SEO FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION FOR PHOTOGRAPHY

WEBSITES

GEORGIE HOPE
 Copyright © Jan 2021 Georgie Hope All rights reserved.
Published by: Large Hope

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author,
except for the use of “brief” quotations in a book review and certain other non-commercial uses
permitted by copyright law.

For permission requests, contact the publisher, at the link below.

https://www.largehope.com/ebook-contact-us/

Created with Vellum

 CONTENTS

Introduction
Who is This Book Useful For?
Why am I Giving You My Secrets and Strategy?
What are the Expected Results?
Free Gift
SEO Excel (Google Sheets) Checklist
Important Notes:

Fifth Check – Theme Speed and Hosting Speed

First Check - Is this a Brand New Website or a Redesign?
Second Check - Has the Domain Name Been Used in the Past?
Third Check – Does the Domain Name Help SEO?
Fourth Check – Does Hosting Provide an SSL Certificate?
Fifth Check – Theme Speed and Hosting Speed

Chapter 2. Tracking Traffic & Initial Keyword Research

Google Analytics
Google Search Console
Bing Webmaster Tools
Other Webmaster Tools
Keyword Research

Chapter 3. Important On-Site SEO Settings

Untitled
a. SEO Plugins
b. Other Website Settings
c. Blog Design
d. 404 Pages

Chapter 4. Other Critical Website Areas

a. Contact Us Page
b. Footer Widgets
d. Sidebar and Calls to Action
e. HTML Sitemap

Chapter 5. URL Structure

Examples
Example 1 – provides one service in one main fixed location
Example 2 – provides many services in one main fixed location
 Example 3 - provides one service in many locations that you travel to
Example 4 – provides many services in many locations travelled to
Layout of Navigation

Chapter 6. On-page SEO for Pages, Blog Posts, Products, Recipes, etc
a. Setting up SEO Plugins
b. Content Writing
c. Content Check
d. On-page Optimisation Overview
i. Example Home Page
ii. Example Service Page
iii. Example Blog Post
iv. Product Optimisation
e. Theme Pages and Images

Chapter 7. Live Site Checks

a. Live Indexing – Critical Check
b. Live Site Speed
c. Https and Secure Sites
d. URL Redirects
e. Final Copy Check
f. Double Check Theme Pages, Posts and Media Library
g. Check for Dodgy Site Pages

Chapter 8. Claim the Business Profiles

A. Maps
B. Relevant Social Media Sites
C. Business Directories

Chapter 9. Is Ongoing SEO Needed? Three Step Test

Three Steps to Work Out Whether You Need Ongoing SEO
ONGOING SEO Plan for Photography Websites
Further Help
Tools I Use
Glossary of Terms
Contact the Author
Connect with the Author
Free Books

SEO Excel Checklist

Review This Book
Other Books by This Author
 INTRODUCTION

This book runs through everything I do as an SEO (search engine

optimisation) consultant before a website is launched. I only get this
opportunity occasionally. In most cases, my clients come to me once their
website is already live for a few months or years. So if your photography
website is already live you can still use this book to check everything and
make changes to improve your SEO just like I normally do.
If all these steps are implemented before a website is launched, the SEO
results will be much faster, helping businesses get leads as quickly as
possible. If the website is already live you will still be able to implement
most of this. Although in some cases you will not want to make the changes
I suggest as it could harm your website. I will let you know when that is the
case.
 WHO IS THIS BOOK USEFUL FOR?

This eBook is mostly written for web developers who are SEO beginners .
It could be used by photographers with the help of a web developer
depending on your technical ability.

As a web developer you may already have the technical knowledge to add
SEO elements to a website. However, you are probably missing the real-
world experience of what actually works in practice.

Photographers and their staff could use this eBook with the help of their
web developer if required to implement SEO. However, they may find my
SEO Course for Beginners eBook designed specifically for business owners
is a better starting point. Then use chapters three to five and eight of this
book that are photography industry specific. See all my books here .
This eBook is designed to help rank photography websites on the first page
of Google. It is a step-by-step guide specifically for local SEO. Local SEO
is for businesses that want to attract people from their local area. That is,
they want to be found when potential customers type in keywords
containing locations, such as photographer London, wedding photographer
Sydney, etc.

Web developers can use this guide to offer SEO as an extra service. Setting
up onsite SEO may take 10-30 hours depending on the complexity of the
website. No one wants to do that much work for free!
 WHY AM I GIVING YOU MY SECRETS AND
STRATEGY?

I Believe Hidden Knowledge is Wasted Knowledge

“When fear exists, critical knowledge is lost and serious problems remain
hidden.”
- Nancy Dixon

If my fear of not being a good enough writer stops me from sharing what I
know then my knowledge is lost.
Hi, I’m Georgie Hope and I have been ranking local business websites for
10 years. Through research, testing, trial and error, I have discovered
techniques that work time and time again.
I started SEO and web design from my bedroom back in 2009. I quickly
realised that SEO is what I loved and decided to specialise in that.

My background was in science/nutrition, sales repping and mortgage

broking. I did an internet marketing course in 2009 at the age of 39 and
never looked back.
SEO makes a huge difference in my clients’ lives. It allows them to build a
business they love, so they can support their families, hire staff and get
more involved in their communities.
I have always loved learning through reading books and via online courses.
I have a passion for education, so teaching thousands of people around the
world inspires me more than building a large SEO agency. That’s why I am
giving you everything I know!
 WHAT ARE THE EXPECTED RESULTS?

For some websites, implementing everything in this book will get the
website to the first page of Google in one to four months. Other websites
might require ongoing SEO for four to 18 months to get a keyword onto the
first page of Google. It all depends on the competition for the keywords.

Think about it this way:

There are only 10 positions on the first page of Google. Only 5% of people
go past the first page. So to get leads, you need to get onto the first page of
Google.
If you’re a photographer and you want to rank for a location keyword like
“photographer toronto”, there will be more than 10 photographer competing
for that keyword. So on-page SEO will help to significantly improve the
rankings. But ongoing SEO of around $1,000-$2,000 per month (10-25
hours a month) will probably be required to get your website to the top of
the first page of Google.
However, within Toronto there are smaller locations, such as Wexford. If
the keyword “photographer wexford” is targeted, the website might rank in
a few months, provided there are less than 10 photographers targeting that
keyword.

Expected results therefore depend on competition

For businesses with less than 10 competitors for their location keywords:
Expect ranking changes and increased leads in one to four months just by
implementing this foundational onsite SEO.

For businesses with more than 10 competitors for their location keywords:
Expect ranking changes and increased leads in four to 18 months by
implementing this foundational onsite SEO. They will also require ongoing
link acquisition (covered in the last chapter of this book).
 FREE GIFT

FREE Books
Get my SEO Migration Book for Free. If you ever get your website
redeveloped you will need this SEO migration book.
This book is designed to save business owners thousands of dollars in lost
business that can happen if the SEO is not transferred in a website redesign.

Get your Free Book

You’ll also get any relevant books for free in exchange for a review. You’ll
be notified about any new releases, giveaways, contests, cover reveals and
so much more.
 SEO EXCEL (GOOGLE SHEETS) CHECKLIST

To access the Free Google Sheets Checklist, go to the Checklist chapter

at the end of this book
 IMPORTANT NOTES:

1. From now on “Google and other search engines” will be referred to

as “Google”
2. WordPress is the most popular content management system (CMS)
used to build websites in the world, so I will use it to explain how to
do things. If you are not using WordPress, you can Google search
how to do the particular task in your system.
3. I have used .com and America in the examples but this checklist
works in any country that uses Google.
4. In the examples, I have made up the business names. However, the
locations are real places.

To access the Free Google Sheets Checklist, go to the Checklist chapter at

the end of this book
 FIFTH CHECK – THEME SPEED AND
HOSTING SPEED

The first check is a very critical step for development sites – it can have
severe negative impacts on SEO if not followed.

If you are lucky, the website will have a good domain name for SEO.
At the web development stage, you can change the domain name before the
website is built. However, if the website is already live and gets traffic from
Google it can be very risky to change the domain name.

In this chapter, I run through two checks that help you assess the domain
name. If the domain name is not helpful for SEO, you can think about
changing it with the help of an SEO experienced web developer.

The other critical thing you can control is the theme and hosting. This can
greatly affect the website speed. Many platforms have a number of themes
to choose from and WordPress has thousands. So, choose wisely.

We’ll now go into these five critical things in more detail.

 FIRST CHECK - IS THIS A BRAND NEW WEBSITE OR A
REDESIGN?

If the answer is no because you just want to do SEO on an already existing

live site then go to the second check.
If the answer is yes then read on.

When you are developing a website, it is very important to block it

from being indexed in Google.

When the new website goes live you want it to be the first time Google sees
the content.
Content is considered duplicate when it is the same on one webpage as
another. This can be on the same site or on different sites. If it is on two
different sites (like the development site and the real site) then Google
usually chooses the first site the content appears on as the original.

If it’s a brand new website on a new domain the development site will be
indexed first. So when the new site is set live in Google it will be seen as a
duplicate site to the development site.

Google will think the development site is the original and most important
site.

This means it could take a lot longer for the proper website to rank.
You want to make sure the development site is blocked from Google and
Google only sees the new site when it goes live on your actual domain.
If it’s a redesign and the development site and the real site are both live in
Google during development, both will be indexed. This creates a duplicate
site. Google might send people to the uncompleted development site
instead. The contact form may not work. It may have dummy content etc.
So you do not want this.

While the development site and the real site are both indexed in Google,
this could slow down the real website’s ability to rank by a few weeks
or even months.

Always make sure the whole development site is set to “NoIndex” during
development and then the site is set to index when set live.
If you are using WordPress go to:
Settings → Reading → Check “Discourage search engines from indexing
this site” is ticked.

If you are using another platform then do a Google search to find out how to
block search engines on that platform. Or use Google’s guidelines
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en
To check if the development site is indexed, go to Google and type in

site:yourdevsitename.com
Does anything come up? You want it to look like this below
(make sure no spaces between site: and domain).

If the development site is indexed but has not gone live:

1. Set the whole development site to noindex as explained previously.

2. Go to Google and type in site:yourdevsitename.com (as above) and
click on every URL that appears.
3. Go to search console URL removal tool
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals and request
removal of each URL.
4. Do not set the new site live until all the URLs are no longer indexed.
5. If you have to set the site live before this then make sure to shut
down the development site as soon as the real site goes live.

If the new site has already gone live and the development site is also still
indexed:

1. Shut the development site down so every page is a 404.

2. Go to Google and type in your development site URL for example
site:yourdevsitename.com (as above) and click on every URL that
appears.
 3. Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals and
request removal of each URL.
4. If for some reason you cannot shut it down, then set the
development site to “NoIndex” and do steps 2 and 3.

Key Takeaway Message

A development site should always be blocked with the “NoIndex” tag so the
pages do not get indexed. This helps to prevent duplicate content issues and
helps the new website rank faster.
 SECOND CHECK - HAS THE DOMAIN NAME BEEN
USED IN THE PAST?

If you check the history of the domain name before you build the website,
you will avoid possible headaches later on when the site is completed. If the
site is already live you can check to see if there has been other owners.

The general rules that apply are:

1. The domain name has never been used before, or only by the current
owner - great news!
2. The domain name has been used previously - there could be issues.

If you don’t check and there is an issue, then the site may never rank on
Google or other search engines.

Here are the steps to check the domain for peace of mind and to avoid
issues.
Steps

1. Go to http://www.waybackmachine.org/
2. Enter the URL without https or http eg facebook.com
3. There will be three possibilities

Possibility 1

The current business owner has owned the domain name the whole time.
In this case, you need to find out from the business owner when they bought
the domain.
Is there a record of a website prior to the current business owner owning it?
Have they had previous websites on the domain name that have been
redeveloped?
Have they used SEO companies in the past?

If the answer is no to all these questions go straight to the “Second Check”

otherwise go to possibility 3
Possibility 2
The Wayback Machine may not find anything. This means the Wayback
Machine has never found a page for that site. This only happens if a site has
never been built on this domain or the site is so new that the wayback
machine does not have a record yet. Therefore, happy days and you can go
straight to the third check!
Possibility 3
There is history from the past, but no captures in the last few months or
years. This means someone built a website on this domain at some time in
the past, then they stopped paying for that domain and the site disappeared.
If this is not the case go straight to the “second check”.

In the image above, we see the last archive was March 2018. Nothing has
been captured since then. If there is no website on the current domain, we
can assume it was shut down around March 2018.
Now, this is where things get tricky or interesting.
This domain may have backlinks going to it that could:

harm
help, or
have no impact

on the new website with respect to SEO.

If the website was shut down 10 years ago, it is unlikely to help or harm.
But what if the last archive is three months ago and the business owner
bought the domain name four weeks ago? In this situation, there is more
chance that links going to the site could impact it.
How do you assess the domain and the links?
I created a video a few years ago that explains how to disavow links.
It will show you how to identify dodgy links and what you may need to do
about them.
Google should be able to identify these links and render them useless. But
there are studies to show that even recently, disavowing links can still help
some sites.
Watch the video here: https://youtu.be/M3FydQJcoHk

You can find backlinks by using programs like:

Google Search Console - free

https://search.google.com/search-console/about

Moz - some free searches

https://analytics.moz.com/pro/link-explorer/home
 SEMRush - some free searches

https://www.semrush.com/ - (affiliate link)

Ahrefs - 7-day trial for $7

https://ahrefs.com/

Linkody

https://linkody.com
These are the questions to ask yourself about the domain name and the
links you find

1. What is the Moz spam score of your domain? Ideally 1% or less.

See https://moz.com/products/pro/seo-toolbar
2. What is the spam score of sites that are linking to your domain?
Ideally 1% or less
3. What are the domain names of the sites linking to your domain?Are
they real sites that are relevant like local directories, other local
sites, and real blogs? Or are they horrible-looking sites, foreign
language sites, image scraper sites, or blogs that are not a real
business or magazine and cover multiple topics? Can you find the
whois data for the domain so you could email them to ask for links
to be removed?
4. What is the anchor text (the words attached to the link) on the
linking sites? Does it have keywords relevant to your client’s
business, along with generic terms like website, click here, the
domain name etc?Does it have anchor text that is irrelevant? For
example a link to a plumbers website with plumber in the anchor
text. Or does the anchor text say “massage” or other words unrelated
to plumbing.
5. What country are most of the linking sites hosted in? You want the
highest per cent to be your country.
Any of the above factors could be a risk.
You can never fully know if the good factors will help or if the bad factors
will harm.
You can only take an educated guess.
If you discover either of the below and this is a brand new website that has
not gone live then I recommend changing the domain name.

Over 20% of links from horrible-looking sites, foreign language

sites, image scraper sites, or blogs that are not a real business or
magazine and cover multiple topics.
Over 20% irrelevant anchor text. Many times, the anchor text is the
domain name, but if it is “fancy blue dress” and your site is about
plumbing, that will not help.

Key Takeaway Message

A previously used domain could have links going to it that might harm
current and future SEO.
If this is a brand new site for this business (not a redesign) you will need to
decide if it is worth the risk. You could change the domain name before the
site goes live.
If the site has been live for years but there is evidence it was owned by
someone else in the past make sure to check the links. There are things you
can do to try and remove old links. Do not change the domain name without
the help of a web developer and specialist SEO consultant
 THIRD CHECK – DOES THE DOMAIN NAME HELP SEO?

If your site is already live do not change the domain name without the
help of a web developer and specialist SEO consultant.
However, if this is a brand new website and the domain name has just
been bought, you have an opportunity to consider changing it.

We want to make things easy for Google. Having a domain name that helps
Google understand what the business does will mean faster SEO results.
If the business owner is in a competitive niche (10 competitors or more in
their location), it is even more important. Having a good domain name will
reduce the number of backlinks needed and therefore be more cost-
effective.
In this section, I will cover the information you need to help choose a
domain name that brings faster and more cost-effective SEO results.
What kind of domain name helps SEO?
Firstly, let's look at what doesn’t help local SEO for photography websites.
1. Just having a brand name.
2. A keyword that is too broad.
3. A keyword that is too specific if it limits the photographers future
planned expansion.
4. Having the owner’s name in the domain if they want to sell the business
later.
5. Using .com if the business is outside the US.

1. Just a brand name

Imagine the domain is a brand name without any relevant photography
keywords, such as boomboom.com .
It will require a lot more SEO work to rank for the photography keywords
people search for.
WHY?
If you hear “Boom Boom”, it doesn’t mean anything to you. So it will not
mean anything to Google either.
This may be great for a huge international company that wants to be like
“Virgin” or “Apple”.
But we are trying to help a local business, with a relatively small budget,
that provides services and maybe a few products to the local area.
What you ideally want is at least one keyword in the domain that is highly
relevant to their industry or the business owner’s location.
For example, if the domain name is boomphotography.com or
boomphotographymiami.com, you know immediately what the business
is, what it does, and possibly where it is located. Therefore so does Google.

2. Keyword in the domain name that is too broad

If a keyword is very broad and covers a lot of topics there will be many
people searching for it. However, there will also be a lot of competition.
For example, the word “productions” is very broad.
A business may only provide wedding photography but call itself
boomproductions.com .
You can guess it’s probably in the creative industries, but you don’t know
that it provides photography.
No one searches for productions when they are looking for photography. If
there is a plan to expand and provide other kinds of photography and video
and movie production services then this would be a great domain name.
However if you only ever want to do wedding photography, it would be
better if the domain name had the word photography in it, such as
boomphotography.com.

3. A keyword that is too specific

If the domain name is too specific it might limit the photographers’ future
expansion or relocation.
For example, if the domain name has a location or specific type of
photography in it the business will be limited. For example
portraitphotographymiami.com, is great if the plan is to only ever do
portraits and to stay in Miami forever.
But if the business expands to cover other cities in Florida, then the name is
too specific. Maybe there is a decision to relocate to New York. The domain
name would no longer be relevant or helpful if it has Miami in it. However,
something like plumphotography.com would avoid these issues.
Or if the business provides one kind of service like portrait photography
and uses portraitphotographymiami.com, but then expands to cover a
range of other photography such as wedding, landscape, glamour etc, then
plumphotography.com would be a better option. Or
plumphotographymiami.com if the plan is to always live in Miami.

4. Owner’s name in the domain name

It is very common for photographers to put their own name as the business
name. Having the owner’s name in the domain name could make it harder
to sell the business later on. Or make it less valuable.
It depends on what their name is.
Is it a generic word, such as cherryphotography.com ?
Or is it something like billsmithphotography.com?
If you have a website that is getting traffic from Google and leads. If you
have social media accounts. Then you have the ability to sell this on
websites such as Flippa.com .
If the domain has the photographers name it can still be sold. But the buyer
will have to spend money to change the domain name, transfer the SEO and
modify the whole site. So a generic name with the same traffic could sell
for many thousands more.

