How To Rank In Google Search As A Local Photography Business

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rank-in-google-600x362 How To Rank In Google Search As A Local Photography Business Business Tips

My Story:

I knew absolutely nothing about marketing a photography business when I met my husband four years ago. A starving artist, I was living off of what little college scholarships I could get and hoping for the best in my schooling, so I could someday live off of my photography. The few photo sessions I did were for next to nothing, almost always for free and rarely enough to cover gas. I was desperate to become self-sufficient in photography, and I didn’t know where to start.

Enter into the picture a marketing expert. Having worked for Ford, the US Defense, Sam’s Club, countless “As Seen On TV” companies, and many others, his thirty years smashed my two years into the wall and bashed them into pieces. When he first hired me (our relationship started out professional), he also promised to help me with my photography. “You need a website,” he said, “Something to show off your work to potential clients.”  My Flickr and measly Weebly account weren’t enough.

flickr How To Rank In Google Search As A Local Photography Business Business Tips

Having a Photo Business is About More Than Photography:

Professional veteran photographers know that shooting is only half the battle. It doesn’t matter how well you are behind a camera, or how great your photos look after post processing – you have to be able to get new clients, keep older clients, and sell to clients. A shy personality and inability to talk to people face to face will get you nowhere.  So how do we get these clients without spending hours upon hours out in the field searching for people who want our niche: local google search marketing!

Google Search:

The next conversation with my now-husband went like this: “You want your business to be Jenna Beth Photography. Type that into Google. What do you see?” I do the search, and find a mix of myself and a California wedding photographer. I show up, so what’s his point? “If you lived in Las Vegas, and you were looking for a photographer, would you be able to look up someone you don’t know?” Okay, I get it. People can’t type in Jenna Beth Photography if they don’t know my name. So how does he expect me to be found in Google? “Think like the customer. What do you type into Google when you are looking for a local business?” Well, usually I type in the business name and the city, or vice versa.

“That’s the key. That’s what your customers are searching for. That’s where you want to be found.”

And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The young lady found her calling with her new keyword, ranked number one in Google, and booked many new clients, to live happily ever after in her home studio.

googlerank How To Rank In Google Search As A Local Photography Business Business Tips

How You Can Rank Better On Google:

Now, let’s get serious. You need to know what I’m talking about because 99.9% of you aren’t married to veteran marketers.  Local search marketing is the term for a search within a specified area and works everywhere around the world. The cities will change, the niches will change, and the arrangement of words may change, but it will always be the same concept. Customers are out there looking for you, but they aren’t looking for “you” – just your niche, and a glimpse at who is there.

A checklist for photographers:

  • Does your fan page list clearly where you are located? It should.
  • Does the About Me on your website talk about your studio address or the cities you do on-location portraits in? It should.
  • Does the URL to your website even give a hint about who you are or what you do? It should.

Put your ego aside. You are not Target or Sam’s Club – where the brands are big enough that we know Target.com doesn’t sell targets, and samsclub.com isn’t a club for people named Sam.  In the big picture, you’re a small studio and are not well known enough that you can start branding it in the hopes that people will find it, because most of the time, they won’t. And, you can brag on about how you are booked to the max and you have so many clients, but you have no idea how much of the market you are missing when you are not branding yourself to match local search.

It took me a couple of years to brand myself into what I wanted to do. And after a few years, I figured it out. Newborns had caught my eye, and they, along with babies and toddlers, were what I enjoyed the most. I did some keyword research (try Google’s keyword search tool if you don’t know where to start) and choose one with a decent amount of traffic coming to it locally. Newborn Photography Las Vegas is what I came up with.

professionalsite How To Rank In Google Search As A Local Photography Business Business Tips

 

Are you wondering “should I actually change the name of my business?”

Now, choosing this as your actual business name is up to you – but it is easier to do it that way when it comes to search engine optimization. Your URL and main keyword for all of your site and social media sites needs to be this set of words, but you can choose to incorporate it in another way besides as your business name.

