How important is SEO for photographers? Well – for any small business in this age of technology, SEO is a very important tool to help you grow your business. The same is very true for photographers.
What the heck is SEO anyway? SEO is an acroynm for “search engine optimization”. According to the Digital Marketing Institute, SEO is the process of getting traffic from free, organic, editorial, or natural search results in search engines. In layman’s terms – you want to get the search enginge (mainly Google) to “like” your website and get you higher up on the list when people search key words that may lead to your business. Higher you are on the list, the better chances you have that someone will land on your website and then ultimately book you.
Increasing your SEO takes a steady, consistent effort. But the outcome means your ideal client is finding and booking with you. So how do you improve your SEO? Let’s chat about a few key ways to bump those SEO ratings!
Determine your Key Words
Part of the battle is figuring out what key words your business should be ranking for and using those key words in your website and blogs. This will depend on what type of photography you offer, your location, etc. So think of things your clients might be searching for when they are Googling – like “family photographer bay area” or “newborn photo studio Indianapolis”. You might even find some free online tools to see what key words your website is already ranking for and use that to guide you.
Blogging with Intention
Blogging is crucial for SEO! We often sometimes see photographers blogging and just posting a short paragraph and then several photos. You want your blogs to be content rich and using your key words to boost your SEO ratings. There is a lot that goes into blog beyond just posting pretty photos and a short story with it. Some things to think about when writing your blogs:
– Is it long enough? Set a goal for 1,500 words.
– Is your key word that you’re trying to rank for present within the first 100 words of your blog? And is it used enough throughout the blog?
– Is your title too long?
– Do you have alt text on your images?
– Add in some links to other pages on your website or refer to other blogs you’ve written.
Just as it is important to blog with intention, it is also good practice to blog often and consistently! This can be tough when you have so many other things going on. Create a monthly content calendar and set aside some time to work on blogging. Not sure what to blog about? Check out these blog post ideas!
Backlinks
Backlinks are crucial and go the distance with Google increasing your ranking. Find a way for your blogs to be shared. You can: write guest blogs, submit your content to national or local publications, write testimonials on partner websites, and write google reviews.
Mobile Friendly and Speed
This is one thing that many might overlook when creating their website and thinking about SEO. Think about – most of your clients will be accessing your website via a mobile device. So you’ll want to make sure you website is mobile friendly. Also, the speed in which it takes your website or pages to load. Your SEO rating can take a hit if the website or page takes too long to load.
These are just some starting points for understanding SEO and simple steps you can take to improve it. It certainly is a tricky thing to figure out and takes time for your efforts to pay off, but we definitely agree that it is something you should be working on in your business.
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