Tips any photographer can apply to its own photography business.

SEO tips any photographer can apply to its own photography business.

Capture 1st spot in your local area and go after the competition next.

Put aside 2 hours every week and you can make it to 1st page of Google in less than 6 months.
    Photography is a very competitive industry. Anyone with a camera thinks they are a photographer. You can build a website, Instagram and Facebook page and you are in business; however, no matter how skilled you are, if no one can find you online you have no business.

Easy to do On-Site and Off-Site SEO any photographer can do:

On-Site SEO – Things you can do on your website to increase visibility on Google search results.

Off-Site SEO – Things you can do somewhere else on the internet to help your website be better served by Google in the search results.

Get to 1st page on Google in 2020 by following these 2 easy steps.

Step ONE

OFF-SITE SEO

1. Sign-up for Google My Business – puts your website on google maps; very good for photographers that offer services in a specific area (LOCAL); it will show in google search results when someone from your area searches for your type of photography services.
2. Yelp, Yell and Local Guides – add your business listing there.
3. Partnership/Collaboration with businesses related to the type of photography you do: restaurants, churches, registrars, wedding dress shops, cake shops, nurseries, local gift shops, boutique shops, DJs, bands, album makers, wedding decorators and caterers etc.; aim for at least 20 backlinks from any of them (backlink – a link on someone else website that sends people to your site).
4. Share your Google My Business posts on your social media spaces.
5. Fill all details on Google My Business.
6. Post at least once a week on Google My Business: text, offers, photos, videos. The more you post the better your results will be.
7. During photo sessions  or events, ask your customers to post behind the scenes photos on Google My Business. Do the same for Instagram and Facebook.
8. Get reviews. You need to have at least 20 reviews on Google My Business and after that at least 1 every month.
9. List packages, products and offers on Google My Business.
10. Create a BRAND CHANNEL on Youtube, search for “Youtube  Brand Channel” on Google if you don’t know what that is, or create a brand new youtube channel – it is up to you, and post slideshows, videos, BTS, and more, add links to your website and your social media spaces.
11. Reach to local publications, online and/or offline, tell them what you do, find a way to get free press, do some charitable work in exchange for promotion on charity’s website or social media, if they don’t post a link, take a photo of the newspaper and brag about it on your site, social media, Google My Business and more.  

ON-SITE SEO

1. Make your website mobile-friendly, more than 70% of search comes from portable devices (Smartphones +Tablets)
2. Post at least one text article every week, fifty articles per year, statistics says that after you reach 100 articles you have more than 50% chances to reach a first-page position on Google search results in your local area, therefore, mix text with photos, collaboration articles, and you will easily have 100 articles in one year. ( The articles should help your type of customers find answers for photography-services-related questions but don’t limit yourself to that.
3. Update articles – if you have your website for a long time and have some articles already posted there, do some updates on those.
4. Make sure you write in a natural language, don’t overuse keywords, put the main keyword in the title and once or twice in the first 100 words of your article. No matter how smart you are, Google will outsmart you if you try to be dishonest, and you may gain traction in the short term, but in the long term, you will lose credibility with Google if you overuse the same word in a short text.
5. Don’t invest in the design, make sure it looks good, but don’t spend too much time on the design and looks alone; until you will have enough content and people find you on the search engines it is useless to have it looking perfect (and what is perfect anyway).
6. Create the content before anything else, no content no visitors no paycheck.
7. Don’t research 100 topics or blog posts at once, think of 1 or 2, write them, publish them, repeat.

“SEO is not easy, but there are a few steps you can take to ensure a better position on Google even if you are not an SEO specialist” Constantine M.