Rangefinder - September 2014

5GET GOOGLE REVIEWS Photography websites ranking at the top of the maps listings and search results have Google Reviews. You must be signed up with a Google Plus account personal profile as well as a profile for your business in order to be reviewed.

(In Google Plus, there’s an area of your profile where you can list all of your local information, so don’t miss out on adding all of your local details.)

Google Reviews is the first place you should be asking your clients for reviews, regardless of the kind of photography you do. You need this in order to be ranked locally. Once your business is listed with Google and shows up in Maps, you should have a goal of at least a review a week in the beginning. It is recommended that you get at least five Google Reviews, so email past clients now! Ask customers to Google you, and where it says “X” amount of Google reviews, they will see the option “write a review.” There is also an option to write a review in Maps.

Bonus Tip: If you have a retail space or you do in-person sales at home, have a sign that says “Review My Business on Google,” giving customers instructions on how to do it. Another tip: Somewhere on your blog and website, have “ Follow Me on Google Plus” with a link to your Google Plus Business page. Google changes so fast that while I was writing this article, it launched a new area for businesses called “Google My Business.” Google also just mailed me a sticker sign to add to my storefront, which says “ Review Us on Google.”

6 LINK AND GET LINKS TO LOCAL BUSINESSES

As photographers, we would all love
to be featured on those amazing, huge
wedding or lifestyle blogs—which, after
all, can be great for SEO. Some areas
not to ignore, though, are smaller blogs,
business websites and association web-
sites. This is especially true if they are
local businesses because when business-
es link to each other, they all become
stronger in their local online presence.

Local businesses always need online marketing help, so be an expert for them, too. In return they can help you by linking to your business, interviewing you on their blog and sharing your business on their social media platforms.

This is great for wedding photographers wanting to work with new wedding venues—call or email the venue saying you are featuring it on your blog as a preferred venue, then stop by to take some images for your blog post. Once you blog about that venue, you then tweet at them. I have a saying that if you promote someone online, they can’t ignore you—and it works!

Bonus Tip: If you do any work for a community college or university, take pictures for an agency related to local government or do a shoot for a nonprofit organization, and try to get them to link to your work! Most .edu, .gov and .org web addresses have a very high rank authority, and having a link from one of them is like finding a golden egg.

7 BLOG ABOUT YOUR LOCATION

Photographers always say they don’t know what to blog about. One way to cure that is to blog about your local community.

Some ideas:

If you’re a portrait photographer focusing
mostly on kids, then blog about things that
parents—your big target audience—care
about: what to do with their kids! This is
one of the most-searched topics in the New
York City area, for example. Blog topics
could be:
• Four things your kids can do in Town A
• The secret to entertaining your
child in City B
• What to do with your child in
the summer
• How to plan back to school
Do a calendar round-up post of events
in your area once a month, and then share
that post to social media using the city’s
hashtag.

Shoot a photo series about your city, such as “ 100 Things I Love About Philadelphia,” and then do a blog post about it. Once blogged, tweet it with a hashtag that includes your location. This is a creative way to get in front of your audience, while telling Google you are affiliated with City A and offering useful information for folks searching for things to do in that area so you become a trusted source.