There are many techniques for ranking yourself for your keyword, and the basic rule is to make sure you have lots of content, and that all of your social media is somehow linking back to your website. Flash does not SEO, and Google cannot read it, so if you have a flash website, I recommend using WordPress to find an HTML/CSS alternative. Try a little back linking if your budget allows it, and if you aren’t sure how to build your website, talk to a designer. You can be ranking in Google for the number one position, but if your web design isn’t up to par, clients won’t stay on the page and won’t book you. A domain registration costs less than ten dollars a year, and hosting is less than a cup of Starbucks coffee each month – so it’s up to you to decide how much that small cost means to branching out your business.

newborngooglerank How To Rank In Google Search As A Local Photography Business Business Tips

For almost six months I have been teetering between position one and position four for my keyword “newborn photography Las Vegas”. I’m also number one for Photo Studio Vegas, as my main portrait keyword. I’ve only stayed up there because I work on my SEO and keep up content and social media. And I am happy about it, especially when I get one of those nice emails from a potential client that says, “Sent via contact form on NewbornPhotographyLasVegas.com.”

Jenna Schwartz is a boutique newborn and child photographer in Henderson, outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. She also markets for local search with clients, optimizing hundreds of sites a month for organic search results with local search marketing, as well as website creation and design, social media optimization, social media campaigns and management, sales page creation and more.

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  1. paul on October 2, 2013 at 11:18 am

    I read this article only because I read most every email I receive from mcp. I have no interest in newborn or studio photography but thought I still might learn something for my business as a Realtor. And, being a neighbor of yours (I live in Anthem, manage a property on Tedesca) I was that much more interested. So thank you. And when we have yet another grandchild born I will give you a call.

    • MCP Guest Writer on October 2, 2013 at 3:13 pm

      Paul,Thank you for your comment! I really do appreciate the gesture. Yes you can apply these to any business as well! the rules apply to everyone. I wish you luck in your own local search marketing.

  2. Nikki Kutz on October 2, 2013 at 2:22 pm

    I’ve been working on getting my website higher in the search for Fort Hood Killeen photographer. I am now on page 2! I will get there I’m a very new business. Thanks for the post! =]

  3. Chris on October 2, 2013 at 4:39 pm

    Great post but what do you do if you don’t have a studio or you shoot on location? Any recommendations?

    • Jenna on October 4, 2013 at 3:51 pm

      Hi Chris,You can still rank your site. You won’t put in an address in Google Maps (which is where it’s pulling mine from). You also won’t list one on your site. But the rest of the rules still apply, and it’ll rank fine even without an address.When I first started out, I ranked without an address because I shot on location too. I also rank online companies this way who specialize towards certain cities, but don’t have an actual office.~Jenna

  4. Jeanine on October 2, 2013 at 5:21 pm

    Thanks! I’m working on SEO for my new site right now so this is very timely information for me.

  5. Doug on October 3, 2013 at 12:21 pm

    But how and where do I actually go into the Google search engines and put in my key words?

    • Jenna on October 4, 2013 at 3:54 pm

      Hi Doug,This is for the actual search part, where you go to Google.com and you search for something. That’s where your potential customers are going to search for you.You will have to apply these to your website. Some easy ways to do this are:- Using your keywords in your site URL- Using your keywords in your site description- Writing blog posts that use these keywords- Alt tagging your images with these keywords- If you use WordPress, downloading SEO plugins where you can input these keywords- Writing Tweets on Twitter or statuses on FB that link back to your website and that use these keywordsAnywhere on your site you are writing copy or tagging things or inputting tags or keywords, you can use the keyword you select there, and it will all help. Writing a lot of copy (blog posts every other day, for instance) also helps get you ranked faster.~Jenna

  6. Heather on October 3, 2013 at 6:50 pm

    This is a great starting point for photographers. I actually work in internet marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) and I think it is important to point out that showing up in the top search results of Google takes more than a good name. Many factors go into how your website will appear in search results. Businesses who have properly setup Google+ and map listings will show higher than those who haven’t. Especially for locally-based businesses like photography services! The number of backlinks to your website (i.e. other websites putting links to your site on theirs) and links from social media platforms like Facebook and Pinterest, also factor into your website ranking high in Google. It’s great that your business ranks really well in search results! It shows that you have a loyal audience of people talking about you and linking to your blog content! Kudos!

    • Jenna on October 4, 2013 at 3:56 pm

      Thank you Heather! I work with my husband to run his internet marketing business during my free day hours. We do lots of those same things for clients, like back links, links with social media, and blogging. Every little but helps. About two years ago I switched over to focusing on mostly locally based business, and it’s really great working with them and watching how excited they get when they rank for their local niche.~Jenna

  7. Alexander on October 25, 2013 at 4:43 pm

    Thank you Heather. I set up my webspace a few weeks ago and I found that it’s a hard work to get even noticed by google. I do all the SEO stuff but it’s no easy mission to accomplish.Thanks for your tippsAlexander

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