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10 Small Business SEO Tips to Earn New Customers

Brittany Bronson — Wed, 02 Jun 2021 17:25:39 +0000

As a small business owner, chances are you’ve already heard of search engine optimization (SEO). Regardless of your business’s size, it’s an incredibly important digital marketing technique. Knowing the importance of digital marketing is one thing, but actually having time to execute a comprehensive small business SEO strategy for your business is another.

As a small business owner, you likely dedicate a lot of time to your company. You may not have a lot of time to spend on your SEO strategy. This is why it’s important to focus your SEO efforts on the tactics that can bring you the biggest bang for your buck. These small business SEO tips will help you earn new customers through organic search.

First Off, What is SEO?

Simply put, SEO is the way of boosting your business’s online visibility by ranking in the search engine result pages (also known as the SERPs). Search engines are complex machines and they run on algorithms. These algorithms dictate how websites are read, categorized, and presented to the consumer based on their relevance to the user’s search query.

Google rankings change frequently, meaning your business can get to the top of the SERPs if you’re willing to do the work! However, search engines don’t release the ins and outs of their algorithms. This can make it tricky to know exactly why one web page ranks higher than another for a specific query. But don’t fret, this is where SEO best practices come in to play.

These tried and true digital marketing techniques have proven to bring the best results to small businesses like yours.

1. Develop a Consistent Small Business Content Strategy

The words content strategy may seem overwhelming to the business owner that is just starting out. But in reality, making a content strategy is much simpler than you may think. All you have to do is ask yourself the question: “What problems can I solve for my prospective customers and my target audience?”

To answer this question, you’ll need to think both creatively and practically. You’ll need to think about what your local customers need to know about your business. Also ask yourself how you are going to present that useful information.

When you do this, you’ll want to target consumers of all kinds. This includes brand new consumers figuring out who you are as a business to the existing consumers returning to your small business website.

Content Marketing = Small Business SEO Success

For some great examples of content marketing materials created by small businesses, read this article. There are so many different ways that small business owners can bring value to their potential customers. Also, content marketing materials easily rank in search engine results!

Some different content marketing materials that you could publish on your website, even with a small team include the following:

Blog Posts
Ebooks
Infographics
Gift Guides
Glossaries
Interviews
Product or Tutorial Videos
And more!

One of the greatest parts about SEO content is that it is one of the best ways to get creative with your brand awareness and authority. You know your customers the best, so feel free to get creative and develop both fun and informational ways of presenting great content.

The more information you produce means more landing pages on your website. This gives your website a better chance of showing up in multiple different Google search results. Not only do you want to provide relevant, up-to-date information to your customers, Google likes to see that you are consistently adding new content and information to your website

2. Optimize Your Meta Tags Properly

When you think about your content strategy, don’t forget to include the existing web pages on your site! Chances are, there are a good amount of usable web pages that just need to be optimized according to SEO best practices.

To ensure your page optimization is consistent across your entire website, you’ll need to focus on the following:

Title tags. The goal of the title tag is to let both the search engine and the consumer know exactly what the page is about. Also known as a meta tag, all title tags should be formatted the same, at the top of page, like this: Example Title, and be no longer than 60 characters. They should also include the target keyword, or a similar term, that you want the page to rank for.
Meta descriptions. Meta descriptions are summaries of what the web page is all about. They are displayed below the page title in your SERP result. The meta description should tell Google and the user the subject of the content. Meta descriptions should be short, sweet, and to the point, include a target keyword. Make sure it is no more than 160 characters long.
Heading tags. These are the visible page headlines on the web page. They give your content structure, and they are characterized by an HTML codes from H1 tag to H6 tags. Heading tags are easy ways to incorporate relevant keywords. They break up the content of the page into easily digestible chunks.

The best part about making these changes is that they don’t take a lot of time. They also pack quite a punch in the long run.

To create content that has an even better chance of ranking, use LinkGraph’s SEO Content Assistant. You can take it for a free spin for 7 days!

