Maximise local SEO with a Google Business Profile to increase traffic and leads to your photography website

In today’s digital world, photographers and small business owners must consistently expand their online presence to attract more clients and grow their businesses.

This is even more crucial if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar studio or shop and are operating solely online.

If people can’t find your business online when searching for their desired services or products, you don’t exist, and you’ll have no one to sell to. It’s as simple as that.

Sure, you can invest in pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns like Google Ads or Meta Ads, and they can be very effective for generating immediate, short-term traffic and visibility. Still, you’ll stop getting results as soon as you stop paying.

Unless you have unlimited funds for paid advertising, you need to dedicate time and energy to maximising organic traffic to your website, social media, and other relevant marketing channels.

Yes, you might not celebrate immediate results, and you’ll be fighting to climb the ranks in a competitive space, but you’ll be rewarded for your ongoing efforts (and patience) over time.

Make local search engine optimisation (SEO) part of your organic marketing strategy

A Google Business Profile can help your local target audience find your photography business on Google Search and Google Maps.

Whether people are searching for “Photographer Near Me”, “Wedding Photographer [+ Suburb]”, or “Best Newborn Photographer [+City]”, setting up and optimising your Google Business Profile can generate more organic traffic and leads to your photography website.

Plus, it’s 100% FREE to set up your Google Business Profile! Honestly, you’d be a silly goose not to take advantage of it.

Supporting your website and social media channels, it's also a great way to request and collect Google reviews—social proof is essential for enhancing your business’s reputation, credibility, and trust.

It doesn’t matter what you say about your products or services; it’s about what others say.

Think about it: when did you last visit a new cafe without going off a word-of-mouth referral or looking up their Google reviews beforehand? And if you did check out their Google reviews first, were you more inclined to choose a cafe with zero reviews or low-star ratings or a cafe with a decent number of reviews and ratings?

Now that you understand its importance and benefits, let’s explore how to set up, verify, and update your Google Business Profile for your photography business!

How to Set Up, Update & Optimise Your Google Business Profile

Step 1. Set Up Your Google Business Profile

If you haven't set up your FREE Google Profile yet, do it now: https://www.google.com/intl/en_au/business/ 

• Add a new Google Business Profile if you’ve never set one up before, or

• Claim an existing Google Business Profile—if you’re not sure if you have an existing profile, search your business name in Google Maps to see if anything comes up.

Step 2. Verify Your Google Business Profile

Depending on your business, Google will automatically determine your business’s verification process through mail, phone, text, video recording, live video call, or email.

Based on my experience and that of clients, the mail verification option is most likely, and they’ll send a physical postcard to the address you provide.

If you’re verifying your Google Business Profile via mail, your unique code may take up to 14 days to arrive. However, it may take longer—from my memory, mine took a few weeks due to Google being short-staffed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

While waiting for your unique code to arrive in the mail, do not change your profile’s business name, address, or category, and most importantly, do NOT request a new code.

All verification codes are set to expire after 30 days, and if you edit your information or request a new code, the code that is already in the mail will automatically be cancelled.

Moral of the story? Follow their recommended guidelines and be patient. Otherwise, you’ll get stuck in an endless loop.

If you’re a photographer (or an online/service-area-based business) and don’t own an office or studio space, the easiest two options for address verification are:

• Your private residential address—once you’ve verified your profile, you can hide/ remove your home address and specify your service locations instead.

• A co-working space or shared studio—only applies if the co-working space maintains clear signage, receives customers at the location, and you or your team are there during business hours.

Aside from privacy reasons, you also shouldn’t display your home address as your business’s address unless you have permanent, fixed signage displaying your business name at the front.

Once your Google Profile is successfully verified, you’ll receive a notification, and you can start updating or adding your information at any time. For quality control, Google may need to re-verify your profile in some instances if you change certain information.

Click here for more information on Google Business Profile guidelines.

Step 3. Personalise & Optimise Your Google Business Profile

Now that your Google Business Profile is live, take the time to optimise and personalise your profile.

Simply search your business name in Google Search or Maps to edit or update your profile directly.

Add as much information as possible to help your Google Business Profile stand out, such as:

• An engaging and informative description of your business

• Business hours

• Business logo

• High-quality photos

• Service and/or product offerings

• All relevant service areas

• Contact information

• Scheduling or appointment links

If you’re a photographer offering multiple services, such as wedding, elopement, family, maternity, newborn, etc., make sure you list all of them. More importantly, upload your favourite high-quality portfolio shots that best reflect your style and target audience.

It's a bit cheeky, but I recommend adding your primary SEO search phrase to your "business name" as well. For example, my freelance copywriting business is called "Melinda Harcourt Copywriting" but I've also added the phrase "Freelance Copywriter Melbourne" at the end to maximise my profile's search visibility.

Step 4. Start Requesting Google Reviews

This is my favourite part!

Hot Tip: Based on my experience, the more Google reviews you have, the higher your Google Business Profile will rank amongst the other local business profiles.

