Most brand photographers lean entirely on their website to get found locally and miss most of what actually decides who Google shows first. This episode is about everything else — the parts of local search that happen away from your website altogether, and how they work together to tell Google and AI search tools who you are and where you operate.
You’ll get a straight read on where photographers most commonly trip themselves up online without realising it, what Google actually rewards versus what quietly gets accounts flagged or shut down, and a handful of low-effort local signals most photographers never think to use.
If you’ve ever wondered why a photographer with a weaker portfolio than yours is outranking you locally, this is the episode that explains why.
For more on turning one of these signals specifically into leads, go back to Get More Leads Using Google Maps to Your Photography Business.
00:01.14
Marcus Ahmad
Well, hello everybody. It’s ah Marcus Ahmad here and welcome to another episode of the Commercial Photographer Podcast. And of course, I’m joined as I am.
00:14.21
Marcus Ahmad
Hiya Sam, how you doing?
00:17.17
Sam Hollis
Hello Marcus. Very, very good. And you?
00:19.87
Marcus Ahmad
um Yeah, I’m very well, thank you, Mady. All good, thanks. Sam.
00:23.11
Sam Hollis
Excellent.
00:23.95
Marcus Ahmad
What are you going to be talking about this week, mate?
00:25.85
Sam Hollis
So I’m going to be talking about ah local SEO for brand photographers. So for brand photographers, how do you get found? locally and for most brand photographers they’re working in a local area so you know how do you get people who are looking for brand photographers to find you and not the competition.
00:43.85
Marcus Ahmad
Nice. Okay, let’s hear it.
00:46.07
Sam Hollis
Cool. Okay. So I think this could really split into two episodes. So we’re going to talk today about online getting found online then we might do a kind of offline one as well so this is kind of all about the way you find
00:54.14
Marcus Ahmad
Okay.
00:55.93
Sam Hollis
online so the first thing is you need to make sure you’re kind of Marketing is fully set up though. Have you decided a niche? Brand photography might be your niche, but for some people they go… niche within that into they work with certain types of businesses certain sizes or something you need to have decided that first.
01:11.06
Sam Hollis
And you need to define your area. Where do you work? And in some ways, those are combined because if you go for just I work with anybody, you can do for quite a small area. But if you’ve got a specific niche, you might need a bigger area to get the right number of clients in.
01:24.14
Sam Hollis
Um… So you need to think about that in your target market. um And the first thing to think about with local SEO. is consistency and lots of people mess this up slightly.
01:35.93
Sam Hollis
Your business name needs to be consistent. You’d be amazed how many photographers are called one thing on Google business, another thing on LinkedIn, another thing on that.
01:39.85
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah.
01:44.44
Sam Hollis
a disaster.
01:45.55
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah.
01:45.87
Sam Hollis
Local SEO local being found on Google and other places is about Google and AI seeing all of the places you’re found around the web. and building up a picture of you.
01:57.14
Sam Hollis
and that only works if everything around the web first of all has your website on because then it links it all together And secondly, you have a consistent name. across all of them.
02:05.88
Marcus Ahmad
Why?
02:06.92
Sam Hollis
ah exactly identical because otherwise it just doesn’t work.
02:07.04
Marcus Ahmad
And…
02:10.36
Marcus Ahmad
And Sam, tell me, you you say you’ve noticed this. have I mean, without giving any names, like or names can you… i mean i’m surprised at that can you give us some examples the kind of things you’ve seen
02:18.12
Sam Hollis
So just over time. So, you know, somebody might have started as a wedding photographer and then they moved on to being, you know, a brand photographer or maybe they do dogs and they do.
02:22.44
Marcus Ahmad
ah
02:28.17
Sam Hollis
headshots and they do they decide to just do different things in different places or you know gradually stuff’s changed over time and they set up their google business first and then their website and then their linkedin and then their instagram and gradually over time the name has changed slightly but they’ve left them all you know, as they went so they’re all slightly different.
02:43.71
Marcus Ahmad
Indeed. Yeah, that’s interesting.