3. Set up a Google My Business Profile and Invest in Local SEO

Local SEO is one of the most powerful digital marketing techniques a small business can do to bolster their online presence, and best of all, it doesn’t require a huge marketing budget.

Google My Business is a free tool that helps to power the Google maps feature. So when potential customers search for a small business in their local area, the different local search results will produce your website’s contact information under the map feature.

Small business owners can include key information about their business in their GMB listing. Their GMB listing can also show up in a comprehensive panel when potential customers search for a small business by name. It can showcase reviews , products, or Q&As to help your small business look more attractive to anyone who discovers you in the search engine results pages.

Google My Business Listings Examples

As a small business, being promoted within the local listings is the goal, which is why local search is valuable. You’ll be included with different businesses of all sizes within this map pack, but when you incorporate local keywords to your website and really focus on local SEO best practices, you’ll have an effective way of standing out among your competition.

So why not take advantage of this free optimization that can lead to great SEO success and more credibility for your small business?

4. Use Online Review Websites to Boost your Small Business SEO

There’s more than just one way of finding your website online. Third-party review websites like Yelp can make or break your business.

As a general rule, consumers are incredibly reliant on online reviews and will search high and low through the web to find more information on your business. So with this in mind, it’s a great idea to use review websites to your advantage. You’ll want to create a business profile on as many websites as you can, and not only keep them updated but interact with your customers there!

Positive reviews and testimonials can be incredibly beneficial in letting potential clients know that there is a face to your small business behind the screen. In a sea full of local directories and plenty of businesses to choose from, your online reviews can be a make or break between converting a new customer or turning one away.

Make Sure to Respond to Online Reviews of your Small Business

So we recommend taking time on a weekly basis to comb through all of your local reviews and respond back to both negative and positive ones with a genuine response.

Notice how this small business owner responds to a reviewer who had both positive and negative feedback on their local business’s services.

Even if there is a consumer with a bad experience, you have the ability to change their view of your small business by offering to make what went wrong, right. Potential customers will be able to see this as well, which can work wonders for your brand awareness and website conversion rate.

5. Conduct Keyword Research to Identify Gaps in Your Small Business Niche

Keywords are not only the backbone of your Small Business SEO strategy, but when you use them properly on your website, you have a better chance of appearing on the first page of Google.

When Google crawlers discover your website, they look for relevant keywords that explain the purpose of the webpage and make it easy to figure out which industry you are in. This is why it is important to use a variety of keywords in all of your valuable content. This includes geo-tagged, local seo keywords, long-tail keywords and phrases, subtopics, and related topics.

But, as with many other white hat online marketing techniques, keyword research can feel like a large hurdle to get over. This is especially true if you are a small business just starting out.

So we recommend starting small and focusing on smaller, quicker wins. Sometimes, if you have a larger and more established competitor, it can be hard to rank for the same keywords as them. But as you build your site authority, this will become more doable in time.

Keyword research should be an ongoing, long-term strategy. Keyword rankings change often, so make sure to stay on top of how your keywords are performing on a monthly basis.

6. Dive Into the Technical SEO Waters

Your website design may look good on the surface, with carefully selected pictures, colors, and fonts. However, your website’s aesthetics do not always correlate to having a website that looks appealing to Google crawlers on the backend.

Potential customers love seeing bold graphics and fun designs. But these features won’t mean anything if the website doesn’t show up within a Google search! In order for a search engine to promote a web page in the SERPs, the website has to be technically sound. This is why it is incredibly important to invest in your technical SEO efforts.

Common Technical SEO Issues for Small Business Websites

Here are some of the more common technical SEO issues that you should focus your efforts on avoiding.

Coding errors, such as a forgotten closer tag.
Broken links, meaning when you click on a link, the link results in an error.
Slow site speed, which can be caused by a variety of different functionality issues like large images or too much text on a page.
HTTPS status codes, a security function that allows users to have access to your page.
Robots.txt files, which are used to index, or store, your pages on the search engine.
Canonical link elements, to help eliminate duplicate content
Keyword cannibalization, which is when you overuse a specific keyword to the point where a search engine can view its usage as spammy.