5. Using the wrong country code

Domains ending in .com are ideal if the business is in the United States
and/or covers the whole world.
If the domain name has a country extension, it will help Google rank you
higher in that country.
For example:
Great Britain .co.uk
Australia .com.au
Canada .ca
Brazil .com.br
India .co.in
New Zealand .co.nz
South Africa .co.za

In summary, things to avoid for a local business domain name are:

1. Just having a brand name.
2. Choosing a keyword that is too competitive or broad. It won’t help SEO.
3. Choosing a keyword that is too specific if it limits the business owner’s
future planned expansion.
4. Having the owner’s name in the domain if they want to sell the business
later.
5. Using .com if the business is outside the US.
Remember we are talking about businesses that want to attract clients from
their local area. So these rules may not or will not apply to online stores, big
brands, blogs etc.

Now let’s look at what does help SEO.

Firstly, you need to ask some important questions:

What is the main service that makes money?

Where is the main service location?
What other services are provided and are they for new or current
clients?
What other locations are an acceptable distance to travel to?
Will services and/or locations expand in the future?
What country is the business located?
Are people searching for the photographers name?

Here’s a simple example for a wedding photographer where:

The main service is wedding photography.

The main location is San Francisco, California
They also offer portrait photography, and event photography but
only want to market weddings.
They will go to San Jose and other locations up to 2 hours away .
They would prefer to get all their work from San Francisco.
The country is the United States.
The photographer is called Bill Smith

The domain could be:

1. billsmithphotography.com
If Bill Smith is an established photographer that people search for online
then using his name could be the best option. The money made now due to
the name and brand recognition could outway any loss made in selling the
business in the future.

2. sanfranciscoweddingphotography.com
A keyword rich domain could be very helpful if the photographer is new
and has no brand recognition with their name. Provided they only want to
do weddings and want to stay in San Francisco forever.
The photographers name can still be their business name. The website can
have;
“San Francisco Wedding Photography” with Bill Smith

3. inspiredweddingphotography.com
A generic word like “inspired”, “cherry”, “plum”, “bloom”, “sparkle”, etc
with keywords can be good if they have no name recognition and are not
sure about living in San Francisco forever.
In this case “Inspired Wedding Photography” would also be the business
name. On the website you can always have;
“Inspired Wedding Photography” with Bill Smith
If they would like to expand and hire more photographers and provide other
services it could be:
plumphotography.com or sanfranciscophotography.com
Depending on the factors discussed.
If they were not based in the US, they might choose:
plumphotography.co.uk for the United Kingdom, or
plumphotography.com.au for Australia, or
plumphotography.ca for Canada.
Some examples of good and unhelpful SEO domains for America are listed
below.

If you are in another country, then use the appropriate extension eg Great
Britain .co.uk, Australia .com.au, Canada .ca, Brazil .com.br, india co.in,
New Zealand .co.nz, and South Africa .co.za.

Unhelpful examples – the business owner is a baby photographer

1. BloomingBubs.com – people do not search for “Blooming” or

“Bubs” in relation to a baby photographer.
2. PinkProductions.com – “productions” is too broad. People don’t
search productions when they want a baby photographer.
3. BabyPhotographer(yourtown).com – could be too narrow unless you
only ever plan to do baby photography in your town (if so then this
is great).
4. YourNamePhotography.com – if you are new with no recognition as
a photographer it may take a lot longer to rank and to build your
brand. But you may be ok with that.

Good examples – the business owner is a baby photographer

1. YourNamePhotography.com - if people already search for you

online and you have an established brand. Or you want to build an
established brand with your name.
2. If the photographers name is not recognised is the first or last name
a generic word? So the domain name can have their name and
keywords and be good for resale. For example
BloomBabyPhotography.com or PlumBabyPhotography.com etc.
3. (yourcity)BabyPhotography.com – very specific and great if you
only want to do baby photography in your city forever.
4. (yourtown)BabyPhotography.com – very specific and great if you
only want to do baby photography in your town forever.
5. If the business owner plans to offer other photography services in
the future and has no name recognition it could be a location domain
name (yourcity)Photography.com or a generic word
BloomPhotography.com
-----------

Warning:
If you change a domain name and the website has lots of SEO traffic and
leads you could ruin the business.
I have an SEO book especially for SEO migration. It shows you how to
figure out if SEO migration is needed and how to do it. You can get it for
free by signing up for the free gift. Or you can buy it on Amazon .

You will also need to consider the impact of the change on your email
address.
If this is a brand-new site that has never gone live, you can change the URL
at any time before launching with no issues.
If you don’t want to change the domain name, here’s how I get around
it.

Example 1
Registered Business Name: Bill Smith Photography
Domain Name: billsmithphotography.com
Service: Bill only does wedding photography
We keep the domain name the same ie “billsmithphotography.com”
But use Bill Smith Wedding Photography
on their:

website home page, contact us page and footer

social media profiles, and
anywhere their business is listed online

Example 2
Registered Business Name: Pinkies
Domain Name: Pinkies.com
Service: They are a baby photographer

We keep the domain name the same ie “Pinkies.com”

But use Pinkies Baby Photography on their:

website home page, contact us page and footer

social media profiles, and
anywhere their business is listed online

Key Takeaway Message

The appropriate keywords in the domain name make it easier for people
and for Google to understand what the business does and the location it
covers.
 FOURTH CHECK – DOES HOSTING PROVIDE AN SSL
CERTIFICATE?

Google wants all sites to be secure and using https regardless of whether
they have an online store.
Make sure the hosting company you use allows this. Many provide free
SSL certificates. (If you are unsure of what an SSL certificate is I suggest
going to Wikipedia to find out more)

Even if this does not provide much SEO benefit now it most likely will in
the future.

If this is a brand new website on a brand new domain then use https straight
away. If the site is http then it should be changed as soon as possible. Every
new link from another website that goes to the http domain is a link that
ideally will need to be changed to https in the future. When I say a link to
the website I mean if you put the website URL in the website section in a
social media account. If you list the business on a business directory etc.
Even if you complete the redirects from http to https, you ideally need to
change all current links on all the external sites to https. You won’t be able
to change them all as some will not allow you to login to do it.

Believe me, it’s really painful and time-consuming to have to change the
URLs on all the business social profiles and business directories – so set the
site up on https as soon as possible! Therefore avoiding a waste of money
later on.
The change needs to be done by someone who knows what they are doing.
Set the redirect protocol so that all http URLs redirect to https for both
www. and non www.
On WordPress you can use plugins like “Easy HTTPS Redirection (SSL)"
by Tips and Tricks HQ
https://wordpress.org/plugins/https-redirection/ .

Once the site is live and secure it will look like this:

or

If it is not secure it will look like this:

Note: a site can be https and still be “Not secure”. If it shows this then
check with your host to make sure the SSL certificate is set up properly.
Manual Check

To make sure the redirects are working properly go to your website.

You will need to check if the three other versions redirect to the chosen one.
You will need to do this on the home page and internal pages.

For the Home page;

For this example your website is https://yourdomain.com.
 1. Remove the “s” in the https so it is http://yourdomain.com and
click return or enter - does it redirect back to
https://yourdomain.com and is it showing as secure?
2. Add in www. so it is https://www.yourdomain.com and click
return or enter - does it redirect back to https://yourdomain.com
and is it showing as secure?
3. Remove the “s” and add the www. so it is
http://www.yourdomain.com and click return or enter - does it
redirect back to https://yourdomain.com and is it showing as
secure?

(If your home page is https://www.yourdomain.com you still do the three

tests but you will be removing the www. in 2 and 3 instead)

In practice I often find it works on the home page but not on the internal
pages. I recommend that you now check three-four of the most important
internal pages

Internal page example;

For example https://yourdomain.com/about-us.

1. Remove the “s” in the https so it is http://yourdomain.com/about-

us and click return or enter - does it redirect back to
https://yourdomain.com/about-us and is it showing as secure?
2. Add in www. so it is https://www.yourdomain.com/about-us and
click return or enter - does it redirect back to
https://yourdomain.com/about-us and is it showing as secure?
3. Remove the “s” and add the www. so it is
http://www.yourdomain.com/about-us and click return or enter -
does it redirect back to https://yourdomain.com/about-us and is it
showing as secure?

Do this with three or four of the other website pages.

If it’s not working contact your web developer or hosting company for help.
If you do not have a web developer see my list of specialists you can
contact to help with this.

Key Takeaway Message

All sites need to be https eventually. It is a big SEO hassle to change all the
backlinks. It means logging into all the social accounts and directory
accounts and changing the website link from http to https. You might as well
start with https. It is important to check that it is actually working on all the
website pages.
 FIFTH CHECK – THEME SPEED AND HOSTING SPEED

Most web developers will know more than me when it comes to site speed
and how to make a site faster. I am not going to tell anyone how to do that.
If you do not have a web developer see my list of specialists you can
contact to help with this.
This section is to remind everyone to check the speed of a theme and
hosting before using it, or at least know how to make it as fast as possible.
My advice is to:

check the speed of the current website (or new theme before
choosing it), and
choose a hosting company that puts a priority on speed.

Doing this will save you time and money and produce better results.

You generally want the loading speed to be one second or less.

If the site is slower than one second, people may leave before they reach the
site, which means the business just missed a potential customer. Sometimes
people click on a listing in the search results and then don’t go to the site
because it’s slow. But they still want information, so they go back to the
search results to look for another option. This tells Google that the person
did not like your website and Google may rank it lower if lots of people do
this.
Here are some suggestions for checking the speed so you can get better
results

Choosing a Theme based on Speed

There are thousands of themes and most have demonstration sites.
Running the demonstration site through some speed tests will give you an
idea of how good it is.
These tools also give you information on how to speed up the theme.
https://tools.pingdom.com/
https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights/
https://gtmetrix.com/

Hosting Speed

Ask yourself these questions:

1. What company is the website hosting through?

2. If you search in Google, can you find information on the speed of
the hosting company vs other companies and any feedback/reviews
about speed?
3. Do you need to change the hosting company?

I once had a site that Pingdom said was taking 12 seconds to load. I worked
with my hosting company to try to get a faster speed by changing to a new
product, but it did not help. So I looked up the fastest internet hosting
companies at the time. When I changed my hosting, the speed went to one
second in Pingdom.

The location tested and the website were the same – I didn’t change
anything on the site on purpose just to test. So, hosting can make a massive
difference to site speed.

I have also been told to watch your speed over time as some hosting
companies will change you to a slower server as time goes by.
Key Takeaway Message

The hosting and theme and many other things can affect website speed.
Website speed affects the probability that someone will wait for your site to
open, which in turn will affect the website’s position in the rankings.
 CHAPTER 2. TRACKING TRAFFIC &
INITIAL KEYWORD RESEARCH

Measuring results is critical in SEO.

I use Google Analytics and keyword ranking tracking software every

month to check my clients results and to create the strategy for what
we will do that month.

Google Analytics is a free way to see all the traffic coming to the website.
It has a section for “Organic Traffic” that shows the traffic coming
specifically from search engines. You can see exactly which pages people
land on and how long they stay on the page. This data is very useful to
monitor results and help increase conversions from the most popular pages.

Google Search Console and other Webmaster Tools are programs

provided by the search engines that are very useful to help index website
pages and check for errors. It also has some data on keywords and the pages
that people visit.

So let's check what you have and set up what you don’t have
 GOOGLE ANALYTICS

Does the Website have Google Analytics Installed

To do this I right click on the website and click on “View Page Source” I
then search for “ua-”

You will see a script like this below if it does have Analytics. The tracking
ID specific to this account is UA-16132981-1

<script>

(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){

(i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new
Date();a=s.createElement(o),

m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)
[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m)

})(window,document,'script','https://www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js
','ga');
ga('create', 'UA-16132981-1 ', 'auto');

ga('send', 'pageview');

</script>

Otherwise, the site might have Analytics inside Google Tag Manager. In
this case you will not be able to see the tracking ID.

<!-- Google Tag Manager -->

<script>(function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':

new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)

[0],

j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.s rc=

'https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl
;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);

})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-NBQNC2L');</script>

<!-- End Google Tag Manager --><!-- End Google | Site Verification Code -
->

Does the photographer have access to their Google Analytics? If you are a
web developer you will have to ask for access. They will need to add your
Google email to the admin section.

If the owner does not have access you can try and get access by contacting
Google. They will contact the current owner and ask them to add you. If
they don't give you access within a few days Google will give you a code to
add to the website to prove you have access to the website.

If the site does not have analytics added yet then you can set up an account
and add it to the current website.

Setting up a Google Analytics Account

1. Go to https://analytics.google.com/ .
2. Sign in with your Gmail account email, your business owner’s
Gmail account email, or create a new Gmail email and sign in.
3. Google often changes things but currently, you can add an account
by going to the bottom left and clicking on “Admin”. This is where
you can also add more emails about users so both you and the
business owner can access the data.

4. Then click on “Create Account”

5. Follow the steps until you get to the screen with the tracking code, which
should look something like this:

<!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->

<script async src="https://www.Googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-
154810094-1 "></script>
<script>
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());

gtag('config', 'UA-154810094-1');
</script>

6. Add this code to the website. You might have your own way of doing
this, so go ahead with that.
Otherwise, the theme might provide a place to add the code. Have a look
through the theme sections to see whether you can paste the whole code
into a section specially created for Google Analytics.

7. Otherwise, install a plugin that allows you to add the code.

I like to use "Google Analytics for WordPress" by MonsterInsights. You can
search for it in the backend of WordPress or download it here https://en-
au.wordpress.org/plugins/Google-analytics-for-wordpress/ . You can add
the code manually or connect directly with Google Analytics so that data
will show up in the WordPress dashboard.
 GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE

Connect your site to Google search console by following these steps.

1. Go to https://search.Google.com/search-console .
2. Sign in with your Gmail account email, your business owner’s
Gmail account email or create a new Gmail.
3. Google is always changing things. To add a property in a new
account is probably different to adding it in an old account. In any
case, you want to search around until you find something that says,
“add property” (most likely by clicking on a dropdown arrow top
left).
4. You will then come to a screen that asks you to enter the domain or
the URL prefix.
5. You can create properties for the URL prefix as http or https (make sure
it’s the one the site will be built on) and then verify via Google Analytics or
by adding the code to the Yoast SEO plugin. Or you can enter the domain or
subdomain and verify via the DNS.
6. I have always used the one on the right as it’s how it was always done, so
it’s easy for me to verify. But for a web developer, the one on the left may
be easier.
7. If you choose the one on the right, you have four options to verify:
8. I usually start with Google Analytics because if this works, it’s the
easiest. But sometimes it does not like where the code is on the website and
verification fails.
9. Then I go to the HTML tag and copy this

10. Then add it into the “Google verification code” section of “Webmaster
Tools” section on the Yoast SEO plugin, or the equivalent on another
CMS/platform.
11. If you are using a domain that has been used for a website in the past,
you may need this extra step. If you added a https version, you will need to
add a http property as well. Then check to see if they had a disavow file in
the past using this link https://www.Google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-
links-main .
12. Add the business owner as a user by going to “Settings” then “Users and
permissions”.
13. Then “Add User”

14. Submit the XML sitemap by finding “Sitemaps” under the “Index”
section. It will show as an error until the site is live as it will be blocked.
15. If you are using WordPress and Yoast SEO, the sitemap URL you need
to add to the end of your domain is “sitemap_index.xml”.
 BING WEBMASTER TOOLS

Connect your site to Bing Webmaster tools by following these steps:

1. Go to http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster .
2. Sign in with your Microsoft email account, Google or Facebook.
3. You can add a site or import sites that are already verified in Google
Search Console.

4. If you use the “Add a Site” option, you will be asked to add the sitemap.
If you use WordPress and Yoast SEO the sitemap will be
https://yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml .

5. If you use the “Add a Site” option, you will be given a code you can use
to verify the site. Add this code into the “Bing verification code” section of
the “Webmaster Tools” section on the Yoast SEO plugin.
6. To add the business owner as a user, go to “Dashboard” → “Configure
My Site” → “Users”.
 OTHER WEBMASTER TOOLS

You can go through the same process to verify with other webmaster tools.
You only need to submit/verify with webmaster tools relevant to your
country or for the website.

Yandex (https://passport.yandex.com/) Is the most popular search engine in

Russia. I have never had a client in Russia, so I have never used this tool.

And Baidu (https://ziyuan.baidu.com/site/siteadd) is the most popular

search engine in China, but your site needs to be written in Mandarin if you
want to rank on Baidu. English words don’t rank on this search engine at
all. I have never used this as I can only speak English and only have clients
with websites written in English.
 KEYWORD RESEARCH

You may have heard people say that keywords don’t matter anymore.
This can be true if you have a very large blog website and are writing 10
articles a day on weight loss. In this case, you could find popular topics
other people have written about on social media without doing keyword
research.

A single post might cover hundreds of keywords like, “how to lose weight
around my belly”, “lose stomach weight”, “best diet for stomach weight
loss”, “exercise to lose weight around waist” etc. In this field people search
with hundreds of different word combinations.

There would be hundreds of keywords with only 10 searches per month or

less, so no keywords stand out as very important. Therefore, it would be
impossible to track all the keywords.
HOWEVER, when it comes to local service businesses it is critical to know
what keywords people are searching with. If someone lives in Toronto,
Canada and wants a wedding photographer, there is likely to be a limited
number of keywords the person will search with. For example, “wedding
photographer Toronto”, “Toronto wedding photographer” and “wedding
photographer Toronto cost”.

If you are a wedding photographer you will need to rank on the first page of
Google for the specific, high-volume, 30-40 phrases that people search
with. If you learn and use the techniques I'm about to show you, you'll get
faster, more stable rankings in Google and obtain more clients. Getting
more leads is the whole aim of it all.

Tracking Software
I recommend you start tracking all of your relevant keywords in some
ranking software before you do anything else. We want to get a baseline for
the website. Even if it is a brand new website and the baseline will be
nothing. It’s good to get the keywords into some software so you are ready
before the site goes live.

