure to claim or update your Google Business profile in your Google Business Account. You also want to update in Yahoo Search Engines (Yext), Bing Search Engines (BingPlaces), and add your local business to review sites such as Yelp.
Now let’s get to some of the Local SEO Tips For Photographers that can make all the difference in your Google Maps SEO.
Tip 1 – Optimize Your Web Pages With Tools
The single most important factor to SEO for local business is having optimized pages that target those keywords. Even without the rest of the other tips, you can make it to number one alone on this tip (we’ve done it and will post a photo soon). Optimize your site and get your page to 90% or above optimization. Of course, there are many things you may need to change to support what needs to be done to get to that optimization percentage, but if you can optimize for a keyword and do it well, then your local results will show up when that keyword is entered into the search engines.
Tip 2 – Add Your City Web Pages To Your Most Successful Keywords
As we point out when local search optimization, some keywords are local by default. However, local is relative to where the user is searching. So if you take your most successful keywords and add the cities you want to target, then people searching your local keyword in those cities will typically find you higher up in the Google Search Results. This takes a little bit of experience sauce to get right. Creating a local page can conflict with the (nonlocal) main page as far as ranking. However, if the city is big enough and generates enough traffic, then it’ll be worth it to attempt a local SEO page. Confirm local searches with Tools such as Keyword Planner in Google Ads or by checking out the impression history in your Google Search Console.
Tip 3 – Take Advantage Of Potential Holidays Coming Up
Not all keywords are in play throughout the year. Check out Google Trends to see how a keyword is trending from month to month. Since this article is for local photography, Christmas family photoshoots are pretty popular. Adding such pages to your web server early on will help to ensure you show up when people search for that service in your area.
Tip 4 – If You Are An Event or Wedding Photographer, Make Sure To Add Event Halls and Wedding Venues To Your Pages
You can make a page more unique and valuable for the user by providing event halls and wedding venues in the area. Not only is this potentially valuable to a user visiting your page, but it also may throw your page in there to rank for that venue or hall when someone books those places and searches for photography. If you have venues you’ve covered with photography already, make sure to include those along with venues you’d like to cover in a way that is helpful to the user and can improve your optimization at those venues.
Tip 5 – Get Reviews on Google and Social Media
Make sure that you have a website where it is easy for your clients and customers to leave reviews about their experience on websites like Google and Yelp. Small businesses interested in Local SEO may feel like the investment is too much to collect reviews and feedback from their current and past customers. This action is not correct in the SEO industry. Especially Local SEO. Local reviews from local clients plus a highly optimized website have the potential to propel you to number 1 in no time at all. This SEO Tip is the See Saw of Tip #1. You can do Tip 1 really well or this tip really well and get to the top spot in Google maps. However, if you do Tip 1 and 5 really well, then the sky becomes the limit (according to the algorithms of course).
Conclusion – Understand How Google’s Evolution Helps All Parties
Google allows the world to search for anything on a website. However, the results returned to users are analyzed by a computer algorithm, not an actual person (although Google does employ people to ensure the quality of the returned results). Recall that Google Suggest or autocomplete didn’t always exist. Let’s think about some of the implications of autocomplete in relation to SEO. Before autocomplete, users could type in whatever they wanted and each variation of a word or phrase would become a new keyword that could be targeted. However, when autocomplete was added, it now allows the user to sort of know what they’re looking for and Google will suggest to them what they want based on popular search results and so forth. This provides a benefit to the user. In addition, this will mean more hits to a chosen keyword or keyword phrase since rather than some other unique keyword created through random searches, it is more likely the user will accept the Google suggestion. This means you can absolutely target keyword phrases and your efforts will go much further in conjunction with Google’s efforts to improve their user experience by nudging them in the right direction. It’s a win win for all and understanding this should help in how you think about SEO in general and how to maximize local SEO for photographers.
We hope you’ve benefited from our local SEO tips for photographers list …. We provide Local SEO for photographers that actually get results. If you are in need of making your website more SEO friendly to improve the amount of traffic you receive organically, please get a quote from us today so we can plug you into the Google ecosystem where you will reap benefits for the rest of your years. Which keywords did we target in this article? Share with us below 🙂 Thank you for reading!