Think of your website’s functionality as the foundation to a strong working website. Without a steady foundation, your website will not be able to work to its full potential. Technical SEO is the bridge between a website that gets visitors and a website that can convert those visitors into customers.

7. Build Backlinks With Other Small Businesses

Link building is the process of optimizing both internal links within your website and external links coming and going from your website. Links are seen by search engines as a vote of confidence in your website. If another company is willing to put a link to your website on theirs, that is a symbol of trust.

Building up your backlink profile is one of the easiest ways to ensure your website shows up on the first page of search results. While link building may seem like a daunting prospect involving a lot of hard work, it doesn’t have to be! You don’t have to be a website owner with a huge online presence to run a successful link building campaign.

The first thing you’ll want to do is reach out to your local contacts. See if you can where you both put external links to the other’s websites on your page. Only reach out to website’s that have relevance to yours. Also, make sure they include the link on your page through an original piece of content.

Utilizing your existing small company contacts is a great way to get good results without spending too much time and money on your marketing efforts.

After you have built up some local authority, you’ll have a good starting point to start reaching out to other social media accounts, bloggers, and higher ranking websites. However, it is important to know that not all links are created equally. It’s better to get one link from a quality website than multiple links from spammy, low-quality websites.

8. Create a Mobile-Friendly Small Business Website

Consider this, mobile phones are the dominant platform for online shopping, with 48% of buyers using a mobile device to complete a purchase. Internet users are a vast and varied demographic, so in order to capture as much web traffic as possible, you’ll want to ensure your website is mobile-friendly.

Think of a mobile phone being a SEO tool to use to your advantage. Also, consider the amount of potential consumers that may never get to your website if the website’s usability is only available on a desktop computer. User experience is everything when it comes to capturing your ideal customers and is a simple way to guarantee your website is accessible to all.

9. Set up Google Search Console and GSC Insights

Your SEO techniques won’t mean anything unless you have the ability to track your hard work. The best way to do so is by setting up your Google Search Console account and your LinkGraph GSC Insights dashboard. Google Search Console is a free platform, and GSC Insights offers limited versions of the platform that allow you to track your SEO performance.

Google Search Console & GSC Insights Dashboards

Google Search Console shows you how your website is presented within the organic search results. This platform allows you to fix any crawl errors. You can also submit your sitemap and specific pages for indexing, and see which web pages are ranking highest in the SERPs.

GSC Insights gives you in-depth insights into your keyword rankings, impressions, and organic traffic that can help you iterate on your small business SEO strategy. All you have to do is link your Google Search Console account and you will have access to new insights and advanced data analysis.

10. Do Some Competitive Research

Do you have some really strong competitors in your local area?

One of the best SEO tips is to do some competitive research and look at your competitor’s websites to see what they’re doing well, and use that to inspire your SEO process.

Take everything in, including the content promoted on their social platforms, if they use paid ads like Facebook ads and Google ads. See whether their content marketing team uses influencers, guest posting, local listings, and what keyword rankings they earn.

It’s always good to look at their internal linking structure and how their business information is displayed in the NAP results for Google My Business. Also see how their brand visibility is promoted in search results, social media pages, and other local listing pages. Write all the information you find out into a competitive analysis finding, and then you’ll be in a great place to start building your own customized local SEO strategy.

You don’t have to feel alone when implementing your small business SEO strategy. LinkGraph is here to help. Schedule a free consultation to learn more about how we can accelerate growth and visibility for your small business.

Our team of SEO consultants offers many SEO services for small businesses that will help you get your website to a rank higher in Google. It is our goal to make your local business’s online visibility and organic results grow exponentially online, so trust in our team of experts to get you there.

The post 10 Small Business SEO Tips to Earn New Customers appeared first on LinkGraph.

4 Local SEO Tools to Boost Site Traffic and Foot Traffic

Brittany Bronson — Tue, 25 May 2021 16:19:59 +0000

For any local business that wants to appear at the top of the SERP results, local SEO tools can help get you there. Local SEO has a lot of moving parts. But getting your website into local search rankings for your geographic area can be an affordable and efficient way to drive traffic to your website. It can also bring foot traffic to your brick-and-mortar store.