Of course, this isn’t guaranteed, but you can somewhat assume that when people search for a product or service, they’ll likely trust and engage with a profile with more reviews than others.

Make it easy for your clients to leave a review by sending them a direct Google review link. 

To get this link, search your business in Google, then click "Ask for reviews".

This will then trigger a pop-up with the direct link to share with your clients.

Don't be shy—reach out to all your past clients to request a short and sweet review!

To make it even easier, you can provide gentle prompts/ suggestions on what to write about, such as their overall experience with you, how happy they were with the final results, why they chose you, etc.

You can also ask vendors/ ex-colleagues/ anyone you've worked with (who can attest to how amazing you are) for a Google review. 

Step 5. Regularly Update Your Google Business Profile

Just like your website, you'll want to keep your profile as updated as possible. 

This includes updating your opening hours (especially around holiday seasons), adding new photos/ information if relevant, and, most importantly, responding to ALL reviews you receive.

By acknowledging and thanking your past clients for their kind reviews, you'll also show prospective clients how engaged and appreciative you are. If they've taken the time to leave you a Google review, the last thing you want to do is to ghost them.

💡 BONUS TIPS

1. Set up your business’s local listing across other search engines too!

While Google Search and Maps are the most popular, you can go the extra mile by setting up your business profile across other search engines. 

Here are other search engines you can create a local business listing:

• Apple Business Connect

• Bing Places for Business

• Yahoo listing

2. Be careful with copying + pasting your Google Reviews directly onto your website

As you may or may not know, Google does not like "duplicate content" and may occasionally penalise you for sharing anything it deems "duplicate". 

I've had clients (and read a few instances) where Google has deleted their Google reviews just because they've directly copied the text—word for word—from a client's Google review onto their website. Stupid, I know.🙄

To avoid this, I'd highly recommend the following alternatives:

• Use a Google review plugin/ widget to embed your reviews instead—you can use a WordPress Plugin or a widget like elfsight, depending on your website platform

• Screenshot individual reviews from your Google Business Profile and add them as images to your website.

Alternatively, if you want to share their review as written text on your website, ask your client if they’re happy for you to edit their original Google Review lightly.

With their permission, you can edit their review—without changing its overall intent and tone—just to differentiate it enough from their publicly posted Google Review (so it’s not a like-for-like “duplicate”) before adding it to your website.

3. Google Reviews not showing or missing from your Business Profile

If your clients have left you a Google Review, but it’s not showing on your profile, you’re not alone. This has happened (and still is) to me, as well as many other businesses, too!

I have 10+ Google reviews—and f*ck knows how many more—that aren’t publicly showing on my profile, and I know this for a fact because clients have sent me a screenshot of their “posted” review from their Google profile.

Apparently, the most likely reason for this is that Google deemed the review “prohibited/ restricted content” (even if it’s not). I have politely contacted their support team numerous times with proof that the reviews did not violate their policy.

However, it’s unlikely that Google will reinstate any already removed reviews.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a solution for this, but here’s how I’m dealing with this annoying lil’ pickle instead:

• If your client has sent you a copy of their review (ask them to if not), add it to your website—any page that might benefit from extra social proof of how awesome you are, such as your Home page, About page, client testimonials page, or one of your service pages.

• Ask your client to post their original (but rejected) Google review as a review/ recommendation on your Facebook Business page and/or any other review aggregator platforms you’re already using, e.g. Trustpilot. Similarly, if you’re a wedding photographer listed on a wedding photography directory like Easy Weddings, your client can also leave you a review there.

• Repurpose the review as social proof content on Instagram, Facebook, and other relevant marketing channels/ collateral, such as your Pricing & Information guides.

Seeing as your lovely photography clients have taken the time to write you a review to boost your business credibility, I totally understand and empathise with how frustrating this Google review glitch can be.

Rather than wasting those “missing” or deleted reviews, get creative and find other ways to showcase them!

4. Export & download your Google Business Reviews

In case something goes wrong, like losing access to your Google Business Profile or it gets deleted, make sure you regularly export and download a copy of your Google reviews!

Here’s how to export your Google reviews:

• Log into your Google account and use Google Takeout.

• Scroll down to locate and select “Google Business Profile” and follow the steps to export all data relating to your Google Business Profile.

• Once the export is completed, you’ll receive an email to download and save the zip file.

• Extract the zip file and find the files containing your reviews. These will be in JSON format, like in the example below.

Now, you’ll have peace of mind that you’ll always have backups of your hard-earned Google Business reviews. You can also choose to export these on a regular basis.

Want more sassy website and copy tips for your photography business?

The correct answer is “Yes, Mum Mel”. Good, I thought so.

After spending 3.5 years as a coach and community manager in Jai Long Co.’s photographer and creative community, I plan to release a juicy suite of DIY templates, guides, and copywriting packages for photographers!

Join the waitlist below—you’ll score instant access to a cute freebie and other helpful photography business tips and fun updates along the way. No icky spam, I promise!