Search engine optimization can provide your website a constant stream of new photography clients. SEO for short, has been my home for many years, as I’ve helped many photographers improve the search engine ranks of their websites. This first post starts very general for beginners with simple background. I’ll explain a little about SEO, the two basic techniques (Yes, just 2… I told you I would make it simple), how search can help your business, and how to get started. To go deeper, the Photographers SEO Book will give you the best text and links you need to position yourself in search. Learn more about the ebook or read testimonials.
SEO: Process to Improve Your Site for Search Results
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is the practice of making minor adjustments to your website in an effort to appear higher in search engine results. I’m talking about the non-paid, sometimes called organic, links that appear down the middle of the search results page. The paid sponsored links that sometimes appear at the very top or right side of search results is a different subject called search engine marketing (or Google Ad Words).
I use “search engines” and Google interchangeably. Google captures over 60% of the US searches, and if your site ranks high in Google it also typically rank high in the other major search engines. Do yourself a favor and focus solely on your rank in Google. To get there, learn a little bit about how it works.
Google’s ranking process uses an algorithm that is extremely complex, and even more secret. It always changes, but the fundamental principles are commonly known. Two basic SEO techniques take advantage of these principles: text on the page, and links to the page.
Match Your Page Text to What Users Type in Search
Google returns the best results by looking at what a user typed into search, then finding webpages that use those same words. Google looks for words from the search phrase in a number of places on the webpage:
• The URL of your site (domain name)
• Your site title, description, and keywords (meta data)
• The text words on your site
Now we know that when a user searches for “San Diego wedding photographer,” Google looks for web pages with the same words. This keyword comparison makes up a minority portion of the ranking process, but the first technique most photographers use is to add common search phrases to your webpages.
Build Quality Links to Your Webpages
The majority of Google’s process looks at the links coming into your page from other websites. Google ranks sites higher that have lots of links pointing to it, including:
• The number of websites linking to a site
• The popularity and importance of the website that has the link
• The text used in the link
The more difficult and time consuming second technique is getting reputable links that are relevant to your website. Link ideas include partner websites, local websites, directories.
Advanced Techniques: the Social Media Photographer
The above is plenty for the average photography business, but by no means comprehensive or in depth. To give you an idea of more complex search optimization, take this social media illustration.
Add a blog and forum to your website, as well as Twitter page where you can promote and invite others to join, comment, and contribute. Interlink your sites appropriately in addition to writing articles or blogs for others websites (that link back to yours). Put buttons on your pages that make it easy for users to share and save your pages. Post your well-tagged photos and videos to multiple sources. Assuming you did the right keyword research ahead of time, all of these activities create web pages with many different content types that are rich in keywords and lots of links – all the things that search engines love.
Benefits for Your Photography Business
The first search result gets 25% of the clicks! Search is such a competitive space that I would not expect any measure of new business without a top 10 Google rank. There are too many sites to rank in the top 10 without effort, so at least a minimal amount of optimization is mandatory if you expect users to find you, because they certainly aren’t picking up the yellow pages!
Optimize your photography website once for search engines, and expect to maintain your search engine position for a long time. Imagine the value of promotion the first page of Google search results provides. Tens, if not hundreds or thousands of searchers are exposed to those free listings. Consider what your competition pays for banner ads, yellow paid ads, or event booths. True, these can have ROI, but rarely do they offer the residual client stream that a high search rank will continue to provide. Your website link will appear long after you have completed the search engine optimization process – free advertising.
Consider how much time, effort, and money you’ve invested in your website. Don’t let it become a billboard in the dessert. Invest a percentage of your time or budget toward website promotion so that your beautiful website can be found. In my case, I spend about 10 times more energy promoting my website than on the site itself. Many times you win a new client from the promotion alone (or search result title, as it were).
Get Started with SEO
The best thing you can do is start simple, check your results, then build from there. Focus on developing one important phrase that you want to be found for in search engines, then experiment with some of the basic optimization techniques to see if you can improve your rank for that phrase. For example, use that phrase in text on your homepage and then after a week or two see if it made an impact on your Google rank. Then begin building quality links back to your site and check again to see what impact that has made. In some cases you may have a photography niche or a location that does not have a lot of search competition and your optimization efforts will quickly be fulfilled. Sometimes phrases too competitive to rank for and you may have to settle for something more unique, or in a less populated location.
I recommend that beginners invest in the Photographer’s SEO Book (because I wrote it). It provides a simple formula for finding your key phrase, an optimized splash page text example, plus a list of places where photographers can get free links – everything you need to get started without a heavy investment.
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A mere online presence won’t serve the purpose of reaching out and impressing your target audience, to beat the competition you need a well designed website with a good search rank and for that you need help of companies which provide complete solutions..
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