02:45.89
Sam Hollis
I’ve seen people with that or with totally different. um
02:49.66
Marcus Ahmad
I was just thinking…
02:49.66
Sam Hollis
So yeah, you definitely… Sorry, Marcus.
02:51.45
Marcus Ahmad
I’m just thinking about ourselves here, Sam. When and we started out, we were Shoot to the Top. I thought it was a catchy name, but it was no good for SEO, as you pointed out.
02:56.11
Sam Hollis
We were, so we need to check. Yeah.
03:00.57
Marcus Ahmad
And we changed the name to the Commercial Photography Podcast.
03:00.65
Sam Hollis
That’s it.
03:02.99
Marcus Ahmad
you know that Ron Seal moment tells what you what he does on the tin. And that’s worked so well for you, hasn’t it, Sam?
03:08.36
Sam Hollis
Exactly. that’s it yeah and we did go through and check all of the platforms that’s really important so go through it’s easy for one to slip is your name consists of name consistency website on everywhere referring to and then description does not need to be consistent as in it doesn’t, you don’t have to have the identical description of everything. But…
03:28.21
Sam Hollis
All of the descriptions need to basically… say the same thing they can say it in different ways but if one of them says i photograph dogs and the next one says i fix cars that’s not very consistent you know it’s got to be a ah can be different descriptions but got to give a consistent picture of what you do So that’s really key. So I’m going to go into the different points. i So obviously website. is a big part of this but some people think SEO is websites and it’s not.
03:51.91
Sam Hollis
looks at all of your things across the web. So we need to look at those other things.
03:54.24
Marcus Ahmad
Mm hmm.
03:54.56
Sam Hollis
But the website is a big part of it. We’ve got quite a lot of shows about SEO in general. So I’m not going to go into too much i just about the little the local part. but you know if your website isn’t working properly it’s technically a mess or it’s slow then no matter what you do, this stuff isn’t going to work. So go and listen to some of the SEO shows, make sure that’s all in place.
04:11.33
Sam Hollis
but in terms of low cholesterol there’s a few things you can do.
04:14.34
Marcus Ahmad
Okay.
04:14.39
Sam Hollis
And the main thing is talking about the local way you’re based, your area. You know, make sure on the homepage you’re talking about, I am a… brand photographer in Bradford. I am a brand photographer in… you know.
04:27.02
Sam Hollis
wherever it is. Make sure that’s in there. It’s mentioned a couple of times. best thing as well is have a page about it have a you know photographer in if you let’s stick with Bradford photographer in Bradford page
04:38.03
Marcus Ahmad
Okay.
04:37.97
Sam Hollis
and and have a page and you might notice them. photographers, lots of businesses, photography in Bradford, photography in Leeds, and they have like loads of pages.
04:44.18
Marcus Ahmad
Yes.
04:44.06
Sam Hollis
And if you do too many, Google goes, you’re just taking the mick. This isn’t, you know, you’re just trying to scam. So if you’ve got one or two, that’s fine because you can.
04:49.26
Marcus Ahmad
Ah. ah Okay.
04:52.02
Sam Hollis
you know, realistically be in those areas, you have to be in just one but if you’ve, you know, some people have 10 or 15 at the bottom and Google would just go, Yeah.
04:53.91
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah.
04:57.68
Marcus Ahmad
I’ve seen that.
05:00.09
Sam Hollis
you know 20 years ago 10 years ago that would have worked now google’s gonna hammer you for it so you’ve got to kind of Yeah, you don’t want to go crazy with that, but it’s perfectly reasonable to talk about the location where you are. Have a page dedicated to that.
05:12.21
Sam Hollis
ah you know You can talk about businesses in the local area, maybe networking events in the local area. you know Show that you’re part of that local business community.
05:20.09
Marcus Ahmad
Mm hmm.
05:19.98
Sam Hollis
this. That’s really important, really valid. Um… And then have some location based blogs as well, I think would be really good. So thinking about. i don’t know you might be talking about locations where you could do for nice brand photography shoot so you can do one on a local park or on a co-working space or you know it might be just a
05:34.68
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah.
