SEO for Professional Photographers

SEO for Professional Photographers

In case you’ve stumbled onto this and are wondering what you’ve found, it’s a page I’ve put together to easily check my SEO status for the various search terms I’ve decided areimportant for my three web pages.  It’s not meant for public use, just for me…If you decide to do your own, then of course the search terms will change to reflect your target markets.

Every month or so I check all the terms (links here) with a Google search to see where I stand and then document them to see which terms I need to work on.  It’s an interesting idea and maybe you’ll want to do the same.  To make my searching a little easier, I’ve made each of these phrases a linkso I can just click on them and see how I’m doing with each search phrase.

BTW – If you’re wondering, the * means that I can check multiple pages with the same term

Optimizing for the correct photography key word

For me, one of the toughest parts about creating good SEO is targeting the correct search terms.  You have to be able to guess what search terms your potential clients are going to use to to try to find your service.  That may sound simple, but it’s not.  It’s really easy to overlook some obvious search phrases that, for whatever reason, don’t come to mind when you think about what you do.

How to find similar search terms for professional photography services

In recent years G has come up with a new feature that helps with this problem of finding new search terms.  As someone types in their search phrase, G “auto fills” or makes suggestions as to possible phrases you may want to use.  These suggested phrases are actually the “most often used” search phrases and may give you ideas of search phrases that you may have overlooked.  Pay close attention to these suggestions.  They can give you great ideas about search terms that you may want to optimize for with future content.

Commercial Photographer autofill

 

food photographer search term suggestions

At the bottom of every results page there are suggestions for similar searches. This a great place to find search terms you may have overlooked.

Google is constantly changing and so should the SEO of every professional photographer

Is there a difference in search results between photography, photographer, and photographers?

Long-tail keywords for professional photographers

Did you ever do a search on G and come up with too many of the wrong types or returns?  What did you do?  You refined your search by adding more works that made the search more specific.  What you did was make a “long-tailed” search.  If you’re looking for a fashion photographer in Pittsburgh, you might type in “Pittsburgh photographer” the results you would get back would include all types of photographers, mostly wedding shooters.  To get a better return, you’d need to refine you search.  Keep that fact in mind.  It’s better to rank high for the spicific long-tailed keywords than it is for very specific terms.  People that use long-taied phrases are usually the ones that are closer to making a purchase too.

The importance of “local” search to professional photographers

 

How to rank for your targeted photography  search terms – What I do…

Research target terms

Create content -Concentrate on one keyword phrase per post and then cover options with other content.  In other wrods, write a post on food photography, than another about shooting ice cream, and another about working with food stylist.  The idea is that you want to convince G that you are an expert on that subject.  That’s how G stays the top search engine. It tries it’s best to give its searchers the best results possible.  You want to be the most informative return possible.  That’s the real key to good SEO, be THE athority on your service.  In my case, that’s food photography for foodportfolio.com, headshot photography for pghpeople.com, and commercial photography for Michaelray.com.

Content length should be at least 300-500 or more words.  The more the better.

Title tag – The HTML title tag should contain your keyword phrase.  Coding is not something I want to get into here, but if you’re a user of  WordPress, it’s easy enough to find the title of each post or page of content.

H-1 tag – The title at the top of your page should be marked with an H-! tag and should contain the targeted keyword phrase or very similar words.  The Title tag and the H-1 tag should contain the same key work phrases but don’t have to match exactly.  For example, this article’s H-1 tag is “SEO for Professional Photographers” but the title tag could be “SEO for Professional Pro photogaphers.  G has gotten very good at recognizing synonyms or closely related words so you’ll want to not repeat the same words over and over again.  It makes for poor writing and G will notice that.

The term should appear in fist line of the first paragraph. and should appear in the final paragraph too.

Throughout the page, use that term often but don’t “stuff” the contentto the point that it sounds unnatural.

Have the your identical contact info on every page for “local” listings SEO

Divide content into small bits with headings (H-2 or H-3) to make it more “scannble” for your viewers.  At least some of those headings should contain your keyword phrases.

 

Have a couple outgoing and internal links

Should have images

image file names

Image “Alt” tags

 

Fore Youtube movies, include a transcript

 

Keeping track of SEO for professional photographers

 

Use the links below to see how professional photography SEO works with Google searches

The list of links below is what I use to check my own SEO status.  You can use it to see the differences between search terms. By closely examining the search results, you may see patterns where G thinks of different words as the same thing.  For example, G might consider “headshots” and “portraits” as the same thing or you can discover what G thinks of using your city name in the search.  If you pay enough attention, there are many things to learn that may help with your optimizing efforts.

Keeping track of SEO for Professional photographers

Keep in mind that G is always refining itself and the conclusions you come to today may not be valid in a few weeks, or even tomorrow, for that matter.  If you come to the conclusion that two words are thought of as the same, it’s still a good idea to occasionally check both search terms and compare the results to see if any changes have occurred.

MichaelRay.com

 

 

 

Other long-tail terms to consider

  • professional
  • best
  • top
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Pennsylvania
  • in Pittsburgh
  • near me

FoodPortfolio.com

 

 

 

Other long-tail terms to consider

  • professional
  • best
  • top
  • near me
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Pennsylvania
  • in Pittsburgh

PghPeople.com

 

 

Other long-tail terms to consider

  • professional
  • best
  • top
  • Pittsburgh, PA
  • Pennsylvania
  • in Pittsburgh
  • near me

Like Ive stated above, SEO for professional photographers is an ever-changing thing.  If I’ve missed something or you want to make any suggestions or comments, please feel free to contact me.  I’d welcome you input.

Michael Ray Photography
2820 Smallman St.
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
412-232-4444