Photography keywords

In today's digital age, the ability to find and use the right keywords is essential for anyone who wants to succeed in photography. But with so many different terms and concepts to keep track of, it can be difficult to know where to start...

What are keywords?

Keywords are words or phrases used in your page or web content to help users find your content via search engines. Every major search engine has keywords, such as Google, Youtube, Pinterest, etc.

For the sake of this guide, we will be focusing on keywords and having users find your web content through the Google search engine.

Why are keywords important?

Keywords allow you and your web content to become discoverable.

Keywords are important to increase brand awareness, thought leadership, and revenue. Later in this guide, we’ll be diving into how the different types of keywords can specifically target each of these growth areas.

Before discussing how to choose the best keywords for your photography website, let’s examine the different types of keywords that exist.

Different types of keywords

There are two types of keywords in every search engine - short-tail keywords and long-tail keywords.

Definitions of words we will be using in this section:

• Search term: another name for a keyword
• Search volume: how many people type in that keyword on a monthly basis
• Keyword competition: how difficult it is actually to rank for that keyword
• Conversion rate: the number of users who land on your page divided by the number of users who convert by contacting you, buying a product, etc.

Short tail keywords

Short tail keywords are generally more broad keywords. These are search terms/keywords that usually only consist of one or two words.

Examples of short tail keywords include:

• Portrait photographer
• Wedding photographer
• Canon camera
• Skin retoucher

Short-tail keywords often have a high search volume, which means more people search for that keyword each month. With a higher search volume comes increased competition, which means it will be harder to “show up” for that keyword on Google.

Long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are search terms/keywords that contain 3 or more words. These keywords are often more specific, resulting in lower search volume but a higher conversion rate because they are more targeted.

Examples of long tail keywords include:

• Portrait photography in Los Angeles
• Miami wedding photography service
• Canon camera under $500
• Skin retoucher online service

Now that we’ve covered the two different types of keywords let’s dive into how to choose these keywords for your photography website and when to use either a short tail or a long tail keyword.

How to choose keywords for your photography website?

You want to target keywords with a high enough search volume so that people are actually looking for results, but you don’t want to pick a keyword that is too difficult, especially if you have a new website.

We’ll be touching on why this is so when we discuss the factors that affect keyword ranking. Choosing the right keywords for your photography website is very important.

The four areas you want to measure your keyword/search term against are what stage your keyword exists within the marketing funnel, the search intent behind the keyword, the keyword search volume, and the keyword difficulty/competition level.

1. Alignment with marketing funnel

If you have ever taken a marketing class or business course, you may be familiar with the marketing funnel. If not, no worries, I will explain the concept here.

This is the marketing funnel:

Starting from the top of the funnel all the way down to the bottom exists the awareness stage/top of the funnel, the consideration stage/middle of the funnel, and then the decision stage/bottom of the funnel.

The lower you go in the funnel, the higher the conversion rate.

Awareness stage/top of funnel

In the awareness stage, also known as top of funnel (TOFU), the goal is to attract a much larger audience with your keywords. In most cases, in order to successfully rank for top of funnel keywords, you will need to write blog content that specifically aims at ranking for that keyword.

The goal with this top of funnel content is to educate your audience on a specific topic, pain point, or need. These keywords are great at building brand awareness and thought leadership.

Short tail keywords are often top of funnel keywords and an example top of funnel keyword within the photography space is “headshot photography.” Using a free keyword tool (we’ll be discussing the various options later), we can see that the keyword “headshot photography” has a higher search volume of ~8,100 monthly searches:

If you look at what is ranking in the top 3 spots, you can see they are all blog content. This keyword is a perfect example of a short-tail keyword as well as an awareness stage/top-of-funnel keyword.

In order to rank for this keyword, you need to create a blog topic similar to what is ranking here and then understand the fundamentals of SEO to ensure your post has the optimal chance of ranking well.

These keywords often don’t lead to “bottom-of-funnel” conversions such as client bookings or product purchases because they are so “top-of-funnel,” but they are great at building brand awareness, thought leadership, and driving that initial traffic to your website.

So let’s say you write a blog on “20 Tips for Headshot Photography” and then when users land on your blog you have a tip sheet for how you approach headshot photography, the chances of users downloading that tip sheet is high.