People often search for local businesses near them on their mobile devices. If your business website shows up near the top of those results, that means more site visitors and potential customers.

To help you get started with a local SEO strategy, here are 4 helpful local SEO tools. By utilizing them, you can help your website rank higher for location-based queries.

#1: Local Search Results by LinkGraph

Does your website need to focus on content, backlinks, technical SEO, or UI/UX design? It will depend on your target keywords and the websites that are already ranking in the top positions.

Looking to your competitors can be a great way to understand what is necessary to rank on page 1. With the help of LinkGraph’s local search results tool, you can see local SERP results for any geographic region.

To use the tool, simply type in the keyword or search phrase and the geographic location where you want to see top-ranking SERP results. The tool will show you the search engine results for that specific region.

Local search results for the keyword phrase “hvac companies near me,” in Austin, TX

For SEO professionals that provide services to clients outside of their geographic area, this tool makes it easy to understand their clients’ local markets.

For site owners who are creating location specific landing pages or targeting new markets, this tool can help you understand the local SERP competition in other geographic regions.

#2: Local Directory Scan

Local Directory Scan from LinkGraph

It’s hard to know how to improve your local SEO strategy if you don’t know where your website currently stands. The local directory scan is an SEO tool that lets you identify where your local business is currently listed on major third-party review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, or TrustPilot. It will also identify the business listings or local citations you have already secured.

Local search has different ranking factors than other types of searches. One of the primary factors is local citations. They are essential to your local website’s ability to rank in local results and the Google Map Pack.

Google looks for consistent business information across these local directories and citations. Starting off with a local directory audit can give you a sense of whether your local citations meet Google’s standards.

How to Run a Local Directory Scan

To use the SEO tool, enter your website url and business information into the required fields. It will take a few minutes to generate the report, but it will include the following information.

Links and Website Authority Analysis
Rank Checker
Local Business Listings
Reviews & Ratings with recent customer feedback
Google My Business Optimization
Existing or Missing Business Profiles on Social Channels

Local Directory Scan Reports

In the above example reports, this website is missing listings for 18 key local business directories. They are also missing some profiles on major review sites. Getting these profiles and listings properly set up with updated information can have a major impact on this website’s ability to rank in local results.

If you are missing profiles or you have a listing that is unclaimed, you will be notified in the report. You can use the report as a general overview of your local online presence and a guide for where you can still improve.

By completing and claiming more local listings, and focusing on improving your customer reviews, you can see significant improvements in your rankings for location based searches.

#3: BrightLocal’s Citation Builder

Want to start building the local citations that you are missing? BrightLocal’s citation builder is one of the most efficient ways to get multiple listings setup quickly.

Bright Local’s local citation builder

BrightLocal’s listing management allows you to pick the most relevant, industry-specific sites that you want to earn citations from. It also includes any major data aggregators.

Simply provide your business information and location information, your preferred listings, and they will build the citations for you. The tool also ensures consistent and accurate listings across all third-party directories — a key local SEO ranking factor.

There are other other types of local SEO software like Moz Local and Yext, but BrightLocal helps your business get permanent citations and at the best value.

If your small business wants an affordable and quick way to jumpstart building your site authority, investing in local seo services is a fast and affordable way to do so.

#4: LinkGraph’s Schema Creator

So once you start ranking for local keywords in your industry, how do you rank in higher positions? Make sure that your site has the local business schema.org markup on the backend of your website.

Schema markup makes it so your website can appear in rich results. They are SERP displays that are more clickable and make your business stand out against your competitors.

But not many digital marketers use schema.org markup on their site. For that reason, adding it to your high performing web pages can have a big impact on your local SEO rankings.

Local Business rich result as seen on a mobile device

When users search for local businesses on Google or in Google Maps, the local business schema will display your website in a prominent knowledge graph or in the map pack with relevant details like your physical address, your hours of operation, and other key business information.