I want you to find a tracking software today and start tracking some
keywords. The only way to know if your results are getting better is to track
them. You can’t see real results by searching on your computer.
I use ProRanktracker.com . (affiliate link)
I found it much more affordable than other software at the time of my
research.
Now that I have it, I don’t want to change as I have all the history in this
software.
So consider that when you choose a software.
ProRankTracker is online so I don’t download it onto my computer.
You can track 200 keywords on one site for $25US a month (at the time of
writing)

There are free tracking software but I don’t know if they are any good.
You can do a Google search to find free and paid tracking software. Also
check out my video at 6min 57sec https://youtu.be/hXqJj8tP88k for more
info on software,

Keyword Tool
I have done many hours of keyword research for you so that you don't have
to. This is valued at around $500 per tab.
I use the FREE Google search tool for keyword research. You can also use
this if you want to do more research.
https://ads.google.com/aw/keywordplanner

In the photography industry people seem to search with the location at the
end the most. For example “wedding photographer san francisco” not “san
francisco wedding photographer”. However they do search both options. I
usually only track one version as they tend to rank fairly similarly.

When you add these keywords;

1. Make sure to select your town or city in the location section of the
tracking software. This makes sure you get the most accurate results
for your location.
2. Make sure to add the main location to the keywords. For example
you can track the keyword “wedding photographer” but it will be
much harder to rank for that. Ideally you want to track the location
versions. “wedding photographer san francisco”, “wedding
photographer san francisco cost”, “pre wedding photographer san
francisco”, “bridal photographer san francisco”, “marriage
photography san francisco”. etc

Done For You Photographer Keywords to track

Click here to go to the spreadsheet to see all the keywords to track
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hmsQtG9KTr058qRpaUinswsXtiz
-IHVfYNkmZmYMeTY/edit?usp=sharing

You can download a copy of this spreadsheet so you can edit the location
section.
Use “Find and replace” to change the location. You want to track the
location keywords highlighted in yellow.

You will land on the first tab that has all the wedding keywords. Click on
the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet for the other 20 plus keyword
categories.
Track the relevant keywords for the “home page” and “services”.

When you write a blog post you can track the keywords from this sheet if
you like. But I don’t usually do that as it could cost a fortune. Instead you
can see in Google Analytics how much traffic the blog gets and make
tweaks to change things if the traffic is low.
It can take 6-12 months for a blog to build up a good level of traffic. The
beauty of blog posts is they can be shared on social media. This enables you
to attract clients well before the post gets traffic from Google.

In Chapter 5 I will run through how to use these keywords on your website.
If you are a photographer just start tracking them and we will see if the
changes you make in chapters 3 and 4 make an impact first. If you are a
web developer you may also want to track the keywords so you can show
the client before and after results once the new website launches.
Key Takeaway Message

I have done thousands of dollars worth of keyword research for you. So get
some tracking software today, change the location on the spreadsheet and
copy and paste the keywords into your software. This is vital in order to
track your results.
 CHAPTER 3. IMPORTANT ON-SITE SEO
SETTINGS

In this chapter, I will run through:

1. The SEO plugins I install and the general website settings. I will use
WordPress as the example. If your site is not in WordPress, you can use
Google to find the SEO plugins and settings your CMS has.These are the
exact plugins I use on all my sites. This list will save you loads of time
trying to choose between many similar plugins.
I’ve never had any issues with these plugins on any themes, apart from
times when there has been a WordPress or theme update and the plugin has
not been updated. They are all tried, tested and popular plugins that enable
me to rank websites on the first page of Google.

2. General WordPress settings

3 & 4. Blog settings and 404 page settings that apply to any platform.

If you are not using WordPress, then you can do the equivalent on your
platform (if possible).

In my experience, WordPress is the absolute best platform for local service

businesses, as opposed to online stores where other platforms (like
Shopify.com) may have benefits over WordPress.
UNTITLED
 A. SEO PLUGINS

Every CMS has some kind of SEO functionality. In some CMSs like
Squarespace, Wix, and web developers’ custom platforms, it is limited to a
few standard things. In other CMSs like WordPress, Joomla and Shopify,
you have plugins to choose from.

WARNING: If you are a business owner, make sure you have the cPanel
login handy and have backed up your website before installing plugins.
Installing plugins can crash a website, as I have learnt the hard way! If you
want the help of a web developer see my list of specialists here .

Recommended Plugins for WordPress

"Yoast SEO" by Team Yoast plugin
https://en-au.wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/
Or
Rank Math
https://wordpress.org/plugins/seo-by-rank-math/
(I have not yet used this plugin but it looks excellent and I hope to use it in
the future)

"Redirection" by John Godley

https://wordpress.org/plugins/redirection/
"Broken Link Checker" - by Janis Elsts, Vladimir Prelovac
https://wordpress.org/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Yoast SEO or Rank Math

Set up for Yoast SEO will be covered in Chapter 5 and I will add
information about Rank Math when I test it.
Redirection
This is a great plugin. You can set it up so that if anyone makes changes to
URLs on the live site, it will automatically 301 redirect them. It is best not
to change URL’s unless you absolutely have to. Or unless an SEO specialist
does it to improve the SEO.
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. Google
suggests these should stay in place forever. This is particularly important if
the old URL has been getting traffic or has links going to it.
I use this plugin to do all the redirects on my client sites.
Broken Link Checker
If a link on the website stops working, it is called a broken link and this is
bad for SEO. The degree of ‘badness’ depends on what the link is for. This
plugin alerts you if a link is no longer working on the website. It allows
someone to go in and change the link, delete it etc.
Other Plugins that May be Useful

"Google Analytics for WordPress" by MonsterInsights – unless you can add

the code in the theme.
https://en-au.wordpress.org/plugins/Google-analytics-for-wordpress/

Instead of using the plugin above, you may want to set up Google Analytics
4 through Google tag manager
https://en-au.wordpress.org/plugins/insert-headers-and-footers/
Social Media Feather – unless the theme has social sharing that you can
activate.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/social-media-feather/
“Easy HTTPS (SSL) Redirection” – to ensure all http URLs redirect to
https.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/https-redirection/

Schema Plugins
Schema for Products and Recipes
If the site has products or recipes, consider installing plugins that will do
the schema mark-up.
It will be best to organise this with a web developer. Schema Markup is a
way to help Google further understand what a website is about.

This is an example of a plugin that does multiple things:

https://wordpress.org/plugins/all-in-one-schemaorg- rich-
snippets/#screenshots
However, if you only need it for products or recipes then it may be worth
finding a plugin designed to just do the schema for that.

Schema for Local Business

You could get a plugin for this but most of the schema is on the contact
page and is pretty easy to add manually, which we will go into later.
Rank Math seems to have some schema included, so this might provide an
all-in-one option for Local Business.

Key Takeaway Message

These plugins can significantly help your SEO efforts. If you have never
installed a plugin before I recommend getting the help of an experienced
web developer. Plugins can crash a website. Web developers will install
them in a test environment so they can check for issues.
 B. OTHER WEBSITE SETTINGS

Most website backends have some settings. Make sure you set up whatever
you are able to.

For WordPress

I highly recommend checking and editing these settings in WordPress. Your

system may have similar ones to these, so use them as a checklist.
Settings → General
Email address for notifications is set to an email that either you or the
business owner will receive.
Site Language is set to "Your Language" for example English (United
States) or English (UK).
Time zone is set to "Your Country/Region".

Settings → Writing
Are you planning to have a blog? Do you need the Uncategorized category?
I often change the Uncategorized category to “Blog” so that by default all
posts go there.

You can change this by going to:

Posts → Categories
Then click the word Edit under “Uncategorized” and change the “Name”
and “Slug” to Blog.
Settings → Discussion

Photographers who intend to blog may get real comments. Having this
option available therefore might be great to create engagement and get
future clients. I always set it so “comments must be manually approved.”
You do not want spam comments with links to other websites taking away
the power of your SEO.

Over the last 10 years, I’ve found that the comments section is often a place
where you get thousands of spam comments. These comments need to be
constantly removed. If my clients are in industries where they are unlikely
to get comments I untick the three boxes below in the discussion settings.
The business owner can override this for individual articles if they want
people to comment on a specific article.

So you will need to make a choice between allowing comments that are
manually approved or disabling comments altogether.
Settings → Permalinks
Warning – If the website is live in Google do not make a change to this
unless you are willing to redirect every current post on the site to the
new URL.
You could lose significant traffic and rankings if you change the
permalink settings without redirecting the old to new URLs. Do not
change anything here until you have done up to chapter 4 of this book
and mapped out all the URLs.
If the website will have 10-20 blogs or more and at least 2-3 blogs under
each category, ideally I would use /%category%/%postname%/.
We will talk about this in Chapter 5, but I often give the post categories the
same URL as a service page so that you effectively silo the posts.

For example:
https://yourdomain.com/artificial-grass/great-for-allergy- prevention

In this case the /artificial-grass/ would be the service page URL and also the
URL of the category.
However, if the site will only have a few blogs on topics that are different
from the service pages, and will not fall under a service page category, then
just using /%postname%/ is fine. Also, if the site is set up so it has
/service/artificial-grass/ as the URL, you cannot silo under it. The problem
with this is that Google may rank your blogs higher than your service page,
so I never use /service/ in my URLs. More on this later.
Once again changing this can seriously impact your site. So do not
change this until you have worked through the first five chapters of this
book and mapped out all the pages and URLs
Settings → Privacy

This is a new feature that allows you to specify the privacy policy page you
have already created or to create one if you don’t have one.
If you choose to create one using the WordPress template, you will still
need to fill it in. You will need to go to the page and add information under
the headings or remove headings.

Key Takeaway Message

WordPress gives you a variety of settings that can help SEO and
conversions. You might as well use these to get even a tiny advantage.
 C. BLOG DESIGN

In this section I will cover a few design aspects with respect to the blog.
A blog on a photography website has two main functions:

1. To cast a wider net by providing useful information that people are

searching for. These posts bring people to the website from Google
searches. People read the blog post and contact the business about
the photography services.
2. To write engaging posts on topics that people may or may not be
searching for that can be shared on social media. Potential clients
see it on social media, click on it and are taken to the website. They
read the post and then contact the photography business.

In both cases, the aim is to write interesting, compelling information that

leads to enquiries.

WE DO NOT WANT PEOPLE TO GET CAUGHT READING LOTS OF

BLOGS AND NEVER CONTACT THE OWNER.

The aim is to get people to contact the photographer, NOT to get them to
read another blog post.
I tend to remove all sections on the theme that encourage someone to read
another blog and replace them with links to the photography service pages.
1. Internal Blog Links
Many themes have links to blog posts in the Home page content, footer
and/or sidebar.
It can look nice and be a design feature. However, it can also be a
distraction that loses clients.
They came to the website through a Google search because they wanted
information or advice.

In Marketing 101 guides every expert says that when someone visits your
website, you only want to give them one action to take. In this case, that
action is to phone or email the photographer to enquire about the service –
NOT to read more blog posts and never contact the photography business
owner.
There should be enough information on the service page or blog post they
land on and the About Us page to get the enquiry from your potential client.

In practice:
If the theme has a blog posts section on the home page, I remove it.
If the theme has links to the blog posts in the footer, I remove them (see
Footer section in Chapter 3).
If the theme has links to the blog posts in the sidebar, I remove them (see
Footer section in Chapter 3).

Not only are the blogs a distraction, but having links in the footer and
sidebar tells Google these are very important pages on your site – which
they are not. The service pages are the most important pages on a
photography site.

The only place I put a link to the blog is in the top navigation or footer
navigation. If people really want to read blogs they can find them by
looking for them.

2. Check the Blog Format

In this section I am looking at the individual blog post pages and the main
blog page.

Do the individual posts have a sidebar option?

Some themes give you a sidebar option. Often these default options are of
little use to a photography business website. I recommend changing all the
sections so they have:

A call to action
A list of photography services
The locations serviced, if you think they might look here rather than
the footer
Links to any products

My preference is to use a sidebar to increase internal links.

It’s also a good idea to have a call to action that automatically appears at the
end of each blog post. The aim is to encourage people to call or email if
they live in certain locations. (Remember information blogs can show up all
over the world so you want to make sure only relevant people contact the
business).
What does the Main Blog Page Look like?

Check your main blog page to make sure it creates excerpts of posts (like in
the image below) rather than putting the whole 400 word or more blog posts
on the page. In other words the main blog page will have an image and a
small amount of text that you can click on to be taken to an individual blog.

This is what excerpts look like

Google is used to seeing excerpts of blog posts on a blog page, which
creates only a small amount of duplicate content. But if you have the same
400 words on the individual blog page, and again on the main blog page,
you significantly increase your internal duplicate content.

This video shows you how to check for duplicate content with Siteliner and
Copyscape:
https://youtu.be/op5ak8AWFwU

WordPress Special Item

As a default standard on WordPress there is a post called “Hello World”.

This exists so someone new to WordPress can see what they are supposed
to do in this section.
It is not useful for SEO and I always remove it. You could use it for training
purposes, but I would set it to “Noindex”.

To find the “Hello World” Post;

Move out of the settings section and go to posts

Delete the Hello World Post
Key Takeaway Message

The blog should help bring more potential customers to the website and
then convert them into leads. We want them to contact the photographer
NOT read more blog posts.
 D. 404 PAGES

When someone goes to a page that no longer exists or never existed, they
are shown a 404 error page.

You can check this by adding random letters to the URL. Eg

yoursite.com/gtrsefubgtsy

Check if the 404 page on your site is just a big white page with nothing but
the words 404 error.
If it is, then the potential client will be lost forever.
There are lots of blogs written on great 404 pages. I recommend doing a
Google search for “best 404 pages”.

In most cases, the following seems to be standard for a basic 404 page:

Menu navigation at the top

Some text to say sorry the page no longer exists
A search bar on the page section
Footer at the bottom
So this should be the ideal minimum for this page to encourage people to
try and find something else relevant on the website.

Key Takeaway Message

The 404 page is an opportunity to help potential customers find information
on your website that no longer exists on the page they were taken to.
 CHAPTER 4. OTHER CRITICAL
WEBSITE AREAS

In this chapter, I run through some other critical places on the website
where small changes can have a large impact on SEO results.
 A. CONTACT US PAGE

I always make sure the Contact Us page has the:

- Business name
- Address (including main city)
- Local phone
- Google map (particularly if they have to travel to you)

Google apparently uses this to check for accuracy against your business
directory listings. So it could be super important to help improve Google
rankings.
You can add extra code to tell Google that the business name is a business
name and the phone number is a phone number. This is called schema.
Click the link below to see the schema for local business
https://developers.Google.com/search/docs/data-types/local-business
Local business rich schema could be used on the Contact Us page. I am not
sure how much advantage this gives you compared to just having the NAP
(Business Name, Address, Phone) information on the page. I have never
tested to see if rankings improve by adding the schema to a clients website
and doing nothing else.
In the interest of transparency, I have to say that I have only implemented
schema on a few of my local business clients’ sites. I have no problem
ranking at number one on the first page with the Name, Address and Phone
number without schema.

However, in a competitive market any advantage you can get on a website

new to SEO could be worth it. As a web developer it should be easy enough
to do. If you are a photographer then ask your web developer or contact a
web developer on my recommended list .

Key Takeaway Message

Make sure you have the Name, Address and Phone Number on the contact
Us page. Google Maps is also very helpful to people if they need to travel to
you.
 B. FOOTER WIDGETS

The footer is a huge opportunity for SEO. I have proven over and over
again that doing these steps has a big impact on rankings for local
keywords.

Here is an example footer using four footer widgets. The widgets can be in
any order.
Widget 1
Widget 2
Widget 3
Widget 4
About

Bloom Photography has been lovingly capturing baby and family photos for
the last 15 years.
Visit our studio in San Francisco which is close to Sunset District,
Richmond District, The Castro, Bernal Heights, Excelsior, Outer Mission,
Broadmoor, Mission District, Daly City, Brisbane, South San Francisco
Services
Baby Photography (links to home page)
Family Photography
Portrait Photography

Other Pages
About
Testimonials
Sitemap
Privacy

Follow us on Social
Embedded Facebook follow icon or Instagram grid.

Social Media icons that link to the relevant social media

Or put sponsorship logos and videos if there is extra space

Contact Us

Bloom Photography

Home Office:
3 Taraval Street, Parkside, San Francisco, California, 94116
Phone: 415-771-2074
Embed Google Map here

Widget 1

This first widget contains information about the photography business and
the locations serviced or close by.
Having the locations serviced (if you travel) / close by (for a studio) in the
footer is a very simple and effective way to help you rank for that location
for every service you provide.
For example, if we use San Francisco in the USA as an example, you need
to think about what locations are most important.

Locations Serviced/Covered/Closest
It might be major locations – San Francisco, San Jose, Fremont, Berkeley,
San Leandro
It might be smaller closer locations – San Francisco, Daly City, San Mateo,
Redwood City
It might be locations within the city – Sunset District, Richmond District,
The Castro, Bernal Heights, Excelsior, Outer Mission, Visitacion Valley,
Bayview, Mission District, Soma

San Francisco and Surrounds

San Francisco City

Widget 2

In this widget, we want to put links to your priority pages. When you link to
a page within your site, Google assumes it’s important.
Important pages should have links from the top navigation, the footer, the
page or post sidebar and from blog post content. The more internal links,
the more important the page is perceived to be.

For example, links to priority pages would be:

Home - (but instead of using the word “Home”, use a keyword such as
“Baby Photography” if that is your main service)
Family Photography
Portrait Photography

Links to other pages important for Google and people:

- about
- testimonials
- sitemap
- privacy
- terms and conditions

Widget 3
In this widget, you want to link to social accounts and/or have social
embeds. As a photography business you are bound to be using Facebook,
Instagram and Pinterest. An Instagram grid often looks good.

If there is lots of space, then you could put:

Sponsorships
Videos

Widget 4

The important info in this widget is the:

- Business name
- Address (including main city)
- Local phone number
- Map

If you only have a home address but you travel to all your clients you can
put the street address without the street number. Or even without the street
name. The main area, city and postcode still helps people and Google.

Key Takeaway Message

We need all the above info in the footer. However, you can change the
widget order. You can change what is in the widgets. Just make sure you
include all the things listed above.
The copyright notice in the footer generally means that you cannot copy the website content without
the owner’s permission.
Check what is required in your country.
I use this template for all my sites:
Copyright © 20?? - 20?? Business Name. All Rights Reserved.
(Please code the copyright so it automatically updates the final year.)
In the first year, it might look strange if it says 2020-2020. But it will make it so much easier if you
don’t have to update the final year manually every year.
In the US you can use the symbol or the word copyright. In many countries you need to use the
symbol for it to be legal. Some sites list the start date and each year there is an update. For example,
© 2019, 2018, 2016, 2013, 2012.
I don’t know how much impact this has on SEO. Google may use it to determine if a site is being
looked after and updated.
Some potential clients will look at these to decide if a business pays attention to detail or if they are
still in business. It may help to see they have been in business for a number of years, so on rare
occasions it might impact conversions.
Developer Link
When a web developer links from the footer of the photography website to their website, it’s
important to make sure that link is a “nofollow” link. This helps the photography website and also
helps prevent the developers site from having too many irrelevant links that negatively impact it’s
rankings.
To check if the link is “nofollow” right click on the website and go to “View Page Source” Then use
command F or Ctrl F to search for the developers name.
The code should look like this
Website by <a href="https://developerwebsite.com" rel=”nofollow” target="_blank">Web
Developers Name</a>
Key Takeaway Message
The copyright date protects you and may help conversions. The developer link needs to be
“nofollow” in order to help both the photography website and the web developers website.
Created with Vellum
 D. SIDEBAR AND CALLS TO ACTION

If the pages or posts have a sidebar then this is an opportunity. You can put
calls to action like a phone number and contact button. The contact button
can link to a contact us or quote page or a contact form.