05:41.41
Sam Hollis
stately home where you’re allowed to take pictures whatever it is but if you don’t have a few local that fit in with your blog you don’t want blogs that are on a very different topic and you randomly throw one in but if it fits with what you’re blogging about then that can work really well some location-based blogs again so that location is being seen in google and by ai and it’s kind of it’s giving them a good picture of where you are It’s a balance.
06:02.34
Sam Hollis
always with your website of getting those keywords in without being ridiculous about how often you say them i’m a photographer in bradford and bradford is my favorite place now you know eventually they’re going to go no you’re just trying to Stuff that keyword in. You’ve got to. balance it.
06:14.26
Marcus Ahmad
i In fact, I think one of my most popular… blogs i’ve got sam is a location in bristol blog you know so that’s you know speaks volumes
06:20.63
Sam Hollis
There we go. Yeah. Great for bringing in traffic.
06:23.69
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah.
06:23.90
Sam Hollis
yeah yeah exactly so that’s kind of key with a website apart from say all the other SEO stuff. You just got to make sure your website’s working, your website’s fast. And it’s got visitors. That’s one of the key ones. If your website doesn’t have visitors, one of your parts SEO needs to be. getting visitors there.
06:39.34
Sam Hollis
Because… because they will with SEO get there eventually, but if there are none to start with, Google just goes, no one’s going to this website, so it’s probably a bit pants. So I’m not going to send anyone else. And then you’re kind of stuck. So yeah. getting visitors there too.
06:50.71
Sam Hollis
So that’s one area. um google maps is another massive area that is huge in terms of local seo and the two website and your google maps work together they they feed information off each other so that’s a massive part of being found locally so that if you’re not sure that’s what gives you ah a pin or an area in google maps and if you do a google search on a desktop you know that get that little knowledge panel on the side we get a little picture and some information it feeds that to
07:01.97
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah. Yeah.
07:12.40
Marcus Ahmad
Yep.
07:16.67
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah, we’ve got shows on that as well, haven’t we, Sam? Specifically aligned to that.
07:19.22
Sam Hollis
We have yet loads of shows that’s it so we’re going to just talk Skim over it a little bit because we’ve got whole shows on it. um But a couple of things to think about with your maps is, like we said, the consistency with the name we’ve already talked about.
07:33.40
Sam Hollis
You’ve got to think about whether you have an area or a pin. Google are getting more. lots of photographers have traditionally done a pin we all know what a pin is in a map yeah or you can have an area where you don’t have a specific location google are getting quite strict on this if you have a pin you must have You must not work from home. You must have an office with a permanent nameplate that people can visit at you.
07:54.10
Sam Hollis
visit you during the hours when you say you’re open. If you don’t have that and you’re working from home, I recommend you switch to an area because if Google found you got a pin… And you get a little bit better find, you get found a bit better for a pin, which is why people like them.
08:04.73
Sam Hollis
But if you’ve got found you’ve got a pin and you’re only really an area of business, which most photographers are, Google can shut your account down and that’s much, much worse. so
08:12.06
Marcus Ahmad
Wow, that’s not good. Yeah, I’ve heard they’ve got…
08:13.61
Sam Hollis
No, and other people can report you.
08:15.72
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah, I’ve heard they’ve got a lot more. you know They want a video now of your location before it’s just a letter.
08:17.90
Sam Hollis
Yeah. That’s it. So they want a big… Out. If you have a pin… So yeah, if you have an area, it’s fairly easy that I did a video for an area the other day, just have to show a video of the area and your business card and your laptop, that’s about it all in the same video.
08:30.37
Sam Hollis
But if you’ve got a pin, you have to show the street, you have to be out on the street, a continuous video, if you’re going to the door, that has to be a permanent nameplate on the door, you have to open the door with a key, you have to then go in and do some stuff inside.
08:42.52
Sam Hollis
So you you cannot do that from your home.
08:43.20
Marcus Ahmad
Bloody hell.
08:44.72
Sam Hollis
you and they will shut it down so you’ve got to be really careful with that
08:46.37
Marcus Ahmad
Okay.
08:47.84
Sam Hollis
um
08:48.64
Marcus Ahmad
Fair enough.
