Ah, yes – geotagging! Sounds pretty fancy, huh? Sounds pretty sophisticated. Well, not really. Marketing companies like to throw this term at you, to make you believe you’re getting crazy value, and it’s some secret savior for your business.
And while it does possess savior status, it’s not even complicated to do – and you can do it yourself, for relatively cheap.
I’m here to break it down for you.
So, first of all – what is geotagging? Well, before I dive into that – I need to explain metadata.
You see, every photograph possesses metadata, which lives within the existing pixels of the digital photo. This information can include the name of the creator of the image, the date it was taken and any camera settings that were used to take the photo.
Now, beyond this – we can add even more data, including geotags.
For our local business accounts, we geotag every single image that we put on the internet. A geotag uses the same concept as metadata, and in this instance we’re using an online software to bake coordinates into the photo using the latitude and longitude of our choosing.
So, for my business – if I want to make it more likely that I’ll be found in Toronto – I’ll type “Toronto” into the search engine of the software, I’ll select it and then away we go.
Let’s dive into how you can do this for yourself. You’re going to use a website called www.geoimgr.com.
We use the paid version, which is $9.90 per month. It provides unlimited tags per photo, on unlimited photos. Unfortunately, at the time of writing there is no longer a free version of geoimgr.
So, if that’s all fine and dandy, head over to the site and get your account all set up. It’s self-explanatory so I’ll leave you to deal with that.
After you’re all set up, you’re going to drag a photo into the window and type in your search query. Select the city you want your photo to exist in, and you’ll notice the latitude and longitude load up into the data fields.
Now, another benefit of using this online software is that you can make your images more searchable on Google. To do this, you’re going to fill out the data fields “keywords and tags” as well as “description/alternative text”. These areas let you get very specific regarding the metadata that’s baked into the photo.
You want to put yourself in your ideal customer’s head – think like them. What would they be searching for? Also provide Google as much information as possible to rank you properly.
So, if you’re a construction company, you could use the following for keywords and tags:
Construction company, contractor, Toronto contractor, renovation, remodel, addition, custom built home, house builder, home builder, residential contractor.
Once you’re done with these, work with the description/alternative text. This section should read something to the effect of:
A photo of a home built by a local construction company in Toronto called (_________) who works as a contractor with Toronto homeowners doing renovations, remodels, additions and new builds.
Yes, this sounds ridiculous – but that doesn’t matter. It’s simply for Google to read and then use to rank you in search results.
And there you have it. After you’re done, you’re going to click “Write EXIF Tags”, and then click “Download”. Save the photo in a geotagged folder and share away.
Now, when I say we geotag everything – I mean everything. This includes anything that goes on social media, like individual photos or even thumbnails for videos – as well as Google Business Profile photos, website photos, etc.
It takes a good amount of time, but it’s definitely worth it. Anything that you can do to get a leg up on other businesses like yours is going to help you out tenfold.
If you need a hand with this, then you know where to reach us. four32 MEDIA is a content creation and distribution company working just north of Toronto, and we’re always happy to help.
To Your Success,
Jay Ashcroft
four32 MEDIA