Examples of other types of awareness stage/top of funnel keywords:

• Wedding photography
• Social media tips
• Photography lighting
• Wedding plan

Consideration stage/middle of funnel

Moving further down the funnel, we have our consideration stage/middle of the funnel keywords. This stage is often the most complicated because you are trying to cater to the users that are in the middle of the awareness and decision stage.

Often, it is considered that if a user landed on your top of funnel/awareness stage blog and downloaded a tip sheet or ebook if you had one, then they will be moved into the middle of the funnel.

So for example, let’s say you are a wedding photographer and you had a blog titled “10 Wedding Photography Tips” and on that blog, you promoted an ebook to pop up when users landed on the page titled “10 Secret Tips for a Successful Wedding.”

If a person were to download that ebook, they would now be considered in the consideration stage because they would be a “warmer lead.”

In this case, if your ebook downloads require a user to input their email address, then in your email newsletter/nurture campaigns, you can segment these users and promote more content that promotes your business.

The content you promote should continue to provide education but also start the process of positioning your product/service as the key to fulfilling their needs. In this case, capturing beautiful photos at their wedding so it can be a “successful wedding.”

In the photographer/artist industry, an example of a consideration stage keywords could be your location + best, such as “best photographers in Los Angeles”:

The results that show up for these keywords are often what is referred to as “directories,” where they are list-type articles. As you can see in the screenshot above, the companies ranking for this keyword include Yelp, Expertise, and Peerspace.

While unlike the top of funnel stage where you could produce blog content to have a chance at ranking for those keywords, your best bet when it comes to showing up in the consideration stage for your target audience is to ensure that you are listed somewhere on these directories.

So, for example, if I clicked on that Yelp or Expertise.com article, you should be on that list. Now, in order to actually get on those lists, you have to go to the directory and see how you get on it.

For example, if it’s Yelp, just ensure that you have a Yelp business profile, that your location is set as Los Angeles, and that you get good reviews. If it’s another site like Expertise.com, then try reaching out to them, stating that you are a Los Angeles photographer and that you would like to be considered for their list.

Since the consideration stage is often dominated by these “directories,” it’s best to have some form of gated content (content that requires an inputted email to download) on your top-of-funnel/awareness stage blogs and nurture them from there into the consideration stage.

To elaborate further, here’s an example of another type of consideration stage keyword that exists within other industries such as the software industries which is a “versus” keyword such as “MailChimp vs Convertkit.”

If you put yourself in this user's shoes, they aren’t at the top of the funnel/awareness stage because they already know who both companies are, but they are alson’t at the bottom of the funnel/decision stage. They are “considering” their options; that's why it’s the consideration stage.

Decision stage/bottom of funnel

The decision stage is at the bottom of the funnel. It is the stage that is most crucial for your revenue or sales numbers. The decision stage/bottom of the funnel is often associated with the long tail keywords.

These keywords have less search volume, but because they are highly targeted and specific, the conversion rate is a lot higher. An example of this keyword in the photography space would be “Los Angeles portrait photographer”:

The keyword has less search volume, but since it is so specific to a user looking for a portrait photographer in Los Angeles, the chances of client booking conversion are higher.

Examples of these types of keywords in the photography space include your service + location:

• Wedding photographer in austin texas
• Headshot photographer in miami
• Portrait photographer in orange county
• etc.

Now that we’ve covered the marketing funnel and how different types of keywords relate to different stages of the funnel, let’s dive into search intent, which we’ve already touched upon briefly.

2. Search intent

Just as it sounds, search intent relates to the intentions behind every keyword search. It has been found that you can group each search query/keyword into one of three buckets: navigational queries, informational queries, or transactional queries.

1. Navigational

Navigational queries are keywords entered with the intent of going to a particular website or page. For example, if you enter “youtube” into the search bar to find YouTube rather than just typing in youtube.com:

2. Informational

Informational queries cover a broad set of topics, and they can be associated with the top and middle funnels that we mentioned above.

Informational keywords/queries could be awareness stage/ keywords such as, “what is headshot photography” and consideration stage keywords such as, “best photographer in texas.”

3. Transactional

Transactional queries are often appended with the terms such as “buy,” “purchase,” etc. and are also related to the keywords within our decision stage/bottom of funnel. Examples of transactional keywords include “los angeles portrait photographer” or “buy lightroom presets.”