Pages
Many service pages are fine without a sidebar. However, the calls to action
therefore need to go throughout the page. It’s also good to have them at the
bottom of the page.

Eg
Contact us
Get a quote
Enquire now
Etc
Posts
In Chapter 2 I talked about the blog sidebar and how I usually add a sidebar
to help with internal linking and calls to action.
They would normally have:

A call to action
 A list of photography services with links to the pages
Locations serviced (if I think they may not read the footer)
Links to any products/categories

Note: As mentioned in Chapter 2, I avoid having links to the blog from the
Home page content, footer or sidebar, as the aim is to get people to the
website and contact the business owner – not get lost in reading blog posts.

Key Takeaway Message

A sidebar is very helpful to add forms and contact details to make it easy
for people to contact the photographer. Adding links to the main service
pages in the sidebar increases the internal linking to these pages and helps
Google know they are the most important and to rank them higher.
 E. HTML SITEMAP

The HTML Sitemap is a page on the website that lists all the important
pages and posts you want people to be able to access.

For example:
https://www.personalitytypes.xyz/sitemap/

The HTML sitemap page is simply a list of links that go to every page and
post or category on the website.
It has been suggested that having this helps SEO.
It is not something I have tested. I have sites ranking at number one that
haven't got an HTML sitemap. It’s up to you if you want to create one just
in case.

Note: Yoast automatically creates the XML sitemap which is different to the
HTML sitemap above.
See a real sitemap in this link:
https://www.personalitytypes.xyz/sitemap_index.xml This is the sitemap you
submit to webmaster tools and is very important for SEO.
Key Takeaway Message
An HTML sitemap is different to the XML sitemap that is submitted to
Google. The HTML sitemap may help rankings and may be useful to people.
The XML sitemap is vital to submit to Google search console and other
webmaster tools.
How are you going so far? Here is a cute pic for you!
 CHAPTER 5. URL STRUCTURE

URL Structure for Service Pages

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT

If the industry has low competition, you might still rank using the /services/
structure.

For example;
yourdomain.com/services/
yourdomain.com/services/newborn-photography/
yourdomain.com/services/baby-photography/
yourdomain.com/services/kids-photography/
yourdomain.com/services/child-photography/

But I have found that in competitive industries you may not rank on the first
page of Google with this structure. It also makes it more difficult to silo
blog posts under a service page, so you lose some of that benefit (more on
this later).
If you use /services/the-service/ you are siloing all the services under the
/services/ page. You are effectively telling Google the services page is the
most important. This page often only has a small amount of information
about each service. This means you have just told Google the most
important page is one that only has a little bit of information on each
service.

What we find in practice is that if you create a service page with a URL like
this:
yourdomain.com/services/baby-photography/
Then create a blog page like this:
yourdomain.com/baby-photography-with-hats/
That Google will rank the blog post instead of the service page for “baby
photography”. This is because you have effectively told Google the blog
post is more important as it has a higher level URL structure. This is not
good because the blog post is not a sales page like the service page is.
The structure that you ideally want is:
Service page
yourdomain.com/baby-photography/

Blog post
yourdomain.com/baby-photography/baby-photoshoot-with-hats/

The baby-photography page is the service/sales page. It is the page you’re

using to encourage people to contact the business owner, so you want
people to visit that page and contact them.

People who type “baby photography london” are looking for a

photographer that does baby photography in London. It is clear intent. They
want to contact someone and see examples and get an idea of price. So we
want to send them to a page that is aligned with the potential client’s desire.
yourdomain.com/baby-photography/

Blog posts have a different style and the aim is mostly to educate or
entertain. People often read a blog post and leave the site without taking
action. Blog posts can be good sales pages too, but most people don’t write
blogs in that format. So you want people to find the blog
yourdomain.com/baby-photography/baby-photoshoot-with-hats/ when
they type in baby photoshoot and hats. This increases your brand
recognition and someone might use your services now or in the future.

In WordPress, you can still list all the services underneath each other in the
navigation by using the “menus” function (or the equivalent in another
platform). You do not have to have them as child pages for the navigation to
work. Also, you can get a plugin to custom organise all the pages in the
WordPress backend if you want them next to each other.

Information Needed
The first step is to get some critical information

For SEO to be effective it is critical to find out:

All the services/products the business provides

The main services/products that make them money
The main location where they provide the service or product
Other locations where they provide the service or product
Future locations where they will provide the service or product
Future services or products

We can use this information to create the URL structure for the service
pages.
 EXAMPLES

I will now run through some different scenarios/examples.

Example 1 – provides one service in one main fixed location

Where the photographer provides pet photography services in their studio in
Lakewood, Denver, Colorado USA

Example 2 – provides many services in one main fixed location

Where the photographer provides pet photography, newborn and kids
photography, family photography and portrait photography services in
Lakewood, Denver, Colorado USA

Example 3 - provides one service in many locations that you travel to

Where the photographer provides pet photography services in Denver,
down to Colorado Springs and up to Fort Collins.

Example 4 – provides many services in many locations travelled to

Where the photographer provides pet photography, newborn and kids
photography, family photography and portrait photography services in
Denver, down to Colorado Springs and up to Fort Collins, Colorado USA
Open the Spreadsheet
For this chapter have this spreadsheet open with the keyword research that I
have done
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hmsQtG9KTr058qRpaUinswsXtiz
-IHVfYNkmZmYMeTY/edit?usp=sharing

Look at the “Animal Pet” tab to see how I use the keyword research to
create the urls for the service pages. Then find the tab with the keywords
relevant to you and use that.

I use the Google Keyword Planner to find keywords. But there are other
tools you can use. If I do not have photography keywords relevant to your
business let me know. Otherwise you can do the research yourself.
https://ads.google.com/aw/keywordplanner/home
Click here to watch the latest video on how to use the Google Keyword
Tool
 EXAMPLE 1 – PROVIDES ONE SERVICE IN ONE MAIN
FIXED LOCATION

Where the photographer provides pet photography services in their studio in

Lakewood, Denver, Colorado USA

Example domain names:

jewelspetphotography.com or
jewelspetphotographydenver.com or
petphotographydenver.com
If the domain has the location and or pet photography in it the website will
rank faster for any keyword phrases containing these.

You could have Lakewood in the domain name but you should be able to
easily rank for Lakewood so using Denver in the domain is more useful in
this case.

Now we need some more information to work out the pages required:

Jewels Pet Photography

All services
Pet Photography

Main Location
Lakewood, Denver, Colorado USA

Other locations nearby that people may travel from

Arvada
Englewood
Littleton
Westminster
Broomfield
Centennial
Thornton
Boulder

Jewels Pet Photography, Lakewood, Denver

People could come to the studio in Lakewood from locations further away.
The main aim is to make sure potential customers and Google know exactly
where the business is. Then Google can show it to the most relevant people
and they can make an informed decision.
Effective URLs

Home Page
I usually use the home page to target the most important service/product
keywords.

For example:
jewelspetphotographydenver.com
Would target the keywords “pet photography denver”, “pet photoshoot
denver”, “pet photos denver” and associated keywords.

If the business does not have “denver” or “pet photography” in the domain
name, the keyword targets are still the same.
It just means it will be harder to rank the website for any keywords that
people use to search with that contain “denver” or “pet photography”.

Service page URLS

We want to create pages to target the other keywords people search for
I create the other service page URL’s like this:
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/animal-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/cat-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/dog-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/kitten-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/puppy-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/rabbit-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/horse-photography/
So basically any animals that people are likely to have as pets in your
location could have a page about it.

I do Not create URLs like this

jewelspetphotographydenver.com/services/rabbit-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/photography/rabbit-photography/
If you do not have “denver” in the domain name, you could put it in the
URLs (provided you don’t want to expand to other cities).
jewelspetphotography.com/denver-rabbit-photography/
If you do not have pet in the domain name I would not put it in the url for
the service pages. I would leave it like this.

jewelsphotography.com/denver-rabbit-photography/
How do we target the other locations?

Jewels Pet Photography

Main Location
Lakewood, Denver, Colorado USA
Other locations nearby that people may travel from
Arvada
Englewood
Littleton
Westminster
Broomfield
Centennial
Thornton
Boulder

This depends on:

1. How competitive the industry is

2. How long the location names are

1. How competitive the industry is

For low competition locations (less than 10 competitors), I can rank on the
first page of Google just by listing them in the footer. That is, by literally
writing the locations in the footer. I can then rank for that location with any
of the services listed on the website. This is great because it saves loads of
money for the business owner compared to having to write a page for every
location and service (see Chapter 4 - Footer Widgets).
2. How long the location names are
The SEO titles are powerful in local business. If we put the location in the
SEO title, we have a good opportunity to rank for it. The problem is that
you can only fit a few locations in the SEO title. The longer the location
names are, the less you can put in a title. We will cover this in more detail in
Chapter 6.

Steps to rank other locations

Step 1
The first thing I do is put the locations in the footer (see technical
instruction in Chapter 4 – Footer Widgets).
I would list the locations in the footer like this:
Locations near to our studio: Denver, Arvada, Englewood, Littleton,
Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial, Thornton, Boulder.

In some cases, this is enough to have the website rank for all services in all
locations.
Therefore, if someone searches “dog photographer arvada” the Dog
Photography page would show up in Google, or if they search for “horse
photographer boulder” the horse photography page would show up. If this is
all you need, happy days!
Step 2
We can also put locations in the SEO page titles. This works well but you
only have limited space of 600px.
This dotted line below is 600px wide
…………………………………………………………………………...
(more on this in Part 6)
Home Page SEO Title
Pet Photography - Denver, Lakewood, Arvada, Boulder, Littleton
You might choose the locations where it is most likely that people have pets
and can afford photography.
Dog Page SEO Title
Dog Photography - Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial
Always put the most important keywords first in the SEO title.
See how the length of the location name impacts the titles
Pet Photography - Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial
Vs
Pet Photography - Tyne, Fisher, Lottie, Noosa, Devon, Oslo, Rome
You can see in the first example above that we can get in four place names.
In the second example, I have used four- and five-letter made up locations
and we can squeeze in seven locations. So, it really depends on whether you
are lucky enough to have short place names.

Step 3
Use the ongoing SEO in chapter 8 and 9 to build backlinks to the website.
Especially links in business directories as these tell Google your location.
Therefore Google is likely to rank you higher for Lakewood and all the
surrounding locations.
Step 4
Add more blog posts about the photography services and locations that you
most want to rank.
For example, imagine “rabbit photography arvada” is not ranking on the
first page of Google. Write 2-3 blog posts on rabbit photography. We DO
NOT want the blog post to target the keyword “rabbit photography arvada”.
Instead we want them to help the service page rank higher. So the blog posts
need to be about rabbits but not compete with the service page. So the blog
post topics could be
What do rabbits love to eat?
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/what-rabbits-love-eating
How to look after a pet rabbit?
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/looking-after-pet-rabbits
In the first paragraph of the blog post I would link to the rabbit photography
page jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/ within a sentence like this;
At Jewels rabbit photography studio near Arvada we have found that rabbits
love eating ……. We can get them to sit still and take great photos.
or
In this blog we look at the many ways you can care for a pet rabbit. As we
do a lot of rabbit photography in Arvada people often ask how to get the
most shinny coat for the photos.

The text that is underlined is the text that links to the

jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/
page. This text is called anchor text. It tells Google that the page you are
linking to is about rabbit photography in Arvada. You have also increased
the content on your website about rabbit photography and therefore are seen
as more of an authority on this.
Step 5
If there is a lot of competition, we may need to create a page for a specific
service for each location.
For example, we would do step 1 and put the locations in the footer :
Locations near to our studio: Arvada, Englewood, Littleton, Westminster,
Broomfield, Centennial, Thornton, Boulder.
We would follow step 2 and put them in the SEO title:
Pet Photography - Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial
We would follow step 3 and claim our maps and social media profiles and
list on business directories.
We would follow step 4 and write more blog posts about the topic. Making
sure the page does not compete with the service page. It needs to target
completely different keywords.
For the main location of Denver it could take a year to get to the first page
of Google and you just need to keep doing step 3 and 4.
However, what about the smaller less competitive locations that are in the
footer but not in the SEO titles?
For these keywords the website may only get to the second or third page of
Google or maybe not even that.
After about six months you might need a new page for each service and
location that is not yet ranking on the first page of Google.
It is best that these pages have different content. (not just copied with the
city names replaced)
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography-arvada/
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography-littleton/
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography-boulder/
We use the format above because in this example the Home page is the
main page we are targeting for the pet photography keywords. So there is no
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography page
So the URLs for these location pages can not be:
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography/arvada etc
However, if it was the
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/
page then the URLs could be:
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/arvada/
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/littleton/
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/boulder/
Adding all these pages could be a big expense for the business owner, so it
is a last resort. If step 1 to 4 work, it is also unnecessary. If you start at step
5 and create all the extra pages and they are not needed, it could harm the
website. Because if the keywords are not competitive, Google will see a lot
of unnecessary site content that it will never show anyone. Plus, it would be
a waste of money.
So do step 1 to 4 first and give it 6 months and then do step 5 with any
pages that need it.
Remember the tortoise and the hair story. Apply that.
 EXAMPLE 2 – PROVIDES MANY SERVICES IN ONE
MAIN FIXED LOCATION

Where the photographer provides pet photography, newborn, baby and kids
photography, family photography and portrait photography services in
Lakewood, Denver, Colorado USA

Example domain names:

jewelsphotography.com or
jewelsphotographydenver.com or
photographydenver.com
If the domain has the location and or photography in it the website will rank
faster for any keyword phrases containing these.

You could have lakewood in the domain name but you should be able to
easily rank for Lakewood so using a large city like Denver in the domain is
more useful in this case.

For example, jewelsphotographydenver.com is a studio that provides six

services.

Jewels Photography

All services
 Pet Photography
NewBorn Photography
Baby Photography
Kids Photography
Family Photography
Portrait Photography

Main Location
Lakewood, Denver, Colorado USA

Other locations nearby that people may travel from

Arvada
Englewood
Littleton
Westminster
Broomfield
Centennial
Thornton
Boulder

Jewels Photography, Lakewood, Denver

People could come to the studio in Lakewood from locations further away.
The main aim is to make sure potential customers and Google know exactly
where the business is. Then Google can show it to the most relevant people
and they can make an informed decision.
URL Structure

Home Page
The home page URL can be more generic and the internal pages all be used
to target the services

For example:
jewelsphotographydenver.com
In this case the home page could be used to target the brand keywords
“jewels photography” and the location keywords “denver photography” ,
“lakewood photography” etc

If the business does not have “denver” or “photography” in the domain

name, the keyword targets are still the same.
It just means it will be harder to rank the website for any keywords that
people use to search with that contain “denver” or “pet photography”.
Service page URLS
We want to create pages to target the other keywords people search for

I create the main service page URL’s like this:

jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/family-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/newborn-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/kids-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/baby-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/portrait-photography/
I do Not create URLs like this
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/services/pet-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/photography/kids- photography/
If you do not have “denver” in the domain name, you could put it in the
URLs (provided you don’t want to expand to other cities).
jewelsphotography.com/denver-pet-photography/
If you do not have photography in the domain name that is already covered
in the above URL.
Other Service pages
There are six main services and each of them have other subservices.
Service 1
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/

We could add the subservices like this;

jewelsphotographydenver.com/animal-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/cat-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/dog-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/kitten-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/puppy-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/rabbit-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/horse-photography/
Best if subservices have the same or more monthly searches then the main
service.
So if “pet photography” has 100 searches a month and all the subservices
have 100 or more searches a month.
or like this

jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/animal-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/cat-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/dog-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/kitten-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/puppy-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/horse-photography/
Best if subservices have a lot less monthly searches then the main service
So if “pet photography” has 1000 searches a month and all the subservices
have 100 or less searches a month.
Why?

Because if we make all these subservices a child page of the pet

photography page we tell Google that the pet page is the most important.
This gives it more power and makes it more likely to rank higher. Since it
has 1000 searches a month we want it to rank higher.
Google Keyword Planner results

Let's look at the actual results for Denver.

You can see that pet and dog photography have more searches than the
others.

So the structure I would most likely use would be

jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/animal-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/cat-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com /pet-photography/kitten-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/horse-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/dog-photography/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/dog-photography/puppy-photography/
How do we target the other locations?

Jewels Pet Photography

Main Location
Lakewood, Denver, Colorado USA
Other locations nearby that people may travel from
Arvada
Englewood
Littleton
Westminster
Broomfield
Centennial
Thornton
Boulder
This depends on:

1. How competitive the industry is

 2. How long the location names are

1. How competitive the industry is

For low competition locations (less than 10 competitors), I can rank on the
first page of Google just by listing them in the footer. That is, by literally
writing the locations in the footer. I can then rank for that location with any
of the services listed on the website. This is great because it saves loads of
money for the business owner compared to having to write a page for every
location and service (see Chapter 4 - Footer Widgets).

2. How long the location names are

The SEO titles are powerful in local business. If we put the location in the
SEO title, we have a good opportunity to rank for it. The problem is that
you can only fit a few locations in the SEO title. The longer the location
names are, the less you can put in a title. We will cover this in more detail in
Chapter 6.
Steps to rank other nearby locations
Step 1
The first thing I do is put the locations in the footer (see technical
instruction in Chapter 4 – Footer Widgets).
I would list the locations in the footer like this:
Locations near to our studio: Denver, Arvada, Englewood, Littleton,
Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial, Thornton, Boulder.
In some cases, this is enough to have the website rank for all services in all
locations.
Therefore, if someone searches “dog photographer arvada” the Dog
Photography page would show up in Google, or if they search for “horse
photographer boulder” the horse photography page would show up. If this is
all you need, happy days!
Step 2
We can also put locations in the SEO page titles. This works well but you
only have limited space of 600px.
This dotted line below is 600px wide
…………………………………………………………………………...
(more on this in Part 6)

Home Page SEO Title

Jewels Photography - Denver, Lakewood, Arvada, Boulder, Littleton
Choose the locations where it is most likely that people will want your
services.
Dog Page SEO Title
Pet Photography - Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial
Always put the most important keywords first in the SEO title.

