SEO 101 for Photographers by Suzan Moody
Click the link to skip SEO 101 and proceed to SEO 201.
Suzan Moody is the operations officer at MorePhotos, an Internet photo sales software that provides professional photographers with on-line photo sales, proofing and hosting solutions, Moody is a 16-year veteran of Internet marketing and recently presented two sessions at the 2010 AAPI conference, SEO 101 and Online Photo Marketing.
With 1.7 billion people online across the world – including 74.2% of North American and 52% of European households – the Internet is one of the most important vehicle for photographers to build awareness of their services and quality of their work.
While it’s important, especially for a photographer’s image, to have an attractive website. It’s just as important for that website to be found. The following search engine optimization (SEO) tips will help photographers ensure that their websites are easily found by search engines such as Google and Bing – and more importantly, potential customers.
Note: While not all of these need to be done concurrently, the more SEO tactics you can implement, the better.
- 1. Domain Name – Begin with a good domain name (URL). If you don’t have a domain name already, pick one that includes keywords relevant to your services or even location, e.g.: “oldtimephoto.com” or “montrealweddingphotographer.com.” Search engines search domain names just as much as they do text for relevance in a search.
- 2. Metadata – A site’s “meta data” can be divided up into three key sub-categories, each of which play an important and separate role in attracting the different
search engines to your site. They are: title tag, keyword tag and description tag. Each of these exist within the coding of your site, so you will need to work with your website
designer to ensure these are properly managed. Left blank and search engines will have a difficult time finding you.
a) Title Tag – The title tag is the text displayed in the blue bar at the very top of a browser window. Although inconspicuous to the user, the title tag is the most important bit of text on a web page as far as the search engines are concerned. Search engines not only assign the words in the title tag more weight, they also typically display the title tag in the search results, making the title tag an important potential call-to-action as well. Thus, the wording of each page's title tag should be thought through carefully.
Good Practice for Title Tags: Accurately describe your site and page’s content. Be brief and to the point, putting more important words to the forefront – keep it to a few words and phrases.
b) Keyword Tag – Keyword tags are used primarily by Yahoo in their ranking formula. Here, you provide a distinct list of keywords that relate to the specific page on your site – words a potential customer would use in a search engine to find a wedding or baby photographer, for example. Please note: If the keywords or keyword phrases do not appear anywhere in the text of your web page (e.g., a competitor’s name), then they should not appear in the keywords tag. Search engines do not like that and will rate the page lower as a result.
Good Practice for Keywords: Search engines only read so far in the split seconds it takes to search your site. That is why it is important to be brief, to the point, and to put the more important and descriptive keywords to the forefront of the keyword tag.
c) Description Tag – These tags provide an overview description of the content found on a website. Google will often use description tags as the “listing” for a business in search engine results. Search engines typically display 150 characters from the description tag, give or take a few.
Good Practice for Description tag: The goal here is to pique the interest of the web user, and be as informative as possible in one or two sentences. If possible, specific terms should be used early in the description to help search engines and visitors identify the main subject of the page, and also to avoid getting left out of the visible area.
- 3. Text vs. Button Navigation – Search engines love text much more so than they do images. They also like links. So, when possible, use text for navigation and
links rather than a fancy button or using the words “click here” to link to another page. Search engines add more weight or value to these words; words represented
graphically are pretty much invisible to search engines.
For example:
1) Photography tips, vs.
2) Click here for photography tips, vs.
3) An image of a button with the words “Photography Tips” on it
The first is the best solution as it uses relevant keywords to navigate customers to the page. - 4. Page Content – When writing the text for any page on your website, be sure to include your keywords and phrases within the text. The first 250 words of text
are the most important to search engines.
