Top SEO Hacks For Your Wedding Photography Site

These days, businesses need to have a strong online presence. When it comes to being a wedding photographer, it’s even more important, because having a website is a way of showing off what you’re good at–taking pictures. Whether you’re best at taking pictures of dancing bridesmaids, dresses designed by companies like Azazie, or even dog-themed weddings, you’ll get lots of new customers online. Sure, word of mouth is still one of the best ways to get customers, and brides will recommend your services to other brides. But having a great wedding photography site is essential these days.

And one of the most important elements of your site being successful is its SEO. After all, if your site doesn’t show up in the first few searches for your services, customers won’t find out about how great you are as a photographer. So if you want to amp up your SEO, here’s how.

1. Use Local SEO 

Local SEO is one of the Internet’s best-kept secrets, and if you’re working for many couples getting married locally, it’s going to revolutionize your business. Local SEO is a way for people searching for services specifically where you’re based to find you. So if you have a registered address for your business online–even if it’s your home–you can pop up as a nearby option for interested customers.

According to BrightLocal, using Local SEO “helps businesses promote their products and services to local customers at the exact time they’re looking for them. Local SEO uses a variety of strategies – getting your site ranked on search engines like Google, business directories such as Yelp, Superpages, Foursquare, Yellowbook, Google My Business listing, Bing Places for Business page, localized content on your website, online reviews and other strategies.”

It’s amazingly effective. 50 percent of consumers who ran a local search on their smartphone visited one of the stores they found that very day, and as a business leader, you know how important it is for your business to meet these couples face-to-face.

2. Understand your customers

Understanding your customers isn’t just about knowing what kind of photography is in these days anymore. Or what they mean when they tell you they want a wedding that’s somehow both classic and modern at the same time. Now, you have to understand them on an analytical level, so that you can create all your site’s content thinking of them. That’s why you have to create a detailed buyer persona.

According to HubSpot, “A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers. When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behavior patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed you are, the better…A detailed buyer persona will help you determine where to focus your time, guide product development, and allow for alignment across the organization.”

Additionally, having buyer personas will help you not only understand how to design your site and tailor what pictures you choose to put in your portfolio, but it will also help you with the blog portion of your site. You’ll know what keywords to use for posts, and how long to make them, which will draw in more people. After all, 53 percent of marketers consider content to be of great importance–so if you don’t have a blog already, it’s time to start.

3. Make your site mobile-friendly

Finally, your site needs to be mobile-friendly. Because really, when was the last time you looked anything up on your laptop while you were at a party or coffee shop? The fact is, we’re using our phones all the time now–so much so that the average American consumer is spending five hours a day on their mobile devices. So if your site isn’t visible on a phone, then you aren’t going to have much success with customers. They need to be able to swipe through your pictures and zoom in to see the beautiful details you capture.

For that same reason, you need to be active on social media. Especially Instagram and Pinterest, where many brides-to-be spend their time looking at wedding trends and dress styles. To learn more about how to use social media for your business, check out these tips from BufferApp.

By using these hacks, your SEO will dramatically improve and attract more traffic to your site, which means way more success for your wedding photography business. What other SEO hacks do you use for your business, and which ones do you think are most successful?