See how the length of the location name impacts the titles
Pet Photography - Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial
Vs
Pet Photography - Tyne, Fisher, Lottie, Noosa, Devon, Oslo, Rome
You can see in the first example above that we can get in four place names.
In the second example, I have used four- and five-letter made up locations
and we can squeeze in seven locations. So, it really depends on whether you
are lucky enough to have short place names.

Step 3
Use the ongoing SEO in chapter 8 and 9 to build backlinks to the website.
Especially links in business directories as these tell Google your location.
Therefore Google is likely to rank you higher for Lakewood and all the
surrounding locations.
Step 4
Add more blog posts about the photography services and locations that you
most want to rank.
For example, imagine “rabbit photography arvada” is not ranking on the
first page of Google. Write 2-3 blog posts on rabbit photography. We DO
NOT want the blog post to target the keyword “rabbit photography arvada”.
Instead we want them to help the service page rank higher. So the blog posts
need to be about rabbits but not compete with the service page. So the blog
post topics could be
What do rabbits love to eat?
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/what-rabbits-love-eating
How to look after a pet rabbit?
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/looking-after-pet-rabbits
In the first paragraph of the blog post I would link to the rabbit photography
page jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/ within a sentance like this;
At Jewels rabbit photography studio near Arvada we have found that rabbits
love eating ……. We can get them to sit still and take great photos.
or
In this blog we look at the many ways you can care for a pet rabbit. As we
do a lot of rabbit photography in Arvada people often ask how to get the
most shinny coat for the photos.
The text that is underlined is the text that links to the
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/
page. This text is called anchor text. It tells Google that the page you are
linking to is about rabbit photography in Arvada. You have also increased
the content on your website about rabbit photography and therefore are seen
as more of an authority on this.
Step 5
If there is a lot of competition, we may need to create a page for a specific
service for each location.
For example, we would do step 1 and put the locations in the footer :
Locations near to our studio: Arvada, Englewood, Littleton, Westminster,
Broomfield, Centennial, Thornton, Boulder.
We would follow step 2 and put them in the SEO title:
Dog Photography - Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial
We would follow step 3 and claim our maps and social media profiles and
list on business directories
We would follow step 4 and write more blog posts about the topic. Making
sure the page does not compete with the service page. It needs to target
completely different keywords.
For the main locations of Denver it could take a year to get to the first page
of Google and you just need to keep doing step 3 and 4.
However, for the locations that are in the footer but not in the SEO titles,
the website may only get to the second or third page of Google or maybe
not even that.
After about six months you might need a new page for each service and
location that is not yet ranking on the first page of Google.
It is best that these pages have different content. (not just copied with the
city names replaced)
jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/arvada/
jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/littleton/
jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/boulder/
However, if it was the
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/
page that you want to rank for “rabbit photography arvada” etc then the
URLs could be:
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/arvada/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/littleton/
jewelsphotographydenver.com/pet-photography/rabbit-
photography/boulder/
Adding all these pages could be a big expense for the business owner, so it
is a last resort. If step 1 to 4 work, it is also unnecessary. If you start at step
5 and create all the extra pages and they are not needed, it could harm the
website. Because if the keywords are not competitive, Google will see a lot
of unnecessary site content that it will never show anyone. Plus, it would be
a waste of money.
So do step 1 to 4 first and give it 6 months and then do step 5 with any
pages that need it.
Remember the tortoise and the hair story. Apply that.
 EXAMPLE 3 - PROVIDES ONE SERVICE IN MANY
LOCATIONS THAT YOU TRAVEL TO

Where the photographer provides pet photography services in Denver, down

to Colorado Springs and up to Fort Collins. They may or may not have a
studio. But they will travel to the owner's home to take photos and therefore
cover a much greater area.

Example domain names:

jewelspetphotography.com or
jewelspetphotographydenver.com or
petphotographydenver.com
If the domain has a location and or pet photography in it the website will
rank faster for any keyword phrases containing these.

Now we need some more information to work out the pages required;

Jewels Pet Photography

All services
Pet Photography

Main Location
Denver, Colorado USA
Other locations we service with main ones highlighted

Fort Collins Colorado Springs

Loveland Aurora
Greeley Littleton
Longmont Boulder

Jewels Pet Photography, Denver up to Fort Collins and down to

Colorado Springs
Effective URLs
Home Page

I usually use the home page to target the most important service/product
keywords.
For example:
jewelspetphotographydenver.com
Would target the keywords “pet photography denver”, “pet photoshoot
denver”, “pet photos denver” and associated keywords.

If the business does not have “denver” or “pet photography” in the domain
name, the keyword targets are still the same.
It just means it will be harder to rank the website for any keywords that
people use to search with that contain “denver” or “pet photography”.
Service page URLS
We want to create pages to target the other keywords people search for

I create the other service page URL’s like this:

jewelspetphotographydenver.com/animal-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/cat-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/dog-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/kitten-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/puppy-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/rabbit-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/horse-photography/
So basically any animals that people are likely to have as pets in your
location could have a page about it.

I do Not create URLs like this

jewelspetphotographydenver.com/services/rabbit-photography/
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/photography/rabbit-photography/
If you do not have “denver” in the domain name, you could put it in the
URLs (provided you don’t want to expand to other cities).
jewelspetphotography.com/denver-rabbit-photography/
If you do not have the word “pet” in the domain name I would not put it in
the url for the service pages. I would leave it like this.
jewelsphotography.com/denver-rabbit-photography/
But what you might need to do is create a page
jewelsphotography.com/denver-pet-photography/
and rank the home page for branded keywords around Jewels Photography
How do we target the locations other than Denver?

Jewels Pet Photography

Main Location
Denver, Colorado USA
Other locations we service with main ones highlighted
Fort Collins Colorado Springs
Loveland Aurora
Greeley Littleton
Longmont Boulder
This depends on:

1. How competitive the industry is

2. How long the location names are

1. How competitive the industry is

For low competition locations (less than 10 competitors), I can rank on the
first page of Google just by listing them in the footer. That is, by literally
writing the locations in the footer. I can then rank for that location with any
of the services listed on the website. This is great because it saves loads of
money for the business owner compared to having to write a page for every
location and service (see Chapter 4 - Footer Widgets).
2. How long the location names are
The SEO titles are powerful in local business. If we put the location in the
SEO title, we have a good opportunity to rank for it. The problem is that
you can only fit a few locations in the SEO title. The longer the location
names are, the less you can put in a title. We will cover this in more detail in
Chapter 6.

Steps to rank other locations

Step 1
The first thing I do is put the locations in the footer (see technical
instruction in Chapter 4 – Footer Widgets).
I would list the locations in the footer like this:
We service: Denver, Fort Collins, Littleton, Loveland, Aurora, Greeley,
Colorado Springs, Longmont, Boulder

In some cases, this is enough to have the website rank for all services in all
locations.
Therefore, if someone searches “dog photographer fort collins” the Dog
Photography page would show up in Google, or if they search for “horse
photographer boulder” the horse photography page would show up. If this is
all you need, happy days!
Step 2
We can also put locations in the SEO page titles. This works well but you
only have limited space of 600px.
This dotted line below is 600px wide
…………………………………………………………………………...
(more on this in Part 6)
Home Page SEO Title
Pet Photography - Denver to Fort Collins & Colorado Springs
You might choose the locations where it is most likely that people have pets
and can afford photography. Or the other biggest city areas that you visit.
Rabbit Page SEO Title
Rabbit Photography - Denver to Fort Collins & Colorado Springs
Always put the most important keywords first in the SEO title.
See how the length of the location name impacts the titles
Pet Photography - Denver to Fort Collins & Colorado Springs
Vs
Pet Photography - Tyne, Fisher, Lottie, Noosa, Devon, Oslo, Rome
You can see in the first example above that we can get in three place names.
In the second example, I have used four- and five-letter made up locations
and we can squeeze in seven locations. So, it really depends on whether you
are lucky enough to have short place names.

Step 3
Use the ongoing SEO in chapter 8 and 9 to build backlinks to the website.
Especially links in business directories as these tell Google your location.
Therefore Google is likely to rank you higher for Denver and all the
surrounding locations.
Step 4
Add more blog posts about the photography services and locations that you
most want to rank.
For example, imagine “rabbit photography fort collins” is not ranking on
the first page of Google. Write 2-3 blog posts on rabbit photography. We
DO NOT want the blog post to target the keyword “rabbit photography fort
collins”. Instead we want them to help the service page rank higher. So the
blog posts need to be about rabbits but not compete with the service page.
So the blog post topics could be
What do rabbits love to eat?
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/rabbit-photography/what-rabbits-love-
eating
How to look after a pet rabbit?
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/rabbit-photography/looking-after-pet-
rabbits
In the first paragraph of the blog post I would link to the rabbit photography
page jewelspetphotographydenver.com/rabbit-photography/ within a
sentence like this;
At Jewels pet photography we have found that rabbits love eating …….
When we are taking rabbit photos in Fort Collins we can get them to sit still
and take great photos.
or
In this blog we look at the many ways you can care for a pet rabbit. As we
do a lot of rabbit photography in Colorado Springs people often ask how to
get the most shiny coat for the photos.
The text that is underlined is the text that links to the
jewelspetphotographydenver.com/rabbit-photography/ page. This text is
called anchor text. It tells Google that the page you are linking to is about
rabbit photography in Fort Collins or Colorado Springs. You have also
increased the content on your website about rabbit photography and
therefore are seen as more of an authority on this.
Step 5
If there is a lot of competition, we may need to create a page for a specific
service for each location.
For example, we would do step 1 and put the locations in the footer :
We service: Denver, Fort Collins, Littleton, Loveland, Aurora, Greeley,
Colorado Springs, Longmont, Boulder
We would follow step 2 and put them in the SEO titles:
Rabbit Photography - Denver to Fort Collins & Colorado Springs
We would follow step 3 and claim our maps and social media profiles and
list on business directories.
We would follow step 4 and write more blog posts about the topic. Making
sure the page does not compete with the service page. It needs to target
completely different keywords.
For the main locations of Denver, Fort Collins & Colorado Springs it could
take a year to get to the first page of Google and you just need to keep doing
step 3 and 4.
However, for the locations that are in the footer but not in the SEO titles;
Littleton, Loveland, Aurora, Greeley, Longmont, Boulder
The website may only get to the second or third page of Google or maybe
not even that.
After about six months you might need a new page for each service and
location that is not yet ranking on the first page of Google.
It is best that these pages have different content. (not just copied with the
city names replaced)
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography-aurora/
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography-littleton/
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography-boulder/
We use the format above because in this example the Home page is the
main page we are targeting for the pet photography keywords. So there is no
jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography page

So the URLs for these location pages can not be:

jewelspetphotography.com/pet-photography/aurora etc
However, if it was the
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/
page then the URLs could be:
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/aurora/
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/littleton/
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/boulder/
Adding all these pages could be a big expense for the business owner, so it
is a last resort. If step 1 to 4 work, it is also unnecessary. If you start at step
5 and create all the extra pages and they are not needed, it could harm the
website. Because if the keywords are not competitive, Google will see a lot
of unnecessary site content that it will never show anyone. Plus, it would be
a waste of money.
So do step 1 to 4 first and give it 6 months and then do step 5 with any
pages that need it.
Remember the tortoise and the hair story. Apply that.
 EXAMPLE 4 – PROVIDES MANY SERVICES IN MANY
LOCATIONS TRAVELLED TO

Where the photographer provides pet photography, newborn and kids

photography, family photography and portrait photography services in
Denver, down to Colorado Springs and up to Fort Collins, Colorado USA.

Example domain names:

jewelsphotography.com or
jewelsphotographydenver.com or
familyphotographydenver.com or
jewelsfamilyphotography.com
As the word family encompasses pets and portraits you could also use this
in the domain name as the umbrella they all fall under.

If the domain has the location and or photography in it the website will rank
faster for any keyword phrases containing these.

For example, jewelsphotography.com is a mobile photographer providing

six services from Denver up to Fort Collins and down to Colorado Springs.

Jewels Photography

All services
 Pet Photography
NewBorn Photography
Baby Photography
Kids Photography
Family Photography
Portrait Photography

Main Location
Denver, Colorado USA

Other locations we service with main ones highlighted

Fort Collins Colorado Springs

Loveland Aurora
Greeley Littleton
Longmont Boulder
Jewels Photography, Denver up to Fort Collins and down to Colorado
Springs
URL Structure
The home page URL can be more generic and the internal pages all be used
to target the services

For example:
jewelsphotography.com
In this case the home page could be used to target the brand keywords
“jewels photography”

Service page URLS

We want to create pages to target the other keywords people search for
I create the main service page URL’s like this:
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/family-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/newborn-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/kids-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/baby-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/portrait-photography/
I do Not create URLs like this
jewelsphotography.com/services/pet-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/photography/kids-photography/
Other Service pages
There are six main services and each of them have other sub-services.
Service 1
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/
We could add the sub-services like this;
jewelsphotography.com/animal-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/cat-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/kitten-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/puppy-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/rabbit-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/horse-photography/
This is the best option if sub-services have the same or more monthly
searches then the main service.
For example if “pet photography” has 100 searches a month and all the sub-
services have 100 or more searches a month.
or like this
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/animal-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/cat-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/dog-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/kitten-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/puppy-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/horse- photography/
This is the best option if sub-services have a lot less monthly searches then
the main service.
So if “pet photography” has 1000 searches a month and all the sub-services
have 100 or less searches a month.

Why?
Because if we make all these sub-services a child page of the pet
photography page we tell Google that the pet page is the most important.
This gives it more power and makes it more likely to rank higher. Since it
has 1000 searches a month we want it to rank higher.
Google Keyword Planner results

Let's look at the actual results for Denver.

You can see that pet and dog photography have more searches than the
others.

So the structure I would most likely use would be

jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/animal-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/cat-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/kitten-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/horse-photography/

jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/
jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/puppy- photography/
How do we target the other locations?

Jewels Pet Photography

Main Location
Denver, Colorado USA
Other locations we service with main ones highlighted
Fort Collins Colorado Springs
Loveland Aurora
Greeley Littleton
Longmont Boulder
This depends on:

1. How competitive the industry is

2. How long the location names are

1. How competitive the industry is

For low competition locations (less than 10 competitors), I can rank on the
first page of Google just by listing them in the footer. That is, by literally
writing the locations in the footer. I can then rank for that location with any
of the services listed on the website. This is great because it saves loads of
money for the business owner compared to having to write a page for every
location and service (see Chapter 4 - Footer Widgets).
2. How long the location names are
The SEO titles are powerful in local business. If we put the location in the
SEO title, we have a good opportunity to rank for it. The problem is that
you can only fit a few locations in the SEO title. The longer the location
names are, the less you can put in a title. We will cover this in more detail in
Chapter 6.
Steps to rank for the locations you travel to

Step 1
The first thing I do is put the locations in the footer (see technical
instruction in Chapter 4 – Footer Widgets).
I would list the locations in the footer like this:
We service: Denver, Fort Collins, Littleton, Loveland, Aurora, Greeley,
Colorado Springs, Longmont, Boulder
In some cases, this is enough to have the website rank for all services in all
locations.
Therefore, if someone searches “dog photographer aurora” the Dog
Photography page would show up in Google, or if they search for “horse
photographer boulder” the horse photography page would show up. If this is
all you need, happy days!
Step 2
We can also put locations in the SEO page titles. This works well but you
only have limited space of 600px.
This dotted line below is 600px wide
………………………………………………………………………… ...
(more on this in Part 6)
Home Page SEO Title
Jewels Photography - Denver to Fort Collins & Colorado Springs
Choose the locations where it is most likely that people will want your
services. Or the largest locations population wise.

Dog Page SEO Title

Dog Photography - Denver to Fort Collins & Colorado Springs
Always put the most important keywords first in the SEO title. So if
Colorado Springs is the one you want to rank the most you put it where
“Denver” is.
See how the length of the location name impacts the titles
Pet Photography - Denver to Fort Collins & Colorado Springs
Vs
Pet Photography - Tyne, Fisher, Lottie, Noosa, Devon, Oslo, Rome
You can see in the first example above that we can get in four place names.
In the second example, I have used four- and five-letter made up locations
and we can squeeze in seven locations. So, it really depends on whether you
are lucky enough to have short place names.
Step 3
Use the ongoing SEO in chapter 8 and 9 to build backlinks to the website.
Especially links in business directories as these tell Google your location.
You can put your home address and tell Google that you travel to visit a
client. Therefore Google is likely to rank you higher for Denver and all the
surrounding locations.
Step 4
Add more blog posts about the photography services and locations that you
most want to rank.
For example, imagine “rabbit photography Colorado Springs” is not ranking
on the first page of Google. Write 2-3 blog posts on rabbit photography. We
DO NOT want the blog post to target the keyword “rabbit photography
arvada”. Instead we want them to help the service page rank higher. So the
blog posts need to be about rabbits but not compete with the service page.
So the blog post topics could be
What do rabbits love to eat?
jewelsphotography.com/rabbit-photography/what-rabbits-love-eating
How to look after a pet rabbit?
jewelsphotography.com/rabbit-photography/looking-after-pet-rabbits
In the first paragraph of the blog post I would link to the rabbit photography
page jewelsphotography.com/rabbit-photography/ within a sentence like
this;
At Jewels pet photography we have found that rabbits love eating …….
When we are taking rabbit photos in Fort Collins we can get them to sit still
and take great photos.
or
In this blog we look at the many ways you can care for a pet rabbit. As we
do a lot of rabbit photography in Colorado Springs people often ask how to
get the most shiny coat for the photos.
The text that is underlined is the text that links to the
jewelspetphotography.com/rabbit-photography/ page. This text is called
anchor text. It tells Google that the page you are linking to is about rabbit
photography in Fort Collins or Colorado Springs. You have also increased
the content on your website about rabbit photography and therefore are seen
as more of an authority on this.
Step 5
If there is a lot of competition, we may need to create a page for a specific
service for each location.
For example, we would do step 1 and put the locations in the footer :
We service: Denver, Fort Collins, Littleton, Loveland, Aurora, Greeley,
Colorado Springs, Longmont, Boulder
We would follow step 2 and put them in the SEO title:
Dog Photography - Denver to Fort Collins & Colorado Springs
We would follow step 3 and claim our maps and social media profiles and
list on business directories
We would follow step 4 and write more blog posts about the topic. Making
sure the page does not compete with the service page. It needs to target
completely different keywords.
For the main locations of Denver, Fort Collins & Colorado Springs it could
take a year to get to the first page of Google and you just need to keep doing
step 3 and 4.
However, for the locations that are in the footer but not in the SEO titles;
Littleton, Loveland, Aurora, Greeley, Longmont, Boulder
The website may only get to the second or third page of Google or maybe
not even that.
After about six months you might need a new page for each service and
location that is not yet ranking on the first page of Google.
It is best that these pages have different content. (not just copied with the
city names replaced)
jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/loveland/
jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/littleton/
jewelsphotography.com/dog-photography/boulder/
However, if it was the
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/
page that you want to rank for “rabbit photography loveland” etc then the
URLs could be:
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/loveland/
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/rabbit-photography/littleton/
jewelsphotography.com /pet-photography/rabbit-photography/boulder/
Adding all these pages could be a big expense for the business owner, so it
is a last resort. If step 1 to 4 work, it is also unnecessary. If you start at step
5 and create all the extra pages and they are not needed, it could harm the
website. Because if the keywords are not competitive, Google will see a lot
of unnecessary site content that it will never show anyone. Plus, it would be
a waste of money.
So do step 1 to 4 first and give it 6 months and then do step 5 with any
pages that need it.
Remember the tortoise and the hair story. Apply that.
 LAYOUT OF NAVIGATION

A basic layout is usually

Home About FAQ Services Blog Contact
Service
Service
Service
Service

Other tabs you could have

Quote/Estimate
Our Team
Testimonials
Products

About Page

The about page doesn’t need to be optimised for keywords other than the
business name and the word “About”. People very rarely search for
information about a business.
But this page can make a huge difference to the number of people that
contact you.