If your local business takes appointments or reservations, you can use the Maps Booking API to add an appointment or booking feature to your SERP result.

How to Use the Schema Creator

To use the LinkGraph schema creator, follow these steps:

Select “Schema Creator,” in your LinkGraph dashboard
Select the schema type that you want to generate markup for, in this case, “Local Business”
Input the required properties
Copy and paste the subsequent JSON-LD markup into the heading section of your web page

LinkGraph’s Schema Creator tool used to generate Local Business schema markup

Once you have added the local business schema markup, you can test it using Google’s rich results test. This test will identify if there are errors in your schema markup and confirm whether Google can successfully generate rich results from the structured data on the page.

Google’s rich results testing tool

Adding schema.org markup is an optimization that costs nothing and can dramatically improve local search rankings and the click-ability of your SERP results. More clicks means more website traffic and foot traffic. Read our guide to schema.org markup to learn more about this powerful optimization.

Final Thoughts on the Best Local SEO Tools

Investing in local search is inexpensive and very effective. If you want to make sure searchers can find your local business, there is no better way than by elevating your local SEO efforts so they always know where to find you.

The above local SEO tools can help your local or small business better understand a competitor, find the right target keyword, create new business listings, craft your own local SEO checklist, show up in Google maps, and improve your overall visibility for local searches.

For more insights into how to elevate your local SEO rankings, read our guide to local SEO. Also, make sure to setup your free LinkGraph dashboard for a free trial of these local SEO tools. In your dashboard, you’ll also find other SEO tools that can help you take ownership of your local SEO strategy or better understand your performance with tons of great SEO data.

And of course if you have any questions, our SEO experts are here to help. They can help you narrow in on the parts of your website that will most benefit from optimization and elevate your overall local search rankings with our local SEO services.

The post 4 Local SEO Tools to Boost Site Traffic and Foot Traffic appeared first on LinkGraph.

SEO for Photographers: How to Optimize your Photography Website

Brittany Bronson — Tue, 29 Dec 2020 19:20:51 +0000

For professional photographers, expanding a customer base and earning more bookings requires far more than just word-of-mouth referrals from previous clients and customers. SEO for photographers is so important because the first place people go to discover new services is search engines like Google. If your professional or wedding photography website isn’t showing up on the first page, there’s a good chance that potential customers will choose a different photographer for their next big event or family portrait session.

As a small business owner in our growing digital world, gone are the days where word of mouth and print advertisements lead to the majority of your business. Instead, digital marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) reign supreme for earning new customers. With 66% of all businesses utilizing some sort of online advertising, it only makes sense to amp up your photography business’s online presence to be more competitive and gain exposure.

But how do you do it? Here’s a beginner’s guide on SEO for photographers so you can improve your photography website to start earning more keyword rankings, website traffic, and photography bookings.

Why Professional Photographers Need SEO

Any business, big or small, needs to invest in their online presence to be competitive in today’s marketplace. Search engine optimization is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve your overall online visibility. At its core, the goal of SEO is to boost the visibility of your webpages by getting them ranking in Google’s Search Engine Result Pages, also known as the SERPs.

Search engine behemoths like Google and Bing keep the details of their ever-changing search algorithms close to their chest and don’t always release the specifics of what businesses should do to land those coveted SERP rankings. But there are some SEO best practices that any small business can implement to up their chances of ranking in the search results. SEO takes time and hard work, but your efforts can quickly result in more site traffic and revenue.

Some of those optimizations are more simple. With the right tools and software, professional and wedding photographers can make changes to their websites in a CMS like WordPress or Squarespace. Other digital marketing concepts can be a bit tricky to implement for the average business owner, so for more advanced SEO strategies, it’s an important thing to work with a digital marketing professional or agency well-versed in the search engine result pages for your photography niche.

Considering that photography is, by nature, a visual business, it makes sense that many small business photographers create websites that are stock full of images. But in the world of SEO, a website has to be more than just a place where potential clients can see the work you have done before. It also has to communicate to search engine crawlers (who can’t see images) the relevance of your content, the quality and expertise of your services in comparison to your competitors, as well as your location and the markets you serve.

