Why Preferred Vendor and Venue Pages Are a Powerful Marketing tool
When it comes to website content, there are two types of pages that we believe every wedding photography studio should have on their website: Preferred Vendors and Preferred Venues. In this article, we’ll explain why these can be your secret marketing weapons and teach you how to create them properly.
Why Venue and Vendor Pages are Beneficial
Venue and vendor pages benefit photographers in 3 ways: 1) Trust, 2) Discoverability (SEO), and 3) Networking. Let’s review each.
Trust - The first thing preferred venue and vendor pages do is provide your clients with a certain level of trust. Showing that you can create beautiful work at their selected wedding venue and with their team of wedding vendors gives them assurance that you can deliver on their wedding day. Essentially, showing these associations publicly on your website implies a partnership and a good working relationship. Like a dentist giving a referral for an orthopedic surgeon or a real estate agent associating with a mortgage broker, these professional relationships make client’s decisions easier and more worry free.
Discoverability (SEO) - The next big factor is SEO. When clients are searching for wedding venues, a common source of information and inspiration is Google. For example, they might type in their potential wedding venue plus the word wedding, like “Ritz Carlton Chicago Wedding.” When they do that, ideally your page would show up on the first page of search results just after the official venue web page. And as a side note, if you have strong enough SEO, you might even outrank the small venues themselves! Also, the images you include on this page are likely to show up high in the Google Images search results as well. (Google Images has its own algorithm separate from the regular search results). What better advertising can you get than to organically appear as a source of info and inspiration along the bride’s natural wedding journey?
Networking - The final important piece of these pages is networking. You’re more likely to be recommended and referred by vendors and venues who know that you are doing the same for them. After you create these pages, be sure to email the link over to the vendor and venue. While it’s unrealistic to expect each and every vendor or venue to return the favor, you’ll likely see at least a few do so. This can lead to valuable link backs to your website, social shares of the web pages, and most importantly, strengthened relationships with your partners.
How to Create Venue and Vendor Pages
We recommend that you create venue and vendor pages with the following guidelines in mind.
Plan ahead and stay organized - Map out a clear structure to these pages. For example, CMS’s like WordPress and Squarespace give you the ability to create parent and child pages. You might use “parent pages” for the city or region and “child pages” for the actual venues. Or you might choose to use "blog categories" as the city or region and individual blog posts as the actual venue pages. Either would be fine so long as you stay consistent and organized.
Create a separate page for each vendor/venue - A separate page for each vendor/venue is better than clumping multiple venues and vendors on a single page. With separate pages, all of the content will focus around the venue or vendor name as the keyword. In addition, a dedicated page will show the venue or vendor more love.
Use Keywords in the Pages - The main keyword for each page should simply be the venue name + the word wedding for your venue pages and just the vendor name for the vendor pages such as "XYZ Venue Name Wedding" or "XYZ Makeup Artist." Use the predetermined keyword in the title of the page, throughout the content of the page and as some of the image names.
For live examples, see our Lin and Jirsa venue pages here.
If any of the above was confusing, we recommend reviewing the SEO section (Workshop 3) in the Photography Business Training System for SLR Lounge premium members.
