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Wedding Photography SEO: 10 Tips
If you are a wedding photographer, then I am sure I don’t have to tell you how important your website is. You can get so many paying customers after they find your website. It is the most important advertising you can do. I am sure your photography is amazing. And if people see it, they will want to hire you. So the trick is to make sure people see it.
And that is where SEO comes in. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It has to do with specific things you can do to make sure your website shows up higher in search engines like Google. It is so important that you are doing everything possible to get your search engine rankings higher.
So with that in mind, we are going to give you 10 things to do that will make you show up higher in Google.
1. Do Your Keyword Research
Now, you may be wondering what I mean by keyword. I mean specific words and phrases people search for when they are looking for wedding photographers. You may know of some of the obvious keywords, search as, well, “wedding photographers”. But there are other ones you may not have thought of.
Consider using a product like Keysearch Starter to help you. This helps you find search terms you may not have thought of. They will give you keyword suggestion options. And when they do, they provide you with information on the search volume for these terms. You might find search terms your competitors don’t know about. You can start using these terms and showing up higher in Google and other search engines for these terms.
2. Write a Blog
Once you know of some good search terms you want to show up high for, you may not where to use them. So consider getting a blog.
I used to run a website for a dance studio. I would find search terms that a lot of people in the area were using but their competitors were not incorporating on their website. The dance studio kept a blog and wrote entire blog entries based on these search terms. It helped them jump to the top of Google.
Your website should have an option for starting a blog. If not, you could consider getting a WordPress website and then using this blog to link back to your website. Here is a non-technical guide to getting started on WordPress.
3. Improve Schema Markup
Now you may not know what I mean by Schema Markup. But what I mean is, you can try to improve the snippets that you see appear on search engines. This has been shown to increase click-through rates by up to 30%. The more people you get on your website, the higher your ranking on search engines will be. Because search engines do like to rank websites that get a lot of hits high.
For a more in-depth look at Schema Markup, check out Kinsta’s Schema Markup Guide.
4. Get a Faster Web Host
Did you know that search engines like Google penalize you if your website is slow? That means if your competitors have a faster website than you, then most likely their website will have a higher ranking. And I know you don’t want that!
So, I recommend you switch web hosts. If you run a WordPress website, a good web host to switch to would be Kinsta (remember how I just mentioned Kinsta? It’s my webhost, by the way) and WP Engine. They are great web hosts for WordPress websites. Your website can get blazing fast speeds with one of these website hosts.
If you run a website that isn’t WordPress, consider choosing SiteGround or A2 Hosting. They are known for their fast upload times.
5. Make Sure Your Website is HTTPS
Look at your website address. Does it have HTTPS or HTTP in front of it? If it is HTTP, you need to get HTTPS. First of all, you want it for security reasons. HTTPS helps prevent intruders from tampering with your website. Having HTTPS helps protect your website from malicious attackers.
But there is another reason to get HTTPS. Because search engines like Google view HTTPS-websites as safer, they rank them higher.
So you are going to need to get an SSL certificate so your website will have “https” instead of “http”. You can get that by clicking here.
6. Get High-Quality Backlinks
So another approach you can take to improve your ranking in Google is to get more backlinks. What I mean by that is when a website that is considered high-quality links back to your website.
Now, what would be a high-quality link? Well, that would come from a website that has a lot of visitors. It could also be from a website that is in your field. Since you are a wedding photographer, it would be great if websites that had to do with weddings or photographers linked to you. Or a website for businesses in your area.
Now, how do you get htis? Well you can reach out to websites and ask them. Naturally, a lot of them either won’t answer you or will say no. Which is fine. It is important not to let this deter you or make you think this is somehow a reflection of the quality of your work. There are a variety of reasons for them to say no, and you shouldn’t waste your time with that. All the Nos can be worth it for one Yes.
But if you don’t want to go through that, you could use a company like LinkFool to help you.
7. Make Sure Search Engines Can Index Your Pages
So, here’s the thing. You can do so many things on this list. But search engines can’t index and rank your pages if they can’t find them. So to make sure this doesn’t happen, make sure you submit an XML sitemap to search engines. Also, make sure that your robots.txt file isn’t blocking crawlers from pages you want to rank on search engines.
8. Continually Track Your Rankings
When you start working on all these tips, you are going to want to keep track of your rankings. You will want to see if what you are doing works. And you will want to see areas where you can improve.
One way to do that is with Local Search Rank Checker. They give you everything you will need to track and analyze your local rankings. You can track your Google and Bing rankings or Google Mobile rankings. You can get reports on rankings at a city or a postal code level.
And you can see how you are doing against your competitor. You can see rankings from your city, zip code, or town. It’s important to see how you are doing versus your competitors so you figure out how you can improve!
And that’s not all. They will also identify your website’s best and worst keyword groups. So this can help you in a lot of ways. Click here to get started. They even offer a free trial!
9. Get SEO 101 For Photographers
Want more specific help? Consider getting SEO 101 For Photographers. It’s a PDF download designed specifically for photographers. They give you a lot of tips to help your SEO strategy. And again, since it is for photographers, it is all very specific to you and your business.
10. Take an SEO MasterClass
Want additional help? How about an SEO Master Class? The SEO Masterclass by BlackBrick Training gives you 20 videos, over 10 different sections, and over 5 hours of content. There are even quizzes to help you see how you’re doing.
And you can get it on sale right now, too. It is normally $99, but you can get it right now for $19 (yes you read that right – it is on sale with a discount of $80!) if you click here.