Designing and structuring your website content to meet the needs of both your potential customers and search engines is key to ranking in organic search results and earning new client bookings. Here are the primary ways you can implement an effective SEO strategy for your own website.

SEO for Photographers: The Basics

Whether you’re an established photographer or just starting out, there is a need to complete a few different SEO basics to ensure your website is optimized properly. If you make it a priority to improve upon the most important ranking factors, you will most likely start to see your SEO rankings improve in as little as 1-3 months.

Photography Keywords

Keywords are the search words or phrases people use when they search in any search engine. With the sheer amount of different keywords people might use to search for photography services like yours, it’s important to do thorough vetting to ensure the keywords you target bring a lot of traffic that is likely to convert on your site.

There are plenty of online tools available to help you determine which relevant keywords to use, but since you are the closest one to your business, take some time brainstorming. Do you specialize in wedding photography, family portraits, or corporate photography? Do you only serve specific local markets? These key factors of your business will help you identify the related keywords that will bring the right kind of traffic to your photography website.

Here are some things to think about when doing keyword selection.

What is the focus of your business? Are you trying to optimize for SEO for wedding photographers only, or do you do family shoots, portraiture, or newborn baby photography? You can have multiple answers to this question.
What locations do you serve? Are you based in one area, or will you travel to different towns and cities?
Who are your competitors? Are you competing with well established wedding photographers in local search that have already established their site authority in the eyes of Google? If so, targeting long-tail keywords that are less competitive is a great way to get some initial search engine rankings for your photography site until you have built up your domain authority through off-site SEO efforts.

Once you have the answers to the three questions above, you’ll be more focused and in a better position to dive into more in-depth keyword research. Online content tools, such as our Keyword Search Volume Tool, provide important keyword data like search volume and cost-per-click that shows how many people are searching for specific keywords or what they are paying to target them in PPC campaigns.

Taking the time to conduct thorough research will help you find the right keywords that bring converting traffic to your website.

HTML Optimizations

Once you have the proper keywords picked out, you’ll need to use them in both the frontend and backend of your web pages. Search engines use web crawlers in order to read what is on your site, and when you properly optimize your HTML tags, it makes it easier for Google to see what exactly your website is about.

At the bare minimum, the HTML tags you should optimize on your photography website pages include:

. Defines the title of the page or the title tag.
. Header 1, which is the largest font on the page, after the title. Should include your focus keyword.
,
,
,
. All subsequent sub-titles or subheadings that decrease in SEO impact as you increase in number.
Meta description. The code of this tag varies per website platform and server you are using, but the meta description is a short sentence telling Google exactly what each page of your website is about.
Alt tags. Search engine crawlers cannot see your images, so an alt tag provides an HTML text alternative so they can understand the content of the many images you’ll likely include on your photography website.

Once you have these HTML basics incorporated on each page of your website, it will be easier for Google to read and categorize your information.

Developing a Sitemap

It doesn’t matter if you have the best-optimized landing pages and blog posts on the entire Internet, if a search engine cannot find your web pages, then they cannot rank them within the SERPs. This is called indexing, which is the crawling and subsequent categorizing of any webpage into Google’s vast website database. And once the website and its pages are indexed, Google can use what information it has to populate its search results.

The easiest way to ensure Google can find your landing pages is to develop a simple sitemap that tells Google exactly what is on your website. A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like– a map of every page. They don’t have to be complex, just a structure of your pages and their URLs. Working with a member of our digital marketing team can help you create a basic, yet functional sitemap to ensure your website is being crawled and indexed properly.

5 Photography SEO Essentials

For the most part, the fundamentals of SEO will not change from website to website, but there are specific things professional photographers should focus on because their websites are more visual in nature and feature more images than the average website.

Having lots of images on your website can impact website speed, page load times, and other important performance metrics that are a part of Google’s ranking algorithm. Here are 5 important SEO tactics for photography websites to focus on to make sure their image-heavy website performs well in search.

