How Photographers Vary Target Keyword for Similar Blog Posts

Hello there. Today, I want to go over keyword variations. This is a critical part of blogging and Search Engine Optimization for photographers. Now, the problem is, sometimes you have a photo shoot that takes place at the same location and has it in the same city or at the same venue times. WordPress plugins, like Yoast, requires you to have different variations of keywords in your planning. This is so that you don’t have competing keywords.
If you are going for the same keyword for multiple pieces of content, those pieces of content will compete against each other in the rankings. Sometimes Google will show one post, sometimes it’ll show the other. Both post generally doesn’t do as well. If you had these post pointed together with a solid keyword strategy, you would avoid this. This can be a big problem when it comes to creating lots of content around the same or similar topics.
What I want to discuss are keyword variations. We’re going to go over keyword variations for weddings, for families, for seniors. And the same thing can apply to other styles of photography. Frankly, this can apply to any industry actively involved in content marketing. Finally, we’re going to discuss cornerstone content.

Wedding Keywords

The first keyword variation we are going to cover is for weddings. Let’s say you have a wedding that you’re shooting at a specific venue. And in this particular variation example, we’re assuming that you’ve shot at that same venue two, three, or four times. What you want to start off with is typically going to be keyword targeting the venue and add venue plus wedding. So let’s say you shoot at the red barn wedding venue. You will use keywords like, “red barn wedding venue,” or “red barn wedding venue wedding photographer.” The second time you shoot there you cannot use the same keyword. You’re going to be competing for the same keyword because the only difference is, it’s a different couple. If you look at the different ways to vary it, you can actually add “…photos” in one, or “…photographer.”
Here are some examples of some other keyword variations:

Now, when people are searching for information about that venue by the venue name, these post may rank for that term. As we continue to shoot at the same venue, we have three or four + pieces of content about the same venue. You may consider adding cornerstone content. We can start focusing on is creating a cornerstone piece of content for that particular venue. We will cover this later in the post in more detail.

Family Keywords

Keywording for families is a little bit different. We’re going to look at the location. We’re also going to look at a city, and then also, you can swap out portrait for photographer. So you have a location, for example, Smith Park. Perhaps you’re in a city that has a big downtown area, you can focus on that keyword variation. Ultimately, we are trying to rank for what people are searching. We are also trying to create authority based on your service area.
For example, In Dallas, we have different suburbs of Dallas like McKinney, Frisco, Allen, and Plano. So wherever that actual photo was taken, you can vary it by mentioning the actual city+ “….family photos.” Other variations may include, “Downtown Dallas Family Photos,” or “Westend Dallas Family Photos.”
Consider we are going to have the same type of shoot, in the same location. So that’s where we’re having to worry about these variations. If you’re in different cities and different locations, it’s pretty easy. Just use the location and use the city. But now that we’re in the same city, the same location, we want to vary it up. So you can do location plus “…family photographer,” or city plus “…family photographer”. And then, you could do location, city plus “… family photos”  And then, also if … for extra variations, you can throw in the word portrait instead of photographer, or family portrait photographer. You can also mix it up with seasons like, “Westend Dallas Fall Family Photos.”
If you have two families that you’ve shot at the exact same location, then you can start creating cornerstone content around this location. And you probably should, because you don’t want those two pieces of content competing against each other.

Senior Keywords

Senior portrait keywords are very similar.  You can use the location that the photo shoot was taken. Another variation is to target senior photos versus senior portraits.  You can also use variations that include the city or the High School where the client attends.
You can consider just creating cornerstone content. Let’s say you had two or three seniors from the same high school. Then, you could have a piece of cornerstone content that hits that high school, and that’s going to be the keyword. So when someone Googles the specific high school senior portraits, then that cornerstone content would rank versus the multiple posts that you have from the same location.
You can create cornerstone content around a location, a city, and a high school. So you could have multiple shoots that are in multiple locations, have multiple instances of needing to vary keywords and create multiple cornerstone contents, and even overlap some of the linking with that.

Cornerstone Content

What is cornerstone content? What does it do? HubSpot calls it traffic clusters. Yoast calls it cornerstone content, and Moz calls it silos and content silos. And if we look at this here, we can see the illustration below, where you have the big, orange circle, and that’s going to be the cornerstone content.

In the example of the senior, this would be an article or a piece of content that’s f focuses on “Independence High School, Frisco, Texas, Senior Photos.”,You have a big piece of content (core topic) for each High School. The subtopics would be Suzie, Frank, Sally, who are clients who attend that particular high school. Those individual client shoots are going to be subtopics that are going to be examples of different photo shoots. Some of the subtopics can be “top five locations for Independence High School seniors photos.” You can even have the core topic be a location or city where the photo shoots are conducted.
Now, if you look here at the definition, the one large piece of content that focuses around broadly covering a core topic. So it’s going to be a location or, in the case of the weddings, the venue. It the core topic is a specific park where you’ve shot multiple times, then maybe you have “the top ten tips for having senior family portraits at XYZ park.”
So the idea is that core topic will be the one that is ranking, that is going to rank for that. And those subtopics, they could rank for some specific long tail type of keywords, but you are really pushing Google to rank the bigger, core topic as for the bigger keywords. So then, you link to the large content as a range of smaller content that covers individual, more specific subtopics. So you kind of add those things that support the pieces of content, and then, the subtopic content will link back to the large content, vice versa, within the same topic. So you have this interlinking that happens there.
Now, you could have a subtopic that is used for more than one core topic, right? So you could actually have … Let’s say you were going for a certain city, wedding photographer. Let’s say you’re going for Dallas wedding photographer, and then, you have a venue that is a specific venue that’s going to be also its own core topic. And then, you have a shoot from that venue that’s one of the subtopics. That subtopic could also be a part of that. And you could also make chains, and subtopics can become core topics. So you really can kind of go with it.
So what this does is it allows you to have multiple iterations and variations of the similar type of content. But really, you’re pushing one epic piece of content that’s going to … they’re really going to rank for it. And then, that bigger piece of content is going to be typically longer in length in terms of text and copy. It’s going to have links out to the individual posts that say, “If you want to learn more about this, here you go. Here, if you want to see some examples of some real weddings, here you go,” or some families or different variations. So you can get creative with it and be able to do that.
So that’s how we use different keyword variations. And then, when you start getting multiple variations, you can expand it into a deeper strategy of creating cornerstone content.
All right. Well, I hope you found this useful. If you have any questions, please reach out over at our contact page, and I’d love to be able to answer any questions you might have.