08:49.02
Sam Hollis
a couple of things Post regularly on Google. business really important. I don’t think about the post, just copy posts. Instagram, whatever, just puts book post regularly, um get reviews. That is so massive. When you look, when you do a search for anything on Google Maps.
09:04.87
Sam Hollis
It’s not 100 % true. But the general rule is the businesses with the most reviews are near the top and the ones with the least are near the bottom. And there will always be, you know, you can find some discrepancy in that and show me. but The general rule is more reviews nearer the top.
09:17.06
Sam Hollis
uh get a really good description. and use product so give google maps allow services and products and obviously photographers are service providers, but then you let you wherere out add about a sentence per service, but they allow you about a thousand characters for a product.
09:32.95
Sam Hollis
So a package is basically a product, you know, if you do a you know, a
09:34.86
Marcus Ahmad
Mm-mm.
09:36.68
Sam Hollis
bronze silver and gold brand photography package each of those is a product bung them in as products because you get way more words so you’re getting your keywords in there you’re giving more text for Google.
09:43.97
Marcus Ahmad
Great. That’s a good tip.
09:45.06
Sam Hollis
to kind of get their teeth into. So that’s a really good thing to do. So yes. Get your maps sorted, get your reviews on there and get your reviews regularly. So what Google also spots is how often you get reviews. So like having a right tomorrow, I’m going to get.
09:58.26
Sam Hollis
all my past planets to leave a review and you get like you know 20 in a month and then nothing for a year. Google spots also the regularity. So you need to have consistent systems. That means when a client finished with the client you’re asking them for the view you’re chasing them up from that view so you’re getting them in regularly you’re not just getting a massive batch and then you get nothing.
10:15.86
Sam Hollis
In fact, that reminds me, I need to i need to chase more markers as well.
10:19.72
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah.
10:20.70
Sam Hollis
Um… Then… Um… try and find some local community stuff you can get on. So it might be um you know local newspapers can you are you doing something which could be in a local newspaper or local magazine and they’re always online as well now so that then gets you an online thing and you know that often looks some of the little magazines nowadays you’ll have to pay for an article which you know.
10:43.71
Sam Hollis
whether you do or not, so it’s different, but some of the local papers are still, you can get articles for free if you’ve got, you know, something, a genuine event on, or you’re helping, or you’re, you know, contributing to the community, whatever it is, I’m sure we can find some reasons why, from time to time, we could appear in the local paper, and that, again, just when Google and I are looking, There’s external sources verifying who you are that you exist that you in that local community, and that’s really powerful.
10:56.12
Marcus Ahmad
Right.
11:08.61
Sam Hollis
if there’s some sort of local bloggers and guest blogs you can get on there that’s amazing or if you’re supporting local events and kind of get your name out that way but kind of you know stuff that you’re doing locally is really really powerful.
11:21.46
Sam Hollis
And then the final one I think is business directories. they’re really great.
11:24.77
Marcus Ahmad
Oh yeah.
11:24.99
Sam Hollis
So that’ just every business directory and it’s another different place in the internet where you exist, retroferring back to
11:31.42
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah, and there’s a few there’s quite a few of those that are free you can do, can’t you?
11:31.46
Sam Hollis
your website. your business. Loads.
11:34.95
Marcus Ahmad
And there’s some on pay, but there’s a few free ones.
11:35.53
Sam Hollis
So yell .com was free.
11:37.23
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah.
11:37.66
Sam Hollis
they’ll pester you to go premium but you can go free and just ignore their pesters and then look for low so i think do a few of those big lashing ones like yell but again because you want the local seo Look. the local business directories.
11:49.44
Sam Hollis
Often there were quite a few free business directories. you know, there’s often a business in the area decides they want to run a business directory if it’s free get yourself on there networking events often if you join so well they vary a lot but some of them have a website and if you join you end up getting a lit you end up getting a page or something on their website too
12:04.35
Marcus Ahmad
Hmm.
12:07.48
Sam Hollis
ah So yeah, it’s that. that local seo is that maps You need the maps, you need the website, and then you need that. how many other places can you get mentioned around the web where it’s your business name very clearly your name and your website and once you’ve got those things google puts it all together and i put it all together and build up this picture of you and the more stuff they’ve got to build a picture of you the more likely it is that you will get shown because
12:19.21
Marcus Ahmad
Sure.