#1: Optimize Images

You run a photography business, so optimizing images for search engines should be a a no-brainer. Since your website will likely include a gallery that is populated with high-resolution photos, it is crucial that you optimize them to be the right image size.

If your page load speed is poor, you’ll likely experience high bounce rates and lose that website traffic you just worked so hard to earn. Not only will optimized images make it easier for clients to scroll or click through your portfolio faster, smaller pictures improve site speed and load times and result in a website that is more responsive and performs better on mobile devices.

#2: Use Alt Tags

Simply put, an alt tag is a description of your photograph that Google can read. Google web crawlers cannot see image files, so a small snippet of alt text makes all the difference in helping them understand the content of your photos — like whether they are primarily wedding photos, landscape photography, or senior portraits.

Consider your photos as just other pieces of real estate on your website that should be optimized with SEO best practices. Adding keywords into an alt tag is yet another way Google can gain information and in return, rank your site.

#3: Create Blog Content

Creating a blog that allows you to target new keywords and while also showing off your photos and past work is great for SEO. Maybe your primary keyword is “wedding photographers near me,” but a long-tail keyword like “engagement photography” can help open up your services to a new market of potential customers.

If your photography website is targeting “wedding photography” keywords, try targeting engagement photography in a blog post. It’s a great way to add new content to your site while also earning new keyword rankings that expand your customer base. Here’s a few reasons why consistently publishing blog posts is a great On-Page SEO tactic for photography websites in particular.

You can use content and blogs to target new keywords with the goal of helping to boost your search engine rankings.
You can show off more images in your portfolio work while also providing captions and more detailed context that will help engage your target audience and their unique needs
You can utilize the blogs as an extra place for images, which includes alt text, making your page more keyword rich.
You can connect with your clients! Online shoppers want to know that there is an actual person behind the screen (and camera!) Writing great content that showcases testimonials or events makes you more personable.

#4: Make Your Homepage SEO Friendly

Your website’s homepage is most likely the most popular page on your site, making it that much more important for it to be SEO friendly. The information you post on the homepage should be quick to find and easy to read. Make sure to include the following:

A call to action with relevant keywords,
Your contact information both on the top of the page (header), and the bottom(footer),
Links to your social media profiles,
Photos of your best work
Headlines, with the proper HTML formatting.

#5: Stay Away From Duplicate Content and Keyword Stuffing

There are several SEO no-nos that websites should stay away from, but some key cautions in particular for photography sites are duplicate webpages and keyword stuffing.

Each page on your website should serve a specific purpose and there should be no duplicate content. Not only do duplicate pages slow down the website’s speed and negatively impact user experience, but Google also penalizes websites with multiple duplicate pages. Just make sure the content you write and the pictures you share on each page are different.

Keyword stuffing in content and alt tags can be tempting if you really want to get ranking for your main keyword, but Google will recognize these black hat SEO tactics immediately and likely penalize your site. Instead, include phrases and synonyms into your page titles and headings that have topical relevance to your target keyword.

You can use a tool like our landing page optimizer to create in-depth, quality content, that displays authority to Google, thus improving overall search engine results for your domain name.

Off-Site SEO for Photographers

Anything to do with off-site SEO for photographers is what happens “off” of your website. Off-site SEO should be a fundamental detail in every photographer’s SEO strategy, as it is a high ranking factor in Google’s eyes. Off-site signals like backlinks and brand mentions show Google that your photography site is trusted by other webmasters and users on the internet.

The easiest way to invest in off-site SEO is to develop a strong backlink profile. A backlink is a link from another website that leads to your website and is used as a signal of authority by Google when ranking your website against your competitors. It tells Google that other businesses trust your website, which is a huge factor in ranking high in the SERPs.

To start earning links, connect with other vendors you’ve worked with in the past and see if they’ll participate in a link exchange. Make sure the anchor text is relevant to your site’s content and is natural in appearance.

For new sites in particular, earning backlinks will have the most impact on improving your SEO rankings right away. The more quality backlinks you have from relevant websites in your photography niche, the higher authority your website will have in Google’s eyes, and the better chance you’ll outrank your competition.