SEO Title – About: Business Name

The “About” page is one of the most popular pages for people to go to once
they reach a website. That is, they land on the website and the next page
they visit is the About page.
Let me emphasise that.

People will search in Google and find the website using various keywords.
At this stage, they land on the website service page or a blog post or
product page. They now know this business provides the service/product
they’re looking for. But they do not know anything about the business. Who
is the business owner, what do they stand for, what are their philosophies
and values?

Some people will contact you without going to the about page. But other
people have most likely never heard of it before and will feel they don’t
know anything about this business. So the next page they go to is the
“About” page. From here they will decide whether they want to contact you
or not.
You have probably heard that people need to know, like and trust you
before they want to buy from you.

Well, the “About” page is the business owner’s chance to create what we
are told all businesses need – the opportunity for clients to “know, like and
trust” you.
What should be on the About page?

what the business stands for

its philosophy
who the people in the business are and what experience they have
why the business owner started the business
when the business started and the benefits of that
any charities or organisations they support
The potential client wants to know they can trust the business and feel a
connection to the business owner and what they stand for.

FAQs Page

Again, this is not a page people search for. However, they may search for
answers to questions that are on the page.
SEO Title – FAQs about “Business topic”
This page is an opportunity to write out all the questions potential clients
ask the business owner.
This serves two purposes:

1. It helps to answer the objections potential clients might have and

therefore make them feel comfortable to contact the business.
2. The questions and answers from your website may appear in a
Google knowledge graph.

If the business owner can’t give you a list of questions and answers, you
can find questions by typing things into Google or going to
https://answerthepublic.com/ .
Google

If I type ”How do I prepare my dog for a photoshoot” into Google. This is

what comes up
So the website dogsbestlife.com has answered this question so well that it
appears at the top of the searches in Google’s knowledge graph.

If you put a great answer on your FAQ page Google may select this for their
knowledge graph.

Answer the Public

https://answerthepublic.com/
It might be hard to see in the diagram below, but I typed in the word “pet
photos” and there are questions like:

how to display pet photos?

how to sell pet photos?
how to take better pet photos?
where to submit pet photos?

Services Page

The services would drop down from the “Services” tab on the navigation.
For example:

Pet Photography
NewBorn Photography
 Baby Photography
Kids Photography
Family Photography
Portrait Photography

The “Services” tab could just be a placeholder and clicking on it takes you
nowhere.

The “Services” tab could link to a page with a summary of each service,
where each service links to its relevant page. This page will get very little
traffic so is not useful for SEO, but could be useful for people already on
the website who want to see all the company’s services on one page. This
page could be set to “noindex” if it has minimal content.

Blog Page
In some photography businesses, a blog can be very effective for SEO. In
others, it’s more helpful for social media and may help indirectly with SEO.
WordPress has blog capability as standard. I think it’s always best to format
the blog pages as that will be useful to most businesses in some way.

I have done keyword research and added a list of blog post ideas for each
type of business.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hmsQtG9KTr058qRpaUinswsXtiz
-IHVfYNkmZmYMeTY/edit?usp=sharing

In some cases there may be very few blog writing options and in others
there is hundred’s.

Social Media and SEO

You can also use social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) to promote the
blog post and help SEO indirectly as:

1. It brings people to the business owner’s website directly from the

social media link.
2. It brings people indirectly. For example, a potential client might see
a Facebook post by the photographer, then go to Google and search
 “Jewels Photography” to see whether it comes up and what other
choices they have for photographers.

Both may indirectly help SEO, as long as people stay on the website and
don’t immediately click away.
Other things to consider

Some blog posts work well for SEO and on social media. This only happens
if people search for the topic in Google and it has a wide appeal on social
media. For example, “how to take pet pictures?”
Wide appeal

For example, in December, “where to get pet photos with santa” will get
lots of Google traffic and social media will love it.

Throughout the year, “How to edit pet photos” will get lots of Google
traffic. Anyone who follows you on social media and has a pet could be
interested. Anyone thinking of getting a pet might see it on social media
and be interested.

Narrow appeal

Some SEO posts are targeted at an extremely specific question or

information for a specific issue that might get little interaction on social
media, but will get lots of traffic from Google.
For example, “real estate drone photography” is a keyword phrase people
type into Google when they want this. But if you post it on social media, it
will only be relevant to people who want to sell. It can still be great to post
on social media but may not get a lot of interaction.
Social only

Some blog posts that are great for social media, such as “Meet our new
office cat”, will not help SEO as no one searches for that. Posts about new
staff and animals etc usually get lots of interaction and help to build trust
and keep people informed. However, no one will type anything into Google
that will take them to this blog post.
Contact Page

People don’t search using the word “contact”. They might in a voice search,
but if they do it will be to contact something specific. The SEO title only
needs the words “contact” and the business name and maybe the location/s

We do not want to optimise the contact us page for any of the main
keywords. Why? Because we do not want people to be taken straight from
Google to a contact us page. People want to read some information first.
Example SEO Title – Contact: Jewels Photography

The contact us page will be covered further in Chapter 6.

Settings → Permalinks

Warning – If the website is live in Google do not make a change to this

unless you are willing to redirect every current post on the site to the
new URL.
You could lose significant traffic and rankings if you change the
permalink settings without redirecting the old to new URLs.
If the website will have 10-20 blogs or more and at least 2-3 blogs under
each category, ideally I would use /%category%/%postname%/.
I often give the post categories the same URL as a service page so that you
effectively silo the posts.

For example:
jewelsphotography.com/pet-photography/how-to-take-pet-photos

In this case the /pet-photography / would be the service page URL and
also the URL of the blog category.
However, if the site will only have a few blogs on topics that are different
from the service pages, and will not fall under a service page category, then
just using /%postname%/ is fine. The only problem with this is that Google
may rank your blogs higher than your service page.

Once again changing this can seriously impact your site. So do not
change this until you have worked through the first five chapters of this
book and mapped out all the pages and URLs
 CHAPTER 6. ON-PAGE SEO FOR
PAGES, BLOG POSTS, PRODUCTS,
RECIPES, ETC

This chapter takes you through the one-off set up tasks for Pages, Blogs,
Products and Recipes.
These tasks ensure the website needs far fewer links to rank in Google,
therefore saving the photographers lots of money.

These tips will help ensure the website doesn’t have thin content or
duplicate content, both of which hinder whole website rankings.

Thin content is when there are less than 200 words on a page, and you
have multiple pages with less than 200 words. Sometimes you won’t even
know these exist as they are theme pages.

Duplicate content is when you have the same content on multiple website
pages, or you have the same content as that found on another website.

The information in the next section will help Google know exactly which
pages to show people, therefore increasing relevance and lead conversion.
 A. SETTING UP SEO PLUGINS

95% of my clients’ websites are in WordPress, so I am going to run through

how to use the Yoast SEO plugin as an example. This is the one I have
years of experience with. I know it inside-out and I know it works.
RankMath is also getting lots of positive feedback but I have never used it.
If I work with RankMath I will update the book to include information on
that.

Note: if you use a CMS other than WordPress, then research online to find
equivalent options for that platform. Or contact me via
https://www.largehope.com/ebook-contact-us/ if you’d like me to do a video
on how to use the SEO functions on your platform.
Yoast SEO is always changing
Go to this video playlist to see the latest video for Yoast SEO.
You should also be able to find a video with your version of Yoast SEO
General things to look for in Yoast

Indexing
Under “Search Appearance” then “Content Types”, you can set whether a
post, page, category, product, and testimonials are to be shown in search
results or not.
In the past it was under “Titles & Metas”
This is very important to set up correctly to make sure you are only
indexing pages relevant to Google.
Often a site will have testimonials, team, portfolio and sometimes more
sections.
If we use testimonials as an example, we find that all the testimonials will
show on the testimonials page. But a separate page will also be created for
each testimonial.

This creates what is called duplicate content. The same content is on the
main testimonials page and also a page by itself. It also creates thin content.
A page with less than 200 words may be considered thin content. A part of
the Google algorithm (originally called the Panda update) will demote your
site if it has lots of thin content.

In practice, I have seen sites with loads of thin content. When I ask Google
to stop indexing all the thin content pages there is a significant jump in
rankings.
Make sure to watch the relevant video to see what to do on your site.
XML sitemap
In the latest versions, this is under “General” then “Features” and it is
created automatically based on which sections are indexed under “search
appearance”. Click on the “?” to access a link to the sitemap.
In past versions, you had to manually set up the sections you wanted in the
XML sitemaps.

The XML sitemap is the one to submit to Google and Bing etc Search
consoles. It is not for the general public or clients to look at. You can also
create a sitemap page that shows links to all the important pages. This is
usually called the HTML sitemap and is created for people and website
visitors. There is often a link to the HTML sitemap in the footer of the
website.

Cornerstone Content
Under “General” then “Features”. Read about how this can help by clicking
the “?” For most local businesses, the service pages on the website will be
the cornerstone content.

We have already shown Google that these are important by linking from the
navigation menus in the top, footer and sidebar. Marking it as cornerstone
content allows you to go to the “pages” and see how many links go in and
out of these pages. Then you can increase links to – and reduce links out
from – the most important pages.

Knowledge Graph
Under “Search Appearance” and “General” set whether you are an
organization or a person
In the past, this was under “General” then “Company Info”.
Media
Ideally, you want to make sure image URLs do not create their own page.
This can also create thin content and demote the rankings of your whole
website.
Leave it to the default setting of “Yes”.
In past versions, I would tick “noindex” for the Media section under post
types.

Social
Add all your social profiles.
Set up extra bits for Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest if relevant.

Tools
The bulk editor can be used to easily edit SEO titles and meta descriptions.
 B. CONTENT WRITING

All content should be written so that people love it and want to read it. You
are better off getting someone who knows how to write in a way that
entertains and keeps people on the page than someone who says they
know how to add keywords or write for SEO.

As you can see from the previous chapters, SEO is so much more than
keywords on a page. You can rank for keywords even if they are not on a
page at all. So make sure the content is engaging because 95% of the
content on the page is more important for conversions than it is for
ranking a website.

It is vital that content:

1. Is easy to read - Yoast gives you a score

2. Is engaging
3. Covers all things that any competitors cover
4. Is a similar length or longer than competitors pages that rank for that
keyword
5. Is unique (no more than three words in a row to be the same as any
other page)
6. Uses headings to break up content
i. Content is easy to read

In Yoast SEO in WordPress, you are given a readability score.

The content writer could be given access to the development site and asked
to try and get a green face for the readability.
Yoast is only a tool, not a human reader. Their readability scores are good
for some content (simple topics, assuming a readership with average
reading ability), but less so for more complex topics where you’re assuming
a knowledgeable/educated readership. Adjusting your writing style to suit
your intended audience is key.
Also, if the text has lots of tables with short sentences the transition words
may not be able to get to 30%.
ii. Content is engaging

Having the business owner’s personality shine through on the page content
will help.
You can always send the business owner questions to answer.
Content can be written to entertain, sell, establish trust, demonstrate
expertise, educate and inform, and maintain loyalty.
iii. Content covers all the things that competitors cover

Look at all the business sites that rank on the first page of Google for the
main keyword phrase you are targeting. Make sure the page, post, product
etc that is being written for the new website covers what the competitors
cover, and more.
iv. Content is a similar length or longer than your competitor’s page
that ranks for the keyword

Copy and paste the competitor’s content in a word counter, see how many
words there are, and make sure yours is similar or longer. Although just
having longer content won’t help unless it is quality content.

v. Content is unique
If your content is copied from another site or is too similar to the content on
another site, it will hinder your site’s ability to rank. Use Copyscape to
check.

vi. Uses headings to break up content

One long chuck of writing is very difficult to read on a website. Many
people love to scroll up and down and read the part that is particularly
relevant to them. Headings provide a way to engage the reader.
 C. CONTENT CHECK

We want to make sure the content on the development site is unique.

First Check – Your Site Vs Other Websites

To check all the pages, posts, products etc

Go to https://www.copyscape.com
Use the development URLs eg dev.jewelsphotography.com to check that all
the content is unique compared to other websites. It will show duplicate
content in pink.
If you can rewrite the content, you ideally need to have no more than three
words the same in a row. Make changes to the content and re-check straight
away.
In some cases, duplicate copy may be a quote or something that legally
needs to be written the way it is. In this case, you should reference the
source. Doing that tells Google you are using content from another site and
giving them credit.

Second Check – Your Site Vs Itself

To check within your site for internal duplicate content
Go to siteliner.com
Only do this when you’re not planning any more content changes. You can
only run the Siteliner test once a month.

Siteliner will count any pages that you have set to “noindex” as duplicate so
if you know it is a “noindex” page then it is fine.
Key Takeaway Message
Unique content has a massive advantage over copied content
 D. ON-PAGE OPTIMISATION
OVERVIEW

We will now look at how to specifically optimise the pages.

Firstly, I will go through a summary of each aspect. Then I will show you
an example of each aspect for the home page, location page, services
page, posts, recipes and products.

Many people think that putting the keyword phrase in the page is what you
do for SEO. If it was that easy, there would be no SEO agencies.

Places you can and should optimise with keyword phrases:

1. The Domain Name

2. The URL
3. The SEO Title (always put the most important keywords first)
4. The Meta Description
5. The Page and Post Titles
6. The Subheadings
7. The Content
8. The Image Alt tags and file names
The Domain Name

This was discussed in Chapter 1. The idea is to have at least one highly
relevant keyword in the domain name if possible.

The URL

This was discussed in Chapter 5, where we discussed putting services and

locations in the URL for the specific pages.

The SEO Title

From my experience, the SEO title is the most powerful place to put
keywords for local SEO – so choose wisely. This was discussed in Chapter
5.

The Meta Description

Google says the meta description does not help rankings. However, it is
believed to make a difference to how many people click through to your
website. People will read the meta description and click through if they see
a relevant word/sentence.

To get some ideas for meta descriptions go to Google and type in the main
keyword for the page. Have a look to see what people are writing in the ads,
especially in the top-ranking websites. Also look at what your organic
competitors put in their meta descriptions.

The Page Title

This is usually the H1. If possible, it should be a variation of the keyword

phrase used in the SEO title.
The Subheadings

These are the H2 and H3 headings above the paragraphs.

The Content

The content needs to be unique and interesting. Having the keyword just
once may be all that is necessary. I usually add the main keyword a few
times and secondary keywords once. I avoid writing a location keyword eg
“pet photography denver” into a sentence. Instead write something like
“Jewels Pet Photography based in Denver specialises in pet photos etc”.

If you stuff lots of keywords into a page it can actually harm your rankings.

The Image File Names and Alt Tags

Best practice is to make sure every image has a file name and alt text
describing the image that both contain a relevant keyword.

However, this is not always a priority. It really depends on what industry the
client is in and what the photo/image is of. Photo file names and alt tags are
most helpful if the image is of something relevant to the industry and
keyword phrase.

If you have a website about pet photography, you can put lots of images of
pets on a page. It is going to be very helpful to Google if all the image file
names and alt tags have relevant keywords. For example, “white poodle dog
photography”, or “black cat with white paws photos”. This will help to
optimise your pages. Google can show them in Google images and it may
even bring traffic to your website.

Because images can bring traffic to your website, they are great on a
photographers website. In your case your photos are the product.
If you put a picture of a dog on the cat photography page and the file name
says it’s a dog it will not be helpful to rank the cat page.
 I. EXAMPLE HOME PAGE

jewelspetphotographydenver.com

Being optimised for “pet photography denver ”, “pet photographer

denver ”, “pet photos denver ”

The Domain Name and URL

Contain the words “pet photography denver ”

The SEO Title

Could be:
“Pet Photographer - Denver, Lakewood, Arvada, Boulder, Littleton”
(limited space 600px)
Always put the most important keywords at the start.
You could put
“Jewels Pet Photography - Denver, Lakewood, Arvada, Boulder”
But Jewels is in the Domain name and can be in the meta description and
you will have less space for locations. But if Jewels is a well known brand
it could help click through to have it in the SEO title.
The Meta Description – as it’s the home page you could list all the
services
It could be
“Jewels Pet Photography specialise in taking stunning photos of your dogs,
cats, puppies, kittens, rabbits, horses and all your pets”

The Page Title – H1

Could be
“Pet Photoshoot”

The Subheadings – H2 and H3 etc

Could be
Professional Pet Photography
Pet and Owner Photoshoot
Awesome Pet Photos
Pet Photography Studio
Pet Photography Pricing / Packages
etc

The Content
Scatter the keywords in the content at least once. Avoid using the location
attached to the keyword if it makes it hard to read. These are the phrases
you would actually put in the content:

pet photography
pet photographer
pet photos
Denver

When you have used each of these once in the content you can use them
again if you need to, but only where it makes sense to do so. Don’t overuse
them just for the sake of it and make it hard to read. You need to avoid
keyword stuffing as Google does not like that.

The Image Alt tags

Use images of pet photography so you can add keywords to the file name
before uploading and to the Alt tag when uploaded.

