As a photographer, it is difficult to bump up your business online without a steady SEO plan. When a person looks for a photographer online, they only look through the top results, and this is dependent on the search engine optimisation of your website. Though there are a lot of SEO tactics that are applicable to increase your online presence, ‘Local SEO’ is another field that is important for photographers to increase their ranking and client reach. Unlike national and international listings, it is easier to climb the rankings in local listings.
Local SEO mainly focuses on improving your reach in your local area or community. Photographers tend to look for clients closer to their work studio and by enhancing their local SEO the chances of job opportunities will increase.
When trying to improve your local SEO strategy, there are a few tactics that one needs to bear in mind:
- Optimization of keywords
- Optimization of the Google My Business page
- Consistent business listings/citations
- Links and sources
- Generation of original reviews
- Tracking the results
Optimization of Keywords
Keywords and Meta descriptions are like the bread and butter of a proper SEO strategy. In order to reach the top of any search page, the website must be optimised with current and relevant keywords. The keywords need to define your service, whether it may be fashion photography or wedding photography.
These keywords are usually categorised as buying intent based and research intent based. For a photography website, whose main focus is to increase traffic and consequently the client base, care must be taken to spend more time on the buying-intent keywords for your ‘core’ web pages; as they will bring in potential customers rather than people who happen to be looking around.
Optimize Your Google My Business Page
The Google My Business page gives your prospective clients an overview of your website. It allows the clients to look you up and provides them with contact details to book your services. It is easier to rank higher in your Google My Business page than on your website.
In order for the My Business page to improve your online presence, you need to fill out the form correctly and make sure to include your proper details along with pictures to beef up your portfolio. The page allows you to add descriptions and categorise your services to reach a targeted client. This lends authenticity to your studio and helps your local clients to find you easily.
Create Consistent Business Listings/Citations
Consistency adds to the overall website rankings. When building websites, an important detail for any business venture is the ‘NAP’ – name, address, and phone number of the studio/business. This needs to be consistent across all your websites without any excess keywords or otherwise; Google will consider the sites as spam and will refuse to rank the site. This, in the long run, will affect your end game and will pull down the visibility of your site.
Your citations need to be listed in an online directory. This service is offered for free by many sites while others require some monetary deposits. The process of selecting the type of online directory you wish to appear in depends on, the traffic that particular website generates and the reach of the directory whether it is local, or more widespread.
Links and Sources
In order to add authenticity and reliability to your business, inbound links from other reputed sources is a requirement. This is achieved by building relationships with other relevant and complementary businesses and services both online and offline. As a photographer, it is important to link yourself with other services that can bring in customers and help build your client network.
Generate Reviews
Reviews play a dual role in terms of boosting your local SEO; they prove that your business is legitimate and also convince potential customers to try your services. Reviews made by other customers helps bring attention to your site when they are placed strategically. These reviews can be generated by linking your clients to your Google My Business page or your Yelp page. In the long run, these reviews also serve the purpose of providing you with feedback to better update your site and the way it interacts with your prospects.
Track Results
All these tactics require constant supervision to check the progress of the plan and to update your local SEO strategy to match the feedback you receive. Tracking allows you to determine the success of your plans in terms of the traffic generation, rankings based on your relevant keywords and the web conversion rates. By tracking your progress, you not only remain updated but also have the ability to update the SEO plan.
Therefore, it is evident that appropriate local SEO tactics will help put your photography website on the map and also increase your overall reach and web traffic.
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