This is not going to be one of those typical wedding photography posts that talk about how to select the best photographer. For this blog post I wanted to focus more on how to actually search for and find exceptional San Francisco city hall wedding photographers. We will also discuss some of the things to avoid during your search. For more information and other useful guides regarding San Francisco city hall, click our City Hall Wedding HOME PAGE.
How to Use Search Engines to find your San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photographer
When trying to find a San Francisco City Hall wedding photographer, many brides and groom will start on Google or maybe even Bing. This is a good approach and will provide you with some of the top and most experienced wedding photographers. This is where it gets tricky, however. Some engaged couples think that a high Google ranking of SF City Hall photography websites is synonymous with quality of the work. This is not necessarily true for reasons we will discuss below. For example, when doing this search you will normally receive 10 search results on the first page. These are commonly referred to as SERPS which stands for Search Engine Results Pages. I do sample searches frequently and can tell you that this listing often represents many of the leading San Francisco city hall wedding photographers. So from that standpoint, searching on Google is helpful. But should you assume that the website on the very top of the listing is actually the best San Francisco city hall wedding photographer? The obvious answer is no.
The ranking within the SERPS page has more to do with the skill level of the people building the website and their ability to optimize their search engine results! They call these people Webmasters and their skill level has nothing to do with the experience level of the city hall wedding photographer. The reason there is close correlation with High Google rankings and the top city hall wedding photographers is because most of these companies have lots of experience. Is the high level of experience due to the high rankings or visa-versa. The answer to this question may not matter. The point is, the some of the best (but not all) San Francisco city hall wedding photographers can indeed be found in the top 10 Google rankings. Just don’t assume that the order of the ranking means anything. Obviously, you should also not assume that if your favorite wedding photographer is NOT listed it means they are low quality. This can often make you miss a good photographer because they’re not on Google. So it definitely pays to look a little deeper and go to other sources.
How Search Engine Optimization Works (SEO)
A high ranking website will usually be the one that has been optimized for keyword searches performed by brides and grooms. One such search is: “San Francisco City Hall Wedding Photographer”. The results of this query are a mixed bag. You will definitely receive information about some of the best and most experienced photographers, but also some who are not either one of those things. Some will most likely be excellent, but others may not be. Please understand that I am not saying that any of the top 10 San Francisco city hall wedding photographers on a Google search are bad. I know for a fact that most of them are quite capable of producing great wedding photograph for you. The point is that their relative search engine ranking is not due to the quality of their work. It’s due to the effectiveness of their SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts and their Webmasters. Google is not capable of evaluating and then ranking the best SF City Hall wedding pictures. Of course, any type of ranking of artwork is subjective at best, so its all personal preference. I believe this is one of the big misunderstandings that a typical bride and groom makes when searching for a wedding photographer.
When Does “Best” Not Really Mean Best
One very common search that brides and grooms do is to ask for the “best” city hall wedding photographer. The results of this search also has little to do with who really is the best. It only represents wedding photographers who have used the search term “best” in their website in various ways. The “best” search results could also have more to do with the number of backlinks the company has and the anchor text being used on those sites. If many related sites point to a San Francisco city hall website and use the term “best” in their text, Google might choose to rank that page higher. I have noticed that Google is starting to rank the word best with some correlation with online reviews. This may mean that the Google search engine is starting to figure this out to some extent.
Recently there has been a website in the search result claiming to list “The Best City Hall Wedding Photographers” However, the criteria for this has nothing to with any type of ranking or experience level. I have looked at this list myself, and there are some exceptional SF city hall wedding photographers on their page, but there are also a few who have practically no experience at city hall and no portfolio photos to show. So the moral of the story is, you have to be very careful and research each photographer carefully yourself. UPDATE: I recently came across a ranking website that actually used online reviews to rank the various San Francisco city hall wedding photographers. This is still very subjective, but it is nice to see a website list at least trying to use some sort of objective criteria to rank photographers.
How to Carefully Evaluate SF City Hall Wedding Photographers
Here is what I would do if I wanted to truly find the best wedding photographers in this class:
- Do a search on Google or another search engine for SF City Hall Weddings Photographers.
- View the portfolios of the top 10 or top 20 photographers on the Search Engine results
- Narrow down your choices to approximately 5 favorite companies based upon their pictures
- Research those top 5 companies by viewing their Websites. Pay special attention to “About” pages
- Narrow down your search to your best 2 or 3 options and see what else you can find out by searching for Online reviews and talking to other vendors in the Wedding Industry.
Notice that nowhere in these 5 steps did I mention anything about price. Unfortunately, this is where most engaged couples start. I truly believe that by doing this, you could be eliminating some amazing and experienced San Francisco city hall wedding photographers. Obviously, price is a factor, but don’t let it be the only factor. You may also find that some wedding photographers who are seemingly offering lower pricing are also offering less services.
What About Social Media for Wedding Photographers?
Many brides and groom search for their San Francisco city hall wedding photographers on site such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok. Is this an accurate way to find top notch city hall wedding photographers? I would say yes, it is just about the same as searching on Google. The one thing I prefer about Social Media searches is that most of these sites need to be regularly updated in order to rank for your keywords. So in most cases, the photos you see on a Social Media site are probably pretty recent. This is always a good thing! On the other side of the equation, lots of things you read on social media can be hard to completely believe.