4. Matching the intent

When you are performing your keyword research (discussed later), it is important to identify which bucket a keyword falls under by examining what is already ranking for that keyword.

In order to have the best chances of ranking for that keyword, you need to match the intent of that keyword. This is especially true for top-of-funnel and middle-of-funnel keywords.

For example, if you were to type in a broad keyword such as “headshot photography” into Google, Google doesn’t know if you are looking for tips to improve your headshot photography skills, if you are looking for a headshot photographer, or if you want to know the history of headshot photography.

When we type that keyword into Google, we can see that the pages that are ranking successfully are all Informational queries. In other words, if you wanted to rank for this keyword, you would need to write a blog article similar to what is currently ranking well.

Here’s another example: if you wanted to rank for “Los Angeles headshot photographer,” you would first type it into Google to see the intent behind the keyword:

Once you type it into Google, you will see that it is a Transactional keyword and that the best way to rank for this keyword is to actively target a service page on your website with this specific keyword to have the best chance of being discoverable for this key term.

Now that we’ve covered search intent let’s dive into search volume.

3. Keyword search volume

The third area you will want to look at when choosing a keyword is the keyword search volume. The search volume is the approximation of how many users search for that keyword on a monthly basis.

When we discuss the tools you can use to find the keywords, I'll show you where to find the search volume.

4. Competition

Lastly, when choosing a keyword, you will also want to look at the keyword difficulty/competition level to see how difficult it would be to rank for that keyword at your current website/domain authority.

After taking into account these four areas, in order to rank for these keywords, you must have a website and understand the pages you need on your website.

Then, when deciding what keywords to go after and what page to target them on, some key questions you can ask yourself include:

• What services do I provide, and what makes me unique from the competition
• What location do I service
• Who are my competitors
• What keywords are my competitors showing up for

If I were my customer, what would I be searching for in Google (covering all stages of the funnel). Now that we’ve covered the areas you should consider when choosing a keyword, let’s explore how to find it.

How to find the keywords?

So you know the difference between short-tail and long-tail keywords and the four areas you want to look at when choosing a keyword—so how do you actually find the keyword metrics?

Luckily, there are keyword research tools that will allow you to find all of these data points. Regarding keyword research tools, there are paid and free tools. I will list the most popular paid tools but focus on the free tools for the sake of this guide.

Paid Tools:

• SEMrush
• AHREFs

Free Tools:

• Keyword Surfer
• KWFinder
• Keywordtool.io
• Keyword Planner
• Answerthepublic
• Ubersuggest

The keyword tool I was using in the screenshots was Keyword Surfer, which is a Google Chrome extension. I’d recommend trying all the tools out and seeing which one you like.

Some are trial versions of a paid option, so there may be a daily limit. Once you’ve played around with the tools and found a few target keywords you want to rank for, let’s dive into where you need to insert your keyword to have the best chance of ranking optimally.

Where to put keywords?

There are 6 areas where you want to insert your keyword on the page.

It’s also important to know that you do not want to target the same keyword on two or three different pages, or you will run into what’s called “keyword cannibalization.”

Each page should have only one target keyword. For example, if you were a shoe store and you sold shoes and shoelaces, you would want two separate pages—one targeting the keyword shoes and one targeting shoelaces—because they are two separate keywords with their own search volume and competition level.

For the following areas, I will be using the example of my old Fullerton Photographer page, which targeted the keyword “fullerton photographer."

1. URL

The first place you’ll want to include your keyword is your URL.

2. Meta title

From there, you’ll want to ensure it’s also included within your metadata, which consists of your meta title and meta description.

Depending on what content management system (CMS) you use such as WordPress, Squarespace, etc. depends on what it will look like on the backend to edit your meta title.

Since we are using WordPress (which I recommend), you can download an SEO plugin such as Yoast SEO or RankMath to add it in. We use RankMath so there is a section to edit the metadata that looks like this:

3. Meta description

Similar to the meta title, you will want to include your target keyword within your meta description:

4. Headings

The fourth area you’ll want to include your target keyword is within your heading structure (H1, H2’s, H3’s, etc.) The most important heading to have your target keyword in is the H1 header:

5. Alt text

The fifth place you’ll want to include your target keyword is within your image alt text. Alt text is a text alternative provided for search engines to understand an image since they can’t look at images visually.

6. Within content

The last area you’ll want to include your target keyword is within the content itself.

