SEO can be extremely overwhelming, and many times it’s hard to know where to start. I put together this blog to breakdown the basics of SEO for you as a photographer. Of course, there are tons of experts that can get into the nitty-gritty of SEO, but I wanted to provide simple and easy to digest information and take some of the stress of trying to figure it all out.

The CLIENT

!!This is the most important part!!

• Who is your “ideal client”? (3 max)

You hear this a lot in marketing, but the thing is, it’s really something you have to look at! You also have to come to terms with the fact that your “ideal client” might not be YOU! What does that mean? Well, your ideal client might not think the way you do.

You have to try to get into a different mind space, and really think about how your client would search for you. If you’re having problems with that, try taking your favorite client out to coffee and pick their brain, or even a friend you can bounce ideas off of.

Ask yourself:

• Where are they searching for(city)? EX: Monterey, Salinas
• What are they searching for (exact words)? EX: wedding photographer, engagement photographer
• How are they searching? EX: Google, Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook

You may provide more than 3 types of photography and have more than 3 ideal clients you want to target but limiting them to 3 or even 2 to start is best. You want to make headway in one area before moving on to the next because if you spread your SEO effort over too many things you probably won’t see any return and you’ll burn yourself out.

BLOGS

A blog is still incredibly important for SEO. You may say “but I don’t ever read blogs! Why would I write one!?!” And that’s totally true-most people don’t read blogs…but google does!

Google wants to see websites with lots of pages that have lots of “good” information. Each blog post is considered an additional page of your website. This gives you the opportunity to add images with tags, keyword text, links to other external websites (which google also likes) and can be a great way to provide information to your clients.

*Tip: many times, your image galleries on your website are not “readable” by google, so blogging is the only way to get your images to show up in google search results.

Blog Ideas: Client Wardrobe Tips, Favorite Session Locations, Weddings (link vendors)-individual couples or by theme (favorite rings, favorite groom suites, favorite wedding dresses, favorite cakes), How to prepare for a session

*Tip: if a client ever asked you a question about something, you should make a blog post for it

Blog Titles: It’s important to title your blogs with the keywords you are trying to show up for. EX: Monterey Wedding Photographer- The Smiths, Monterey Wedding Photographer- The Perry House

If you have a beautiful session but still can’t think of anything to write about it’s ok. Post the blog anyways without any text. A blog with images is better than no blog at all.

TAGS

There are different types of tags, but basically, they offer more information about your website to search engines so they can display your website for relevant search queries (when people type something into google).

*Tip: My overall rule for tags is FILL IT IN! If there is a place on the backend of your website to fill in any kind of tag or keyword-do it! Even if you’re not sure if you’re doing it exactly right it’s better to have information there than nothing.

ALT TEXT– is a description of the image (VERY IMPORTANT). This is where Google pulls a lot of the information. 

IMAGE NAME– The naming convention of your image file. Do NOT do IMG_2294.JPG

Instead name your image relevant to your webpage information Monterey-Beach-Wedding.jpg Ideally you should vary your image names, but this can be tedious and it’s better to just batch rename them then to not rename than at all.

PAGE TITLE (Title Tag)- Browsers will display this at the top of the window or tab. This also shows up as the first line when you come up in a google search. Don’t include your business name. Do not duplicate page titles. Put most relevant words at the beginning of the title. EX: Monterey Wedding Photographer, Engagement Photography Gallery