Getting your photography website to the top of search engines
There are several factors that, when done correctly, will increase your search engine rankings for your top keywords within your desired geographic area.
Before proceeding, it’s important to realize that if you really want to increase your income with stronger search engine rankings, you simply need to follow the steps laid out in the next few weeks. Here are the lessons we’ll be covering over the next month:
- Setting the right keywords
- Optimizing your website for strong search engine rankings
- How to rank strong in the exact geographic area you want to target
- How To Use Social Media To Boost Your Ranking Through The Roof
It all starts with the right keywords for each page of your website. Please note that we are mainly talking about the pages of your website that are relevant to your services. It is also very important to note that you should have a website page for each of the niches that you cater to.
If you have a website with nothing more than a photo gallery, it probably won’t rank well unless your website has been established for many years. Even if you have a service page for many niches, this simply won’t give you the authority it could if done correctly.
We’ll go over niche photographers and how to run that page in a bit. First, I want to refer to those who manage more than one niche.
The following example can be used for any number of niches within the photography industry. Let’s say you service the following:
- family portraits
- Wedding
- events
I realize some photographers will shoot just about anything, but it’s important that your website focuses on your top 3-6 niches.
Each of the above should have a separate web page. While having a photo gallery is fine, we recommend that you have your photo galleries on each of your niche pages. Show photos of your family portraits on that page, weddings on that page, and events on that page.
Your prospects will stay on your pages longer and you will have much more authority from Google and the other search engines.
Now is the time to do your keyword research. If you don’t have access to the Google Keyword Planner found within Google Ads, you may want to set up your account.
Just go to https://ads.google.com/ and click start now. You don’t have to spend money on Google ads to just start your account.
Once you’ve set up your account, go to keyword planner and tools.
Now click on discover new keywords and type in your main keyword. In this case, we will put “family portrait”.
Before proceeding, your keywords will be placed on every page of your website if they are not already there. You will also use these keywords in any type of marketing or post you do.
Note that whenever possible you want to add photography to your keyword if it’s not already there. There is a big difference between wedding and wedding photography, or events and event photography.
Looking at the keyword planner, I would choose the following. Keep in mind that you want a minimum of 8 and up to 15 keywords for each web page or niche.
Please note that I will cover targeting your local geographic area in greater detail with our Facebook Live event held on Thursdays. We will be recording the event.
For now, if you are not on page 1 for your top keywords (as mentioned above) in your main geographic area, you need to determine which geographic area or geographic areas you want to target. Don’t try to bite too hard with your geographic area. I will take a specific geographic area to give you an example. Feel free to open Google Maps and see what I’m talking about.
If we look at the suburbs of New York, we have a fairly large city called Yonkers, NY, with a population of 202,000. Let’s say you want to target Westchester County, which is the county that Yonkers is in. If you’re not on Page 1 of Yonkers, you need to head to that area first. In fact, if you’re looking for Westchester County, you should use Yonkers and another like Scarsdale or White Plains before trying to get the entire county.
I’ll show you how to use geographic in a moment, first let’s choose the keywords for your family portrait page:
- family portraits
- family photography
- family portrait photography
- family photography near me
- Family photos
- professional family photography
- Family photography studio near me (if you have one)
- Family photos
Now you place your geographical areas. We will use three of them.
- Yonkers New York
- White Plains New York
- Westchester County New York
Many times you as a photographer can think of other keywords that people are using to find your services.
In your coding you will find where to place your keywords. There are so many templates that it would be impossible for me to show you all of them.
Below is an example of the format of your keywords. Most templates allow you to place your keywords in the coding. You’ll see that we add your main geographic area to the main keyword and your top three or four main geographic areas at the end.
We’ll get into descriptions, titles, and alt tags that will make all the difference in the world in our optimization lesson. By now, you should have a much better understanding of how to set up your web pages and the keywords within each page.
The training we offer photographers is priceless. We offer tools, training, and resources that will enable very consistent and strong growth for your business.