Anna Garvey Photography : Website SEO

Scope of Project: Website Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

About the Client

Meet Anna the passionate birth and motherhood photographer behind

@annagarveyphotography

She is based in Charlotte, NC, USA. Our collaboration began when Anna reached out needing guidance on getting her website ranked on google. After discussing SEO and the options we decided a full optimization of her current site was the best plan. While her search keywords were not too competitive it was important for her and her new website to be amongst the top results so she can begin growing her business.

Our Goals

Objectives for SEO or the website optimization side of SEO is simple, we want to get her website at the best place possible for Google to both understand it’s purpose and then begin ranking it within on-topic search results.

Key Words: Charlotte Birth Photography

Get Her Brand New Website Searchable on Google

Be Seen on the First Page of Google for Chosen Keywords

What Hanna Did

For every one of my SEO projects I like to bring a level of understanding to help you feel empowered in your own business and what’s going on during the process. My first approach is to run tests on your website itself before we’ve done anything. This allows us to see any major issues before simply optimizing. Some have made huge errors without really understanding the impact, others have left out simple steps in the process that can make a significant change to their searchability, while others just need to get each page as set up and optimized as possible to connect with their top keywords.

Once we finished the audit process I delivered a 12-part SEO auditing list showing where each page needed work, where big fixes needed to be done, and where minor tweaks would make a huge difference. And the 12th step being a crucial competition analysis. For Anna we did not include any copywriting or design element it was simply the SEO optimization so some elements were left for her on a to-do list and to understand like word count and filling her pages with on-topic and valuable content.

Then I began the process of optimizing each page according to our goals and meeting the expert standards. One thing we did run into was image size. This is a relatable issue I come across with photographers often and thought would be helpful to share here. The Google recommendation for highest optimization is keeping images under 250mb or at max 500mb. This can be hard for photographers who often view their images somewhere between 2 GB-10GB. Because it indeed shows in the image quality depending on the functional size (larger header compared to small box) of the image on the website. So we found a middle ground allowing some or most of the images to maintain the quality size while optimizing the rest of her site. Thankfully in the long run this lack of change did not affect our long-term goal of getting to the first page on Google. But may be something to consider for others looking to use SEO as a marketing strategy.

Once I finished the optimization process and connected with Anna throughout to make any additional preferential tweaks. I delivered a final report. Similar to her audit but this time showing the changes finalized in each part of the website. Our project was 2-3 weeks total from audit to final report.

The Results

Once we finished optimizing the website, we waited to see how the newly indexed website would begin to do with the SEO changes we made. Depending on the competition for the search terms and other factors within Google this can take time and in some cases require additional SEO strategies like blogging and backlinkinks to achieve your goals. But thankfully for Anna we were able to see results within a few days moving from 26th to 12th and within several weeks she was 4th and 6th for her top search words.

The more she continues to create blogs and direct viewers to her website organically the more this ranking will likely increase. Her website was new for google standard so their also will be an increase with longevity and presence online as well.

What Anna Says…

❝ HANNA! I cannot believe it! I’m number 6 and number 4 on Google for our searches! I am in SHOCK! Like literal shock!  I’ve been checking almost daily but forgot the last few days, and the indexing just for a week or so ago must have finally hit (or maybe something else? Idk haha) and I moved up a TON! I honestly couldn’t ask for anything better! THANK YOU!❞