There are several factors that, when done correctly, will increase your search engine rankings for your top keywords within your desired geographic area.
Before we proceed, it’s important to realize that if you really want to increase your income with stronger search engine rankings, you simply need to follow the steps laid out in the next few weeks. These are the lessons we will cover over the next month:
- Setting the right keywords
- Optimizing your website for strong search engine rankings
- How to position yourself strongly in the exact geographic area you want to target
- How to use social media to drive your ranking through the roof
It all starts with the right keywords for each page of your website. Please note that we are mainly talking about the pages of your website that are relevant to your services. It is also very important to note that you must have a website page for each of the niches you serve.
If you have a website with nothing more than a photo gallery, you are probably not ranking well unless your website has been established for many years. Even if you have a service page for many niches, this simply won’t give you the authority that it could if done correctly.
We’ll review photographers who have a niche and how to manage that page in a moment. First, I want to refer to those who handle more than one niche.
The example below can be used for any number of niches within the photography industry. Let’s say you service the following:
- family portraits
- Wedding
- events
I realize some photographers will shoot just about anything, but it’s important that your website focuses on your top 3-6 niches.
Each of the above should have a separate web page. While it’s fine to have a photo gallery, we recommend that you have your photo galleries on each of your niche pages. Show your family portrait photos on that page, weddings on that page, and events on that page.
Your prospects will stay on your pages longer and you will have much more authority from Google and the other search engines.
Now is the time to do your keyword research. If you don’t have access to Google Keyword Planner within Google Ads, you may want to set up your account.
Just go to https://ads.google.com/ and click start now. You don’t have to spend money on Google ads to simply start your account.
Once you’ve set up your account, go to Tools and Keyword Planner.
Now click discover new keywords and type in your main keyword. In this case, we will put “family portrait”.
Before proceeding, your keywords will be placed on every page of your website if they are not already there. You will also use these keywords in any type of marketing or posting you do.
Note that whenever possible you want to add photography to your keyword if it’s not already there. There is a big difference between wedding and wedding photography, or event and event photography.
Looking at the keyword planner, I would choose the following. Keep in mind that you want a minimum of 8 and up to 15 keywords for each web page or niche.
Please note that I will be covering how to target your local geographic area in greater detail with our Facebook Live event taking place on Thursdays. We will be recording the event.
For now, if you’re not on page 1 for your top keywords (as mentioned above) in your primary geographic area, you need to determine which geographic area(s) you want to target. Don’t try to bite too hard with your geographic area. I’ll take a specific geographic area to give you an example. Feel free to open Google Maps and see what I’m talking about.
If we look at the suburbs of New York, we have a fairly large city called Yonkers, NY, with a population of 202,000. Let’s say you want to go to Westchester County, which is the county that Yonkers is in. If you’re not on page 1 for Yonkers, you need to head to that area first. In fact, if you’re looking for Westchester County, you have to use Yonkers and another like Scarsdale or White Plains before trying to get the whole county.
I’ll show you how to use geographic in a moment, let’s first choose the keywords for your family portrait page:
- family portraits
- family photography
- family portrait photography
- family photography near me
- Family photos
- professional family photography
- Family photography studio near me (if you have one)
- Family photos
Now you place your geographic areas. We will use three of them.
- yonkers new york
- White Plains New York
- Westchester County New York
Many times you as a photographer can think of other keywords that people are using to find your services.
In your coding you will find where to place your keywords. There are so many templates that it would be impossible for me to show you all of them.
Below is an example of the format of your keywords. Most templates allow you to place your keywords in the coding. You’ll see that we add your main geographic area to the main keyword and your main three or four geographic areas at the end.
We’ll get into descriptions, titles, and alternate tags that will make a difference in the world in our optimization lesson. By now, you should have a much better understanding of how to set up your web pages and the keywords within each page.
The training we offer to photographers is priceless. We offer tools, training, and resources that will enable very consistent and strong growth for your business.