Local SEO for Photographers Tips

Local SEO is how Google classifies and promotes businesses per their location. When a user enters a geographic or location-based keyword phrase, Google understands that the most relevant results will be those that come from the same geographic area.

Think of when you do a Google search for a pizza place, the results at the top will likely include Google maps with those businesses closest to you in your town, city, or suburb. However, photography businesses are not as cut and dry. Portrait photographers may have a studio that they work in, while wedding photographers may not have a brick-and-mortar location, but still be confined to working events in limited areas.

Making sure your location information is clearly communicated in your meta data and off-site signals is an important thing for driving qualified traffic to your site — or only those users who are also in the same area where your business operates. Having a clear contact page with your phone number or a submission form will help turn those local searchers into more bookings and business.

Also, getting your photography business listed in popular online directories like theknot.com is a great way to start building your off-site signals and earn links back to your site. Make sure your business is listed in the most popular photographer directories so more customers can find you and search engines can trust that your business is reputable.

Here are some easy local SEO tips to follow to improve your search engine results appearances for geographic search phrases.

Fill out your Google My Business profile. This is where you’ll put your studio location (if you have one), your hours, your website URL, and your contact information.
Update your Yelp directory listing. Feel free to fill your yelp photo gallery with recent pictures of your work but at the very least your Yelp profile should include the same information as above.
Comb through your customer testimonials on Google, Yelp, and social media. Make sure that you reply to every single one with a solution or words of thanks, even if it is negative. Doing so will allow potential clients to see your customer service at work.
Get your photography website listed across online directories. Monthly local citation services can ensure your site information is listed with accuracy across hundreds to thousands of NAP listings, a cost-effective, easy way to get a nice boost in domain authority

Creating a Great Photography Website: How to Improve Core Web Vitals and Page Experience

Consumers have very limited attention spans when it comes to finding information on the Internet. Because there are so many photography businesses out there, if your website gallery doesn’t load, they can easily hop to another new page on another domain.

Poor user experience and page speed is the number one factor in why a user would leave your website, and because Google is advanced enough to understand whether your website is operating at peak performance, it is less likely to rank web pages that have high bounce rates or don’t perform well.

Luckily, Google provides a free tool known as PageSpeed Insights that allows anyone to see how their website is performing. They also provide Core Web Vitals metrics in their Google Search Console. Core Web Vitals are best described as three metrics created by Google that measure unified the essentials in delivering a great experience on the web.

The three metrics are:

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): measures loading performance of the website as a whole. For a good user experience, your LCP should occur within 2.5 seconds.
First Input Delay (FID): measures interactivity; how long it takes for a user to be able to interact with the page. Every page should have an FID of less than 100 milliseconds.
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS): measures visual stability; or how often the website’s layout shifts when a user is scrolling through. Every page should have a CLS of less than 0.1.

The best part about PageSpeed Insights is that you don’t have to be incredibly savvy with web-dev in order to make changes. When you add your URL into the PageSpeed Insights tool, it will give you very detailed information on how to increase both your Core Web Vitals metrics and your PageSpeed. Google provides step-by-step instructions, but if you have any questions, a member of our digital marketing team is happy to help you.

Last Thoughts on Photographer SEO

When it comes to SEO for photographers, it is important to remember that search engine optimization is like the stock market: you get out of it what you put into it. It is very important to be patient when it comes to SEO simply because of the nature of what it is – not only does Google change its algorithms periodically, it can take a couple of weeks to a couple of months for Google bots to actually crawl your website.

Just like it took you awhile to build up your photography skills, you can’t improve your Google rankings overnight. By taking the first step to connect with an SEO professional, it is not only an investment in your business, but in you as a photographer! The more people who can find you website in Google Search results the more individuals who will see your photography and consider purchases services from you.

After you have implemented your SEO for photographers strategy, make sure you track your progress in Google Search Console and Google Analytics. Take snapshots every 3 months of your improvements, and continue to optimize accordingly. As your metrics improve, your appointment book will likely start filling up.

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