File name – striped-cat-pet-photography.png

Alt tag – cat pet photography denver
 II. EXAMPLE SERVICE PAGE

jewelspetphotographydenver.com/dog-photography/

Being optimised for:

dog photography denver
dog photographer denver
dog photos denver
dog photoshoot denver

The Domain Name

Contains the words “photography denver”

The page URL

Contains the words “dog photography”

The SEO Title

Could be:
“Dog Photographer - Denver, Westminster, Broomfield, Centennial”
(limited space 600px).
Always put the most important keywords at the start.

The Meta Description

Could be:
“Jewels Dog Photography specialise in taking stunning photos of your
dogs, and puppies. Including dogs with owners and portraits”

The Page Title – H1 should be different to the SEO title

Could be:
“Dog Photoshoots ”

Note: I use Dog Photoshoots here, Dog Photography in the URL and Dog
Photographer in the SEO title to mix it up.

The Subheadings – H2 and H3 etc

Could be:
Professional Dog Photos
Dog Portrait Photography
Dog and Owner Photoshoot
Dog Studio Photography
The Content
Scatter the keywords in the content at least once. Avoid using the location
attached to the keyword if it makes it hard to read. These are the phrases
you would actually put in the content:

dog photography
dog photographer
dog photos
dog photoshoot
denver

When you have used each of these once in the content you can use them
again if you need to, but only where it would make sense to do so. Don’t
overuse them just for the sake of it and make the content hard to read.

The Image Alt tags

Use images of dog photoshoots you have done. Add keywords to the file
name before uploading and to the Alt tag when uploaded.

File name – dog-with-camera-photoshoot-denver.png

Alt tag – denver dog photography
 III. EXAMPLE BLOG POST

Remember that the blog needs to add extra value and be about topics that
are interesting. We do not want to write blog posts that compete for the
service pages keywords.

Topic: How do I prepare my dog for a photoshoot

jewelspetphotographydenver.com/dog-photography/prepare-dog-for-
photoshoot/

Go to Google and find other phrases that are similar that people search for.
Or use the Google Keyword planner or Answer the public

Being optimised for:

How do I prepare a dog for a photoshoot
How do you teach a dog to pose for pictures
How do you give a dog a photoshoot

The Domain Name

Contain the words “photography ”
The Page URL
Contain the words “prepare-dog-for-photoshoot ”

The SEO Title

Could be:
“How do I Prepare my Dog for a Photoshoot? Denver Photography”
…………………………………………………………………………...
(limited space – use Yoast to check. Or even better the Moz title tag tool
https://moz.com/learn/seo/title-tag ).

The Meta Description

Could be:
“Learn how to prepare a dog for a photoshoot, teach them to pose for
pictures and make sure you both have an enjoyable experience”

The Page Title – H1 should be different to the SEO title

Could be:
“Preparing Your Dog for A Photoshoot”

The Subheadings – H2 and H3 etc

Could be:
How to prepare a dog for a photoshoot (slighty different version of the main
keyword)
How do you teach a dog to pose for pictures
How do you give a dog a photoshoot
etc
The Content
Scatter slightly different versions of the keyword phrases in the content at
least once.

For example
Many people ask me “ How can I prepare my dog for a photoshoot? ”
From years of doing photo shoots with dogs …………

People also ask us “ How to get a dog to pose for photos? ” We advise
………

If you want to give your dog a photoshoot we recommend

The Image Alt tags

Use images with dogs so you can add keywords to the file name before
uploading and to the Alt tag when uploaded.

File name – dog-photoshoot-preparation-with-stuffed-toys.png

Alt tag – Preparing a dog for a photoshoot at home
 IV. PRODUCT OPTIMISATION

Some photographers might sell a few products or sell their own photos.

For example

photography course
photography equipment
props used in photo shoots
etc

Their service is their main source of income and they mostly provide these
products to current clients. There is also a possibility that someone may
search for these products and then become a service client. For example,
they may think they want to do a photography course, but when they see
everything involved in the process, decide to hire a photographer instead.

If you are using WordPress, you could use a plugin like WooCommerce to
create an online store.

a) For Websites With One or Two Products

If the business only sells one product then you could just create a page for
it.
jewelspetphotography.com/photography-course/
or
jewelspetphotography.com/shop/photography-course/

Optimise it for whatever is relevant, for example:

online photography course
beginners photography course
pet photography course
denver photography course
etc

Be sure to specify it if you only want to deliver to a limited location or if it

is online.

The Domain Name

In this example, the domain name contains photography

The Page URL

Contains the words “photography-course”
The SEO Title
Could be:
“Pet Photography Course Online: Learn to be a Pet Photographer ”
…………………………………………………………………………...
(limited space 600px).

The Meta Description

Could be:
“This online pet photography course teaches beginners to become a pet
photographer as a business or for your pets social media profiles”

The Page Title – H1 should be different from the SEO title

Could be:
“Pet Photography Masterclasses”

The Subheadings – H2 and H3 etc

You could use subheadings if the product description is long enough.

The Content
Scatter the exact version of the relevant keywords in the product description
at least once. (except for location keywords)

Our pet photography course is a beginners photography course designed

for anyone who wants to get better at pet photography. We may have in
person workshops one day in Denver but due to Covid we have created this
as an online photography course so you can access it from anywhere in the
world.

The critical thing is to write a unique description for every product. If you
are selling someone else’s product, don’t just copy and paste the
manufacturer’s content. Describe the product as if you are doing a review
covering all the things that are great about it and why. If it is a high-priced
item, make sure to say why it is better than cheaper options. Talk about who
it is designed for. Videos showing the product in action can also be very
useful.

The Image Alt Tags

The images are very important on a shop page because:
 1. People search in Google Images to find products
2. People can pin the images on social media and share them

As this is an online product people will probably not search in Google

images for it.
File name – photography-course-online.png
Alt tag – Beginners Photography course online
b) For Websites With a Shop

When it comes to a shop page (unlike a services page) people do search for
shop keywords. In this case, it is a good idea to have a shop page listing all
the products and separate pages for each product.

Shop Page URL could be:

jewelspetphotography.com/shop/ or
jewelspetphotography.com/products/

Product Category:
jewelspetphotography.com/product-category/photography-courses/
jewelspetphotography.com/product-category/photos-for-sale/
jewelspetphotography.com/product-category /dog-cat-collars/
jewelspetphotography.com/product-category/cameras/
jewelspetphotography.com/product-category/photoshoot-equipment/
etc

Product URLs could be:

jewelspetphotography.com /shop/pet-photography-course/
jewelspetphotography.com/shop/portrait-photography-course/
jewelspetphotography.com/shop/pink-diamonte-cat-colar/
jewelspetphotography.com/shop/photoshoot-studio-lighting/
etc

Optimising Shop Pages

jewelspetphotography.com/shop/

It depends on what the shop contains as to how you optimise it. In this case
we will assume they sell a pet photography course and photos on canvas

Being optimised for:

Pet Photography Course and Pet Photos on Canvas

The Domain Name

Contains the words “pet” and “photography”.

The page URL

Contains the words “shop”.

The SEO Title

Could be:
“Buy Pet Photos on Canvas and Photography Courses Online”
…………………………………………………………………………...
(limited space 600px).

The Meta Description

Could be:
“Jewels Pet Photography shop currently allows you to buy your pet photos
on canvas and we also have a pet photography course”

The Page Title – H1 should be different from the SEO title

Could be:
“Pet Photos and Photography Shop”

The Subheadings – H2 and H3 etc

Would usually be the products or the product categories that are
automatically generated.

The Content
The shop content is usually made up of all the products or all the product
categories. So there is usually very little written content on a shop page.
Google does not expect to see a lot of content so that is fine.
The Image Alt tags
The images are very important on a shop page because:

1. People search in Google Images to find products

2. People can pin the images on social media and share them

If the page is a list of products, it will draw in the data from the products.
If the page is a list of categories, you can optimise the category image.

Optimising the Product Page of a Shop

jewelspetphotography.com/shop/cat-photos-on-canvas/

See the guide for the single product above.

Optimising the Product Category of a Shop

jewelspetphotography.com/product-category/photography-courses/

Only optimise these if you have more than three products in the category.
If not, it’s best to just leave them set to “noindex”.

Use the same guidelines as above.

 E. THEME PAGES AND IMAGES

Sometimes the WordPress theme gives you demo data, content and images.
We need to remove all theme content that is not being used for the website.
Otherwise, we get content indexed in Google that has nothing to do with the
website. This brings the overall power of the website down.
I once saw a site that was about financial planning but was built on a
coffee shop theme. It had 150 pages indexed in Google and only 10 were
about financial planning. The rest were the coffee shop theme pages
and images. Don’t let this happen!!!!!
To check the content indexed in Google go to Google and type in
site:yourdomainname.com
Make sure there are no spaces.
For example with my website below there are 41 results to check
I would need to click on all 41 results to make sure it is a page I am happy
for Google to show to people
 CHAPTER 7. LIVE SITE CHECKS

Ok, so you have done everything in Chapters 1- 6 and the time has come to
either set the website status to live if it’s a new website or a redesign. (If it
is I highly recommend you use the SEO Migration Checklist book as a back
up) Otherwise the site was always live and these will be to recheck.
These critical checks will help make sure all your hard work pays off.
 A. LIVE INDEXING – CRITICAL CHECK

If this is a new website or redesign read on otherwise go to number 2. In

Chapter 1, I asked you to block the development site from Google while it
was being built. This is critical for SEO to get off on a good foot.

We had to block Google while the site was being developed. But now the
new site is live we need to give Google full ability to find the website. If
you leave the site set to “noindex”, it would be like building a shop in a
backstreet and putting a massive cover over it so no one can see it or access
it.

First check if the development site has accidentally been indexed.

Go to the Google search bar and type in:

site:https://www.your-development-website-url.com
(make sure there are no spaces and that the “site:” text is in lower case)

Does anything come up?

If it says “Your search - ……………. - did not match any documents” like
the image above then the site is blocked, which is great.

If it shows a list of pages that are indexed, you need to shut down the
development site or set it to “noindex”, so all the URLs are 404 or
“noindex”. Then use the Google Search Console tool to ask for all these
URLs to be removed.

See https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals as explained in

Chapter 1.

Set the New Real Site to “index”

Go to the backend of the new real live site.

You need to undo whatever you did in Chapter 1

In WordPress, go to:
Settings → Reading
Go in and untick "Discourage search engines from indexing this site"

Key Takeaway Message

We needed to block the site in development. But when the site is live you
need to unblock it or Google can not show your site to anyone.
 B. LIVE SITE SPEED

We know that the faster the site is, especially on mobile, the better it is for
the user. If it is better for the user, Google likes it more. Ideally, you want to
be as fast or faster than all the competitors for the business keywords.

Check Live Site Speed

1. Go To https://tools.pingdom.com/

Ideally, the load time for the nearest location to the business owner’s target
market should be around one second or less.

2. Crawl stats in Google Search Console show “Time spent downloading a

page (in milliseconds)”. It will take some time to gather this data, so you
will need to wait a few weeks to do this check.
1000 milliseconds is one second so ideally, you want it to look something
like it does above.

If you have done everything you can to increase the speed of the theme and
it’s still over one second, then consider changing your hosting company
(unless you know you have a very fast host).

Key Takeaway Message

Recheck the site speed now the site is live on the final hosting with all the
changes. If it is greater than 1 sec try and do everything you can to speed it
up. Check the competitors for your major keywords to see their speed. If
you can’t get under 1sec at least try to be faster than them.
 C. HTTPS AND SECURE SITES

Make sure the website shows a little lock next to the domain name on all
the main pages, so you know it is secure.

If it says "Not Secure", check with your web host.

 D. URL REDIRECTS

Make sure that all versions of the URL go to one URL.

If the main URL is https://www.bloomweddingphotography.com , all the

versions below need to 301 redirect to this version.

Type/paste them into Google and see what happens

http://www.bloomweddingphotography.com
http://bloomweddingphotography.com
https://bloomweddingphotography.com

Check your about page and other service pages and make sure they also
redirect so only one version of the url ever shows.
 E. FINAL COPY CHECK

https://copyscape.com

Use Copyscape to check any URLs you have not yet checked.
In some cases, duplicate copy may be a quote or something that legally
needs to be written the way it is. In this case you should reference the
source.

https://siteliner.com

Use Siteliner to check for internal duplicate copy.

Siteliner will count copy that you have set to “noindex” as duplicate, so if
you know it is “noindex” then it is fine.

Use Screaming Frog or a Similar Program

This will give you a list of all the URLs, SEO Titles and Meta/s, H1 and H2
Titles and lots more data so you can double-check the site.

https://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/seo-spider/
 F. DOUBLE CHECK THEME PAGES, POSTS AND MEDIA
LIBRARY

Double-check there aren’t any theme pages that have nothing to do with the
current site in the posts and pages sections. Move them to the trash. Also,
check the media library and remove any images from the original theme
that are not relevant to the site. Be careful here and only remove images you
are definitely not using.
 G. CHECK FOR DODGY SITE PAGES

Give the site one to two weeks to index all the pages.
Then use site:yourdomain.com

Double-check that Google is not indexing pages that are not useful to
people.
 CHAPTER 8. CLAIM THE BUSINESS
PROFILES

If you are a web developer you could offer this as an extra service if you
want to, or outsource it to someone else.
If you are a photographer with time then do this yourself for a big SEO
boost. If you have little time than outsource this.

This will give a website a significant boost in SEO and more website traffic.
 A. MAPS

These listings give you huge credibility as a real business.

Google My Business – https://www.Google.com/intl/en_au/business/

Create an account
Verify address - (You can use a home address and then set a service
area that you travel to. You can also mark the attributes as
“Appointment required” and the service options as online
appointments or onsite services) They will send you a post card or
call you to verify.
Add Photos
Fill out info and description
Name, Address, Phone number and Website
Service Area
Primary category and additional categories. At the time of
writing you can choose from 11 photography options
“Photographer”, “Wedding Photographer”, “Aerial Photographer”,
“Photography Service”, “Photography Studio”, “Photography
Institute”, “Photography Class”, “Photography Shop”, “Photo Lab”,
“Photo Agency”, “Photo Restoration Service”.
Hours
Services - if you are given the option
Attributes - Health and safety and service options
Description
Opening date
 Posts - Share content from your website in the posts section. They
expire every 7 days so make a note in your calendar.
Reviews - Request reviews by asking people to search your business
name in Google.

Bing Places – https://www.bingplaces.com/

You can import verified listings from "Google My Business".

Fill out every section you can

Apple Maps – https://mapsconnect.apple.com/

Fill out every section you can

 B. RELEVANT SOCIAL MEDIA SITES

These social media sites are very high authority sites. If you have a link
from a relevant high-authority site, it helps Google trust your website and
rank your website higher in Google.

Every social media site is also a search engine. So you can optimise your
social media profiles to help them come up in searches within the social
media platforms. But that is not my expertise. If anyone knows an expert in
social media platform SEO who might like to write a book on that contact
me.

Critical
The biggest direct SEO benefit is to add the link to your website in the
social media profile.
As a photographer you have a huge opportunity to get a big following on
social media just from posting your photos.
However many social media platforms can also indirectly help your website
SEO by bringing traffic to your website. To get traffic to your website from
social media there needs to be a link in the social media post that goes to
your website.

Six Main Social Media Platforms for Business

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/
Create a personal and business page and add the website link in your
profile.

Instagram posts do not allow you to link to website pages, which means
Instagram has limited direct SEO value other than the profile link.
However, as a photographer Instagram is a fantastic way to promote your
business.
This drives people to click your profile link and may indirectly help SEO.

Twitter
https://twitter.com/
Create a personal and business page and add the website link in your
profile.
Business Page:

1. Make a plan to post about every service on your website at least

once. Use hashtags with keywords so people can find it in the future.
2. When you do these tweets put a link to the service page in the tweet.
3. You can post photos on Twitter as well.

Facebook
https://www. facebook.com/
Create a personal and business page and add the website link in your
profiles.

As a photographer Facebook is an ideal place to grow an audience.

Adding links to pages on your website helps bring traffic and can indirectly
help Website SEO.
Business Page Posts
1. Make a plan to post about every service on your website at least
once. Use hashtags with keywords so people can find it in the future.
2. When you do these updates put a link to the service page in the
Facebook post description.
Pinterest
https://www.pinterest.com/
Create a personal and business page and add the website link in your
profile.
Pin every image that is on your website to relevant boards on both profiles.
This gives a link to your website from every image.

You can also upload images that are not on your website directly to
Pinterest and link to your website.
Again this can indirectly help website SEO by bringing more traffic to your
website.

LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/
Create a personal and business page and add the website link in your
profile.

LinkedIn is a great way to connect with other businesses in your industry

that may refer to you.
Business Page:

1. Make a plan to post about every service on your website at least

once. Use hashtags with keywords so people can find it in the future.
2. When you do these updates put a link to the service page in the
LinkedIn post description.

YouTube
https://www. youtube.com/
Create a business channel and add the website link in your profile. You can
also put links in the description of every video.
Photo Shoot Videos
You could make slideshow videos of every photo shoot. The people you did
the shoot for are likely to share this. The link in the video description could
go to the photoshoot page on your website. Or to the home page of your
website.

Service Videos - that link to a specific service page

Make a slideshow video for every service that you provide.
Put a link to the service page in the description of each video.
For example if you are a wedding photographer and you have done 10
weddings then make videos with a few photos from all 10 weddings but on
a specific service.

1. Pre Wedding Photography - link to the website page on Pre wedding

photography
2. Bridal portrait photography - link to the website page on Bridal
photography
3. Groom Photography - link to the website page on Groom
photography
4. Marriage Proposal Photography - link to the website page on
Proposal photography
5. Night Wedding Photography - link to the website page on Night
photography

etc etc

You can share all these videos on all the other social media platforms and
add them to your website. The links in the video descriptions.
Other Social Media Platforms for Photographers
Again you want to add a link to your website in the profile if possible.
Vero Social
Youpic
Flickr
Exposure.co
Steller Stories
Tumblr
Behance
 C. BUSINESS DIRECTORIES

Any Business Directories that Show Up When You Type Your Main
Keywords into Google

These sites are much lower authority than social media sites but are highly
relevant for a local business. They help Google trust you are a real business.

How to Find Them

For example, if your main keyword is “Wedding Photographer San
Francisco”, type it in the Google search.

