Does Geotagging Photos Help SEO?

Geotagging a photo means attaching a location to the image file. Latitude and longitude, written beside the picture. Phones do it on their own, where that setting is on.

Whether that lifts a local ranking is not something anybody outside Google can settle. So this page will not pretend to. The tools that write coordinates into a file are documented in plenty of places. So is the rest of image work, from alt text through to file names. None of that gets repeated here.

What rarely gets asked is what a geotag actually is. That part has an answer. It also changes what anybody should expect from one.

A Geotag Records Where the Camera Was

Think about the other things on your website saying where you work. The city in a page title. Your address on the contact page. Whatever sits on your listing.

Every one of those went there on purpose. About the business, meaning it to be read.

Now look at the geotag. No person put that number anywhere. A device recorded its own position the moment a picture got taken, then tucked that in beside the image.

So a geotag is no statement about your business. Rather it is a note a device made about itself.

Nobody at Your Company Decided That Number

That sounds like hair-splitting. Watch what it does, though.

Your address is true about your business wherever the photo happens to be taken. Meanwhile a geotag is true about a spot on the ground and nothing else. It answers one question. Where was this phone?

Sometimes that spot is your shop. Other times it is a customer’s driveway.

Thirty Geotagged Photos Are a Record of One Phone

Picture a plumber’s camera roll. A job in Airdrie. Then the supply counter where he picked up a part. One taken in his own kitchen, working out how the new phone handled low light. A few from a Sunday.

Upload the lot and every file carries its own coordinates. Read together, they are a record of where one phone has been over a fortnight.

That is not where the business is. Nor is it where the work gets sold. It is a fortnight of somebody’s driving.

Somebody Will Point at the Geotagging Tool

Fair enough. The tactic rarely leaves it to the camera. It tells you to write the coordinates in yourself, so all thirty files say your shop rather than Airdrie.

That works, and it is a short job. Only look at what the writing did to the thing.

Then It Stops Being a Record

The geotag reported something that happened, before you touched it. A device was somewhere. Afterwards it reports what you would like to be true.

Both are fine. They are simply different objects, and only one of them was evidence of anything.

Which leaves an ordinary question. You already say where you are, in your title, on your listing, across your contact page. What does saying it again inside a photo add?

You were never short of places to say where you work.

The File Frequently Does Not Arrive With It

Here is the part worth checking before anybody spends an afternoon on it.

Upload an image and the receiving end frequently does not keep your file. It makes its own. Website software builds smaller copies for phones. Meanwhile a platform runs the picture through its own machinery on the way in.

Whether the coordinates survive varies by platform, and it has changed more than once over the years. Nobody should take a blanket answer from a page like this. Yours is checkable, though.

Somebody Will Say Their Photos Kept the Data

Some do. Plenty of setups leave the original alone.

Say yours is one of them. Then the coordinates are still sitting in there, and the question comes straight back. What do they say? Either a device recorded a place having nothing to do with your business. Or somebody typed a location you had already published elsewhere.

The tactic survives the upload. It still arrives holding one of those two things.

What the Photo Itself Carries

None of this makes the picture worthless. Quite the opposite.

A photograph of a real job in a real neighbourhood tells a customer something no coordinate will. They can see the house. Then the work itself. Nothing in a coordinate was ever going to show them either one.

So use real ones, taken on real jobs. That advice has nothing to do with metadata, and it does considerably more.

What Geotagging Publishes About You

Suppose the data survives on your setup. Then it is worth knowing what leaves the building.

Photos taken at a kitchen table publish the coordinates of that kitchen table. Plenty of trades run the business from home. Nobody is in danger here, and this is no warning. It is a fact about the file, and the one genuinely useful thing to know about the format.

Notice that it has nothing to do with rankings.

Where the Geotagging Argument Stops

Geotagging carries no penalty. No rule forbids it. It costs almost nothing. Plenty of checklists carry it, which is a reasonable place for it to sit.

The claim here is narrower than it sounds. A geotag is either a record of a device or a repeat of something you have already said. Neither one is a bad thing to own. Just price it accordingly, and spend the afternoon on the photograph instead.

Download Your Own Photo and Look

Go to a page on your live website. Save one of your own images back onto your computer. Then open the file information panel, whatever your machine calls it.

Should the coordinates still be there, read them. Are they your business, or wherever somebody happened to be standing?

Should there be nothing at all, two explanations fit. Either the platform rewrote your file on the way in, or the camera never recorded a coordinate to begin with. Nothing in the file tells you which. Both land in the same spot, though. Whatever the tactic was meant to be doing, it was not doing it here.

No statistic about other people’s websites settles which of those you are holding. Yours is one download away.

Local SEO Work for Calgary Businesses

That checklist turns up often enough at SEO Company To-The-TOP!, geotagging somewhere near the bottom of it. Often the first useful hour at To-The-TOP! goes on the items above it instead.

Businesses across Calgary tend to want the local half working. Mostly that is ordinary SEO in Calgary rather than anything exotic. Real photographs, for one. Then search engine optimization on the content a customer reads. Also keyword research, pointed at the words people type when they need somebody. The portfolio shows the keywords this work has reached.

Then a Google Ads campaign covers the months before any of that traffic lands. No guarantees. Three to six months is the plain range, and it has been the range at To-The-TOP! since 2007.

Common Questions About Geotagging Photos and SEO

Does geotagging photos help local SEO?

Nobody outside Google can say what it does with the data, so treat confident answers carefully. What is checkable is what the geotag holds. Either a device’s position or a location you already publish elsewhere.

Does uploading strip the geotag from my photos?

Often, though not always. Platforms and website software handle it differently, and the behaviour has changed over the years. Download one of your own live images and look rather than trusting any page on this.

Should I geotag photos on my Google Business Profile?

It costs almost nothing, so nobody should argue hard against it. What the photograph shows does considerably more work than the coordinates ever will.

Is there any harm in geotagging photos?

Not to your SEO. The one real consideration is the reverse of the tactic. Where the data survives, photos taken at home publish that address, which plenty of people would rather keep off the internet.

What should I do instead of geotagging?

The ordinary local work. A complete listing. Pages naming the places you actually serve. Reviews from customers who live there. Every one of those gets read by a person, which is more than a coordinate manages.