Good Practices for Page Content: Stay Focused on that page’s topic and keep it succinct, again, placing as much keyword and relevant language as you can (but not overdoing it) within the first 250 words on a page. And, whenever you can, add fresh content and relevant links, either to an internal page or relevant external page. - 5. Use of Webmaster Tools: Analytics – Major search engines provide free tools for webmasters that help analyze a site’s ranking factors. These tools help identify site issues such as what may be not “crawlable,” identify issues with your metadata, identify how customers reached your site (e.g., what keywords they used), identify dead links, etc. During a down time, photographers should be sure to pull this information (their web designer can help) to understand just how well a site is doing in marketing a photographer’s business.
- 6. Don’t Give Up – SEO can be intimidating. Though it won’t happen overnight, be assured that small changes will add up to big results.
SEO 201 for Photographers – working the links by Suzan Moody
NOTE: This is part II in a two-part series on search engine optimization strategies for photographers.
To see the first article, SEO 101 for Photographers, click here.
Now that you have a good handle on keywords and implemented them into your metadata and website text, it’s time to take your search engine optimization (SEO) tactics one step further by building an inventory of quality “in-links” to your site.
Why in-links? Because the quantity and, even more importantly, the quality of external links that come to your site are yet another important factor that search engines look at in ranking your website amongst search engine results. Quite simply, the more relevant websites you have linking to your photography studio’s site, the more credible search engines will consider your site and thus, rank it higher.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Link building is vital but at the same time, a very lengthy and extensive task to perform. But don’t let that scare you away from this important tool for getting your website noticed. Here are some tips:
- 1. Focus on Quality
The quality of the in-links depend on the genuineness and relevancy of the content of the website that is linking to you, and search engines look to this more than the quantity of links to your site. For example, if you’re a Chicago-based wedding photographer, search engines will rate more highly a link to your site from mychicagowedding.com than it will a link from yellowpages.com (not that the link from yellowpages.com is a bad link to have; it’s just that it’s not as relevant to search engine looking for Chicago wedding photographers.)
Moody’s In-links How To
Spend a little time on the Internet searching for websites that are relevant to your area of specialty. For example, in the case of the Chicago-based wedding photographer, look up Chicago wedding magazines or Chicago wedding planners. Also try to find your own site or those of your competitors by typing in relevant keyword(s), e.g., Chicago wedding photographers. See what non-competitors’ sites come up at the top of each the results, and determine each site’s credibility and whether it links to others. If so, contact the site to see if they will list your photography business on its website.
NOTE: Not all may be “free” listings – but if it’s a very credible site that places highly in search engine results, then you may want to spend the money to be included on the site. - 2. Get Social
The social website Facebook currently has over 400 million active users and is the second most popular website in the United States. Facebook is holding on as the second most popular social site with approximately 120 million users. The fact is, people like to share things – random thoughts, photos, recommendations, complaints, etc. So much so that in 2009, users spent 82% more time on these and other social website such as Twitter, LinkedIn than in 2008.
Moody’s Social Media How-To
Getting your photography business active on social websites is beneficial in two ways. First, by creating a page for your business – if you haven’t already – and then sharing it with your customers, friends, etc., you’re gaining free exposure for your services in one of the fastest growing marketing mediums. The second and less obvious (but equally important) reason is, by having a presence on such sites, you are providing your business with opportunities for more in-links to your website – and free ones, at that. Whenever you post new images, link back to your site. Adding “pre-shoot tips” for baby photographs to your Facebook page? Link it back to your site. - 3. Write an Article
As an expert in your craft, you can provide advice to amateur photographers or tips to photography subjects on preparing for a session, for example, and have it published online via a number of different sites such as Squidoo or Hubpages – and of course, linked back to your site. - 4. “Wiki” Yourself
Wikipedia is a web-based encyclopedia that is written collaboratively by largely anonymous users. Anyone with Internet access can write and make changes to Wikipedia articles.
Moody’s Wikipedia How-To If you do nothing else on Wikipedia, create a page for your photography business and link it back to your website as well as to the Wiki pages of the photography associations to which you belong. To take it further, contribute to other relevant Wikipedia pages and link back to your Wiki page or website. - 5. Get on the ‘Tube
YouTube.com is not just for your vacation video. It’s also another website through which you can gain additional exposure for your business – as well as another in-bound link.
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