Look at the first three to five pages of Google results to see which
directories and other sites come up
For this particular search, I found these 7 sites on the first page of Google:
https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/wedding-photographers-san-
francisco-ca
https://junebugweddings.com/vendors/ wedding-
photographers/california/san-francisco/
https://www.herecomestheguide.com/wedding-
vendors/category/photography/northern-california
https://www.fearlessphotographers.com/location/149/best-wedding-
photographers-san-francisco
https://www.weddingwire.com/c/ca-california/san-francisco-san-jose-
oakland/wedding-photographers/807-10-rca.html
https://www.expertise.com/ca/san-francisco/wedding-photography
https://www.peerspace.com/resources/best-wedding-photographers-san-
francisco/

So you want to make sure you are listed on any wedding directories that
show up on the first page of Google for your main keywords. Not only is it
important because then you are on the first page. It will also give you a link
to your website that will help your website rank higher.

When you list on these websites you will need to use the same:
Business Name
Address
Phone Number

on all the listings. This increases Google trust and therefore rankings.
We also use Brightlocal.com to find new listing opportunities for our clients
in the competitor links section.
Key Takeaway Message
Maps, social media and wedding specific directories will be a critical part
of your off site SEO to help you compete with other photographers.
 CHAPTER 9. IS ONGOING SEO
NEEDED? THREE STEP TEST

You now have awesome onsite SEO.

The web developer, photographer, or another company has claimed all the
profiles and maybe some directory listings.
But does the website need ongoing monthly SEO?

The Critical Questions are –

How many other websites are competing for this website’s keywords?

Who is going to do the ongoing SEO?

If you would like us to find an SEO specialist ideal for your circumstances
https://www.largehope.com/ebook-contact-us/
 THREE STEPS TO WORK OUT WHETHER YOU NEED
ONGOING SEO

Step 1.
Take your website’s main keyword for the home page and type it into
Google.
Step 2.
Click on all the results for the first five pages and open them in new tabs.
You want to see who is ranking.

Step 3.
Ignore any business directories.
Check where each business is located and count the number of business
websites.
If there are less than 10 real businesses competing for the location keyword
(that are actually servicing that location) then the website probably doesn't
need ongoing SEO.
If you have more than 10 real businesses competing for your keywords,
then you will need ongoing SEO. See the section for Ongoing SEO.
No – Website Doesn’t Need Ongoing SEO

Websites That Probably Won’t Need Ongoing SEO

The website has less than 10 real competitors for their main keywords.
For example, they are one of four food photographers in a Town.
Or one of seven pet photographers in a City.
Then the awesome onsite SEO along with claiming their profiles should be
enough to rank them on the first page of Google.
If they want even more business then adding relevant blog posts and
portfolios of their work to the website on an ongoing basis is always a good
idea.
Yes – Ongoing SEO Needed

Websites That Will Most Likely Need Ongoing SEO

If the website has more than 10 competitors in their location for their
keywords, then ongoing SEO will be needed. It can take a very long time to
rank for highly competitive keywords.

How much time needs to be spent on ongoing SEO?

If you paid someone to do your SEO, they are likely to charge $75-$175 per
hour. Let's say the average is $125/hr. If you did two hours of ongoing SEO
per week (75% backlink building and 25% blogging) you would be
investing roughly $1000 per month into your SEO. I would recommend at
least this amount of time for any business with more than 10 competitors.
In this case, you have a few options:

1. The web developer also does SEO for their clients.

2. Hand the SEO to an SEO company to build backlinks and write blog
posts and monitor SEO. Contact me if you want help finding
someone in your area who knows what they are doing.
3. The business owner builds backlinks and writes blog posts and
monitors their SEO.
4. The business owner outsources backlinking to a company like
BrightLocal and writes blogs and monitors their own SEO.
What you need to monitor as part of ongoing SEO

1. Organic traffic in Google Analytics.

2. 404 errors and issues in Google Search Console and Bing
Webmaster Tools.
3. Backlink issues from links you are not creating – I use SEMRush to
check toxic score of backlinks.
4. Keyword rankings – I use ProRankTracker.com but there are many
other options.
5. Competitor backlinking opportunities – using software like
BrightLocal, SEMrush, Moz.com, Ahrefs, and Linkody.
6. Are the backlinks being indexed in Google? Sometimes your
competitors may have links from sites that are live, but the links are
not indexed and so these links may not help.
7. Keyword research for new blog posts.

If you would like us to find an SEO specialist ideal for your circumstances
https://www.largehope.com/ebook-contact-us/
 ONGOING SEO PLAN FOR PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITES

Make sure you have claimed all the recommended profiles in Chapter 8.

I have listed the ongoing tasks in what I think is the order of importance.
1. Find your competitors links

Because links come and go this is something you want to be doing every
month. Even if it is just for 1-2 hours a month it can make a huge difference
over the long term.
Every website will have links going to it. There is software that can help
you see where your competitors have got links and you can get them too.
Use software like:
BrightLocal
SEMrush
Moz.com
Ahrefs,
Linkody.com
to find links your competitors have that you could also get.
For example, when you sign up with BrightLocal you enter your website
and you will get a list of;

1. Sites that you already have listings on

2. Sites that your competitors are on.

This makes it very easy to find new places to list your website and to get
links.

If you sign up with SEMrush or any of the other sites you can add your
competitors website directly and it will give you a list of their links.

The idea is that if both you and your competitor have a link from the same
website then you cancel out any advantage they have over you.

Directories often stop taking submissions. So if you get in early you can get
a listing that future photographers will not be able to get. Giving you an
advantage over them. SEO is a long game and it is in years 3-4 of SEO that
I see the exponential results because of this.

2. Blogging on your own website

In the photography industry there are lots of blogging opportunities.

You can see all the research I have done here with a large list of blog ideas
for each type of photography.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hmsQtG9KTr058qRpaUinswsXtiz
-IHVfYNkmZmYMeTY/edit?usp=sharing
If I have not covered your type of photography yet then please contact me
at https://www.largehope.com/ebook-contact-us/
If you are only able to write one blog a month that is better than nothing. In
your case the blog can be mostly photos so it will be much quicker than
other types of blog posts.
The more blogs you can write the more you have to share on social media
and the more chance you have of being found in Google.

I recommend that you put your main location in the SEO title for all your
blog posts as well.

For example if the keyword you are targeting is “winter wedding

photography” then this could be the title of the blog post. Or the title could
be “Winter Wedding Photography with Gina and Steve” or something like
that.
The SEO Title that you put in Yoast SEO could then be;
“Winter Wedding Photography San Francisco, California”

Go to Chapter 6c “Example Blog Post” to revise

Or watch this 30min video for how to do more keyword research for
blogging in general
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-CEsJNs1uU&t=1801s
3. Blogs That List Many Businesses in Your Industry
Do a Google search with your keywords using the word “best” before it.
See if any websites or blogs come up that you could contact to ask to be
listed.

For example
Google search: “best photographer denver”

These are the websites / blog posts that rank on the 1st page
https://www.expertise.com/co/denver/portrait-photographers
https://www.snappr.com/best-photographers/denver-co
https://www.peerspace.com/resources/best-denver-portrait-photographers/
https://www.yelp.com/search?
cflt=photographers&find_loc=Denver%2C+CO
https://www.fearlessphotographers.com/location/151/best-wedding-
photographers-denver-colorado
https://fromthehipphoto.com/
https://www.theknot.com/marketplace/wedding-photographers-denver-co
https://www.thumbtack.com/co/denver/ affordable-photographers/
https://junebugweddings.com/vendors/wedding-
photographers/colorado/denver/
4. Guest Posts on Relevant Websites That Could Also Bring Real
Traffic

Google search for photography guest posts, write for us etc.

You want to make sure you guest post on websites that your potential
clients might read

List of blogs on photography websites that accept guest posts;

https://www.writersincharge.com/photography-blogs-accept-guest-posts/
https://www.linkio.com/guest-posting-sites/photography-blogs/
https://www.bigguestposting.com/niche/photography/39/guest-posting
Guide to Guest Posts for Photographers
https://photodoto.com/guide-winning-guest-blogging-photographers/

5. Create accounts on websites that let you sell photos or display photos

This is only if you can sell the types of photos you take. This will give you
brand recognition and people may search for you in Google. Therefore
indirectly helping SEO. In some cases they may even let you link to your
website.
Do a Google search for “where to sell photography online”

Here are some blogs that list the top sites to sell from;
https://www.shopify.com.au/blog/how-to-sell-photos-online
https://enviragallery.com/best-places-to-sell-photos-online-and-make-
money/
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/places-sell-your-photos-online/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_image_archives

How to successfully sell photos (option 3 is from your own WordPress

website)
https://graphpaperpress.com/blog/sell-photos-online/

Do a Google search for “display my photos online”

Here are some blogs that list the top sites to display photos;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_image-sharing_websites
https://www.techlicious.com/guide/best-photo-sharing-sites/
https://www.photoblog.com/learn/best-photo-sharing-sites/
6. Create More Videos and Share on More Sites
Keep making videos on an ongoing basis.
Upload your videos to YouTube and other relevant video sites
https://beebom.com/video-sharing-sites/

YouTube
Vimeo
TikTok
Facebook
DailyMotion
Instagram
byte
Periscope
LBRY

7. Local Sponsorship
Sponsor a local club or organisation that has a website and will link back to
your website.

Ok, so you have reached THE END.

I really hope you get some fantastic results.

 FURTHER HELP

Paid Training Option

Request a one-on-one session
Can be recorded just for your private use.

Free Training Option

Request a video that will be put on YouTube and will help everyone.

SEO Done For You

If you would like us to find an SEO specialist to do the SEO for you who is
ideal for your circumstances https://www.largehope.com/ebook-contact-us/
 TOOLS I USE

Google Analytics – Free

To measure SEO results

Google Search Console – Free

To check for errors and look at keywords

Google Data Studio – Free

Reports
Brightlocal.com – Paid (free 14-day trial)
Citation and directory tracking

SEMrush.com – Paid (free 7-day trial)

Link assessment, AdWords comparison

ProRanktracker.com – Paid (free 7-day trial)

Rankings tracking

Moz.com – Paid (free 30-day trial)

Authority checking

Linkody.com – Paid (free 30-day trial)

If I need extra help to track and manage dodgy links
Note: some of these are affiliate links.
 GLOSSARY OF TERMS

301
301 redirect is used for permanent URL redirection . The 301 redirect is
considered best practice for changing users from HTTP to HTTPS .
404
The HTTP 404, 404 Not Found, 404 Page Not Found, or Server Not Found
error message is a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) standard response
code in computer network communications, to indicate that the browser was
able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what
was requested. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_404
Ahrefs
Online software to audit your website, explore competitors, research
keywords and backlinks – all in one place.
Alt Tag
Also known as "alt attribute" and "alt description," this is an HTML
attribute applied to image tags to provide a text alternative for search
engines.

Answer the Public

Online tool to find out what questions and queries your consumers have by
getting a free report of what they're searching for in Google.

Apple Maps
A website map service developed by Apple Inc. It provides directions and
estimated times of arrival for cars, walking, and public transportation.

Baidu
The Baidu search engine is about the fourth largest website in Alexa
internet rankings. It includes a Chinese search engine and a mapping
service called Baidu Maps .
Bing Places
Is a Bing portal that enables local business owners to add a listing for their
business on Bing.

Bing Webmaster
Tools to improve your site's performance in search. Get free reports, tools,
and resources.

Blog
A regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual
or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.
BrightLocal
Tool to track local SEO performance, boost local rankings, increase online
visibility, build citations, develop online reputation, and grow your
business.

Child Page
Subpage. A page that appears below the top-level pages in a website's
navigation. These pages often appear as dropdowns in a top navigation bar
or sidebar menu.
CopyScape
A free plagiarism checker. This software lets you detect duplicate content
and check whether your text is original.

Domain
Is what you call your website and ends in .com etc

Footer
The bottom section of a webpage is also known as a footer. This area
typically contains the name of the company or organisation that publishes
the website, along with relevant copyright information.
Google Analytics
Measure the traffic to your website from all sources. You can also set goals
to track and measure results.

Google Keyword Planner

Find keywords to use in your SEO or Google Ads campaigns.
Google My Business
A free business profile that usually pops up on the right when someone
searches your business name.

Google Search Console

A free tool provided by Google to help measure your site's search traffic
and performance. You can also detect and fix issues and problems.

Header
The webpage header typically includes the organisation's logo, and main
navigation bar. It’s often part of a template and the same across all website
pages.
Hosting Speed
The speed provided by your web hosting provider.

HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the underlying protocol used by the
World Wide Web and this protocol defines how messages are formatted and
transmitted, and what actions web servers and browsers should take in
response to various commands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol

HTTPS
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the
Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure communication
over a computer network and is widely used on the internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTPS

Linkody
Backlink tracker and monitoring tool to manage your link-building
campaigns.
Meta Description
The meta description is a snippet of up to about 155 characters – a tag in
HTML – which summarises a page's content. Search engines show the meta
description in search results mostly when the searched-for phrase is within
the description, so optimizing the meta description is crucial for on-page
SEO. https://yoast.com/meta-descriptions

Moz
Tool builder that makes SEO, inbound marketing, link building, and content
marketing easier.

Pro Rank Tracker

Comprehensive SEO rank tracking and reporting solution (SERP tracker).

No Index
Tells search engines that you don’t want a page to be indexed. So therefore
people can not find it be searching online.

Screaming Frog
This SEO Spider is a small desktop program (PC or Mac) which crawls
websites' links, images, CSS, script and apps from an SEO perspective.

SEMrush
Online visibility platform. Toolkit for online marketing specialists.

SEO
Search engine optimization is the practice of increasing the quantity and
quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results.
SEO Title
A title tag is the HTML element that specifies the title of a webpage. It is
the part that shows up in Google searches in Blue and helps both people and
Google to understand what a webpage is about.

Side Bar
A sidebar on your website helps site visitors navigate to other pages,
products, categories or web forms on your site. Can be on the left- or right-
hand side of the page.

Siteliner
Website analysis tool - it helps you find duplicate content, broken links and
more. It compares your site to other sites online.

Social media
Websites and applications that let users create and share content or
participate in social networking. For example Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter,
LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Snapchat.

SSL Certificate
Small data files that digitally bind a cryptographic key to an organisation's
details. When installed on a web server, it activates the padlock and the
https protocol (over port 443) and allows secure connections from a web
server to a browser. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_key_certificate
URL
A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed a web address, is
a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer
network and is a mechanism for retrieving it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL

Video sites
Websites such as YouTube and Dailymotion that let people upload and view
videos from all over the world.

Wayback Machine
A digital archive of the World Wide Web, founded by the Internet Archive,
a non-profit organisation based in San Francisco. Its founders, Brewster
Kahle and Bruce Gilliat developed the Wayback Machine with the intention
of providing "universal access to all knowledge" by preserving archived
copies of defunct webpages.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayback_Machine
WordPress
Online program where you can build a website or blog on WordPress.com.
Dozens of free, customisable, mobile-ready designs and themes. Or upload
the Wordpress.org files to web hosting and use as your CMS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPress

XML sitemap
An XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap is a text file used to detail
all URLs on a website. It can include extra information (metadata) on each
URL, with details of when they were last updated, how important they are
and whether there are any other versions of the URL created in other
languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitemaps

Yandex
The largest search engine on the internet in Russian, with a market share of
over 52%. The Yandex.ru home page is the fourth most popular website in
Russia. It also has the largest market share of any search engine in the
Commonwealth of Independent States and is the fifth largest search engine
worldwide after Google, Baidu, Bing, and Yahoo!.

Yoast SEO
Complete WordPress SEO plugin. It helps the technical optimization of
your site and assists with optimizing your content.

Other Sources:
https://makeupandbreakup.com/2020/07/07/a-to-z-of-search-engine-
optimization-seo-part-a/
https://www.oed.com/
 CONTACT THE AUTHOR

Hi, I’m Georgie Hope and I have been ranking local business websites for
10 years. Through research, testing, trial and error I have discovered
techniques that work time and time again.

I started SEO and web design from my bedroom back in 2009. I quickly
realised SEO was what I loved and decided to specialise in that. I have 2
cats that came along in 2011 and 2014 to join the business.
My background was in science/nutrition, sales repping and mortgage
broking. I did an internet marketing course in 2009 at 39 years of age and
never looked back.
SEO makes a huge difference to my client’s lives. It allows them to build a
business they love, support their families, hire staff and get more involved
in their communities.
I have always loved learning through reading books and via online courses.
I have a passion for education, so teaching thousands of people around the
world inspires me more than building a large SEO agency. That is why I am
giving you everything I know.

Georgie Hope
Business Owner
Large Hope SEO & Large Hope Publishing (previously Fruitful Online)
Personality Types XYZ - I’m fascinated by personality types and how they
influence the way people run their businesses. If you’d like to find out more
about your personality type, check out my other website.

Further Help
Paid Option – Request a one-on-one session . Can be recorded just for your
private use.
Free Option – Request a video that will be put on YouTube and will help
everyone.

If you would like us to find an SEO specialist to do the SEO for you who is
ideal for your circumstances https://www.largehope.com/ebook-contact-us/

PS Readers:
It means the world to me that you read my book. I know you could have
picked other books and so I am extremely grateful. I’d like to ask for a
small favour. Your feedback is very important to me. Would you be so kind
as to click here and find this book and leave an honest review on Amazon?
Thank you so much!
Have an awesome day,
Georgie Hope
I really hope this book added value to your business. If it did, it would be
great if you could share this book with other web developers (or
photographers who might want to do their own SEO). You can share it by
messaging them or posting this link on your social media:
https://amzn.to/2U6Qk9I
 CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/georgiehopeauthor/
YouTube - Georgie Hope SEO Training
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgiehope
Also
Twitter - https://twitter.com/LargeHopeSEO
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/largehopeseo/
Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com.au/LargeHopeSEO/
 FREE BOOKS

Get my SEO Migration Book for Free. If you ever get your website
redeveloped you will need this SEO migration book.
This book is designed to save business owners thousands of dollars in lost
business that can happen if the SEO is not transferred in a website redesign.

Get your Free Book

You’ll also get any relevant books for free in exchange for a review. You’ll
be notified about any new releases, giveaways, contests, cover reveals and
so much more.
 SEO EXCEL CHECKLIST

Go to the Free Google sheets checklist here

 REVIEW THIS BOOK

It means the world to me that you read my book. I know you could have
picked other books and so I am extremely grateful. I’d like to ask for a
small favour. Your feedback is very important to me. Would you be so kind
as to click here and find this book and leave an honest review on Amazon?

I really hope this book added value to your business. If it did, it would be
great if you could share this book with other web developers (or business
owners who might want to do their own SEO). You can share it by
messaging them or posting this link on your social media:
https://amzn.to/3sFnGvT If you have an Amazon affiliate account, you can
even get your own link and make some commission .
 OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

Find all my current books and those available for preorder on my

Georgie Hope Author Page

If you would like me to create an SEO book for a specific industry, contact me at
largehope.com/ebook-contact-us/