12:34.00
Sam Hollis
if you’ve just got your website and you’ve said that
12:36.69
Marcus Ahmad
Exactly.
12:36.95
Sam Hollis
well if you’ve got the website and the maps you’ve got the reviews you’ve got more and more stuff it’s going to be okay you know there’s a lot going on here this is a serious photographer knows what they’re doing lots of external recommendations
12:47.59
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah, I mean, i you know I’ve got to jump in here here with my one of my back in the day stories. And ah you won’t know this, Sam, because it really was back in the day.
12:52.69
Sam Hollis
Heh heh.
12:56.64
Marcus Ahmad
But and in the 80s and 90s, in the fashion world, anyhow, there was a book. you’d have… called the… The… the black book and you’d have it was based in uh you know you you’d have a you take a page on there or quarter a page it was horrendously expensive you had to be really high and you get in there and yeah that was the directory and that it was like a really thick book you can imagine that that.
13:20.76
Sam Hollis
Yeah.
13:21.17
Marcus Ahmad
photographers around the world even at that time So that was one way. And then I was just thinking about your local way, Sam, and you’ll know this one, which of course is the the the you know no local or shop where you then have a board where you pin up your…
13:32.57
Sam Hollis
Yeah.
13:35.65
Marcus Ahmad
you know, your little…
13:36.39
Sam Hollis
And that still exists.
13:36.100
Marcus Ahmad
Lab.
13:37.60
Sam Hollis
And we’re going to do a show.
13:37.96
Marcus Ahmad
Yes.
13:38.52
Sam Hollis
Well, I was going to do a local show. And that is one thing. Those local things do still exist. There are still a lot of community news. news boards around and that definitely has a part to play this show we were just about online stuff but yeah there is a hundred percent up Yeah, a place for that.
13:53.39
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah, and these mod and these digital…
13:53.55
Sam Hollis
i
13:56.02
Marcus Ahmad
Online things are just variations of those things, really, aren’t they?
13:58.56
Sam Hollis
Yes. Exactly.
13:59.64
Marcus Ahmad
It’s not it’s nothing new.
14:00.30
Sam Hollis
Yeah. the
14:01.65
Marcus Ahmad
It’s just expanded.
14:02.06
Sam Hollis
Nothing new. so the only difference is now you’ve got the google and ai hoovering up all the information are then presenting it to people and that’s where people are looking so you’ve got that gatekeeper which is different now so although you’re putting yourself on all of those directories and you’re doing the google maps
14:12.35
Marcus Ahmad
Yeah.
14:17.14
Sam Hollis
They’re all really good, but in some ways… they are partly for the people visiting but They’re more or less. for feeding ai and feeding google information so when people ask google and ai who’s my local brand photographer i should go to That’s that, guys.
14:31.90
Marcus Ahmad
yeah Anything to say on Google Ads, i .e. paying for it, Sam?
14:35.65
Sam Hollis
So I mean Google Ads can work really well if they’re done right um Yeah, I mean one of the first things to do is look who else is running of them. Do search forque look search for the keywords that you would want to be searched for in the area you want to be found.
14:50.26
Sam Hollis
And then, you know, if there’s 10 other people running ads in that area then that’s definitely not something you want to do But if nobody else is running ads, they could you know you can get some a lot of people in at really quite low value.
14:55.37
Marcus Ahmad
No.
15:01.15
Sam Hollis
So, yeah, add some of those, you know. i don’t like to say yes or no it’s think about it. look at what the competition likes in the area. and there’s not much comp If there’s not many people running ads in the area, you can do really well out of it.
15:13.93
Marcus Ahmad
nice one Okay.
15:16.14
Sam Hollis
Cool. Right. Thank you, Marcus. then so I look forward to chatting next week.
15:21.34
Marcus Ahmad
Thanks for the info, Sam and see you next week, mate.
15:23.41
Sam Hollis
See you next week.
15:24.30
Marcus Ahmad
Bye-bye.
15:27.06
Sam Hollis
Bleh!