You’ll want to ensure your keyword exists within your page around 4-6 times. Be sure you do not “keyword stuff” your keyword on the page, or it can actually harm your SEO.

Back in the day, before Google released the Panda Update, people would stuff their target keyword into the page every chance they could get. Google’s algorithm became smarter and was able to detect if you were trying to game the system.

Since then, it has been important to incorporate it naturally while also being cognizant that it should exist within the content.

Factors that affect keyword ranking

You may insert your target keyword into all these areas and then not see any keyword movement, or you may not appear on the first page for that keyword as you thought you would.

Well, actually, other factors affect your keyword ranking, and that is where the art of SEO comes into play. If you could just stick your keyword into those six areas and then rank #1 for that keyword, it would be too easy.

Now that we know the main areas to include our target keyword let’s dive into the factors that affect keyword ranking.

1. Domain authority

The first factor that will affect your ability to rank for a target keyword is your website’s domain authority. Your domain authority is a ranking score developed by a company called Moz that is a logarithmic score that takes into account factors such as how authoritative your site is based on how many people are linking to it.

AHREFs are in another company and have a similar ranking score called Domain Rating, but they are the same for the most part.

If you have ever heard of “link building,” this is the process and strategy of getting more links to your website so your Domain Authority/Domain Rating score can increase, making it easier for you to rank for your target keywords.

The Domain Authority/Rating score is based on a logarithmic scale, which means it's easier to go from 20 to 30 than from 60 to 70. You can check your site's current domain authority with this free tool.

If you want to see your score in real time, the sites linking to you, and their domain rating/authority score, you will have to use paid SEO tools such as AHREFs or SEMrush.

2. Quality of the content

The quality of your content is another factor that will influence your ranking position.

The better and more engaging your content on your site, the longer people will stay on your page. They may even link to your page from another site, which will also increase your Domain Authority score.

Google can see the average session duration people stay on your page and if they proceed to check out other pages on your website. If your site/page is engaging, that will help boost your chances of ranking for your target keywords.

3. Health of the site

The third factor is the health of your site which can be broken into having no technical errors as well as a fast site speed.

No technical errors

The most common technical errors are 301 redirect errors, 404 errors, and 500 errors.

Google can see the errors on your website when it crawls it. If you have a lot of errors on your site, Google does not like this so it can ding you in terms of your ranking potential. Be sure to check if you have any errors using Google Search Console.

Fast site speed

Having a fast site speed is also important for your ability to rank optimally for a keyword. Similar to technical errors on your site, a slow site speed can be detected by Google and ding you in terms of ranking potential.

A slow site speed also affects user experience, which can affect your site’s bounce rate (if people land on your site and leave immediately) and average session duration.

You can check the site speed of your website with Google PageSpeed Insights, which is a free tool provided by Google.

Once you enter your website and see your score for both mobile and desktop, then you can scroll down and see the opportunities to improve your site speed:

Often, your mobile score will be lower than your desktop score due to the mobile responsiveness of websites and due to the fact that mobile devices have smaller screens.

You must focus on your mobile score, however, because Google is configured to index through mobile-first, which means the score and optimization opportunities you have on mobile are the ones Google will focus on.

List of keywords for photography websites

We’ve gone ahead and pulled some example keywords and the search volume for the following categories so you can see some examples of short and long-tail keywords of the highest searched keywords.

Portrait Photography Keywords

• Portrait photography - Monthly Search Volume: 40,500
• Portrait photography tips - Monthly Search Volume: 1,000
• Portrait photography background - Monthly Search Volume: 260

Nature Photography Keywords

• Nature photography - Monthly Search Volume: 9,800
• Nature photography tips for beginners - Monthly Search Volume: 40
• Nature photography ideas - Monthly Search Volume: 70

Wedding Photography Keywords

• Wedding photography - Monthly Search Volume: 11,000
• Wedding photography tips - Monthly Search Volume: 350
• Wedding photography packages - Monthly Search Volume: 1,100

Landscape Photography Keywords

• Landscape photography - Monthly Search Volume: 18,000
• Landscape photography tips - Monthly Search Volume: 400
• Landscape photography southern california - Monthly Search Volume: 20

In conclusion, this was an in-depth guide discussing photography keywords. I hope you enjoyed this guide and learned some new insights. It’s important to take action and apply any new concepts you learn to your own business. Good luck!