Clickbooq offers beautiful web-based portfolio management perfect for photographers. Ease of use for editing simplifies the web for those non-technical photographers. Custom designs coupled with very clean navigation make the customer experience excellent, and their customer support was superb in answering my questions within an hour. Visually and technically, clickbooq has everything a photographer needs, but what about search engine optimization (SEO) features? The Photographers SEO Book can definitely help you take advantage of them, but here’s a quick review on what comes standard with the clickbooq system:
Site Level Metatag Editing
Clickbooq includes an easy to use section where you can control your site title, meta description, and keywords. Yes, that means the same information on all pages of your website, but sitewide meta data is standard on systems like this.
clickbooq meta tag screen for SEO
One note: meta descriptions do not help your rank position, they only entice users to click on your search result. So it’s better to use a compelling marketing statement here than keyword loading. Second, meta keywords are all-but meaningless. You won’t find any on my websites. If you must use them (and expose yourself to competitors) then use 5 or less words please.
Image Names and Text Control
clickbooq had fields where you can enter information about your images like the title of the image and a caption, and those fields can hold embedded links (direct URLs). While this text may or may not be visible to users, it does appear in the HTML version of the code in the form of image alt attributes. I did a quick check to see how this translates to rankings. For example Chris is a Kansas City Wedding Photographer who used the text “Lake Quivira Country Club wedding” as the title for one of his images. When you search for that on Google Chris’s wedding gallery ranks #5 simply because he used that text, and he may get some good leads from people looking to book that specific venue.
Now the truth is that Chris has an edge because he has a powerful site with lots of links to it. It is difficult to rank for something because of just one image title, but as is the above example it can be done, and does not take a lot of effort to name images. My point it that clickbooq has the infrastructure for you to do so without needing to know HTML.
Lack of URL and Filename Control
Like most photo website systems, you cannot choose the URLs for your pages because they are automatically generated by the website. Here are some examples of clickbooq URLs.
Homepage http://www.mysite.com.com/#/client/template.xml?aaa=home&bbb=
Notice the homepage can have multiple versions of its URL. To help your rank you want to be consistent and always link to the same version of the URL. The more links you have to an individual URL, the better Google will think that page is.
Subpage http://www.mysite.com/#/client/content_page/3096.xml
Portfolio Page http://www.mysite.com/client.html?view_type=portfolio&id=16136&
Image http://content.clickbooq.com/101/photos/00137626e5_thumb.jpg
For these other pages above, obviously it would be better if you could use a folder and file path like /galleries/weddings/san-diego-bride-saying-vows.jpg because that gives Google some great information about your content and can help your rank. But that is not an option in the current version of clickbooq.
Automatic HTML Versions of Pages
There has always been an SEO problem with sites that are 100% Flash because Google can’t read what it in the Flash. A search engine is not like a human that can interpret the visual content, so when it gets to the Flash portion of a website it basically hits a big blank spot in the code where it doesn’t gain any information about what your website says. Clickbooq attempted to solve this problem by providing automatic HTML versions of each website to help Google read and index all of its pages. It does have some value, but the even the HTML versions have very little information for Google other than confusing URLs, navigation text and image text. Bottom line: it will be difficult to get the HTML pages ranked.
Access to FTP for Uploading HTML Pages
Site navigation buttons (which can be hidden if needed) can link to an HTML page that you can upload to your clickbooq FTP directory, which can show up in a Google search.
This is a unique offering to be able to hide custom pages from your menu but still make them visible to search. The best use of this technology I see for this would be a sitemap or a links page.
WordPress Hosting and Integration
A tremendous feature! Clickbooq allows you to have a WordPress blog attached to your photography website and hosted by clickbooq. WordPress is the absolute best SEO blogging platform and can get fairly technical at points. So the fact that they will connect it to your site allows you to have the most optimized blog as a part of your own website. About the only downside I see is that you may lose control over the URLs of your blog posts (slugs) but this is a minor sacrifice. Every photographer should take advantage of this feature.
Google Analytics
Clickbooq has a field where you can enter your Google Analytics code without needing to get into the HTML of your website. So you can go to https://www.google.com/analytics/, setup an account, and paste the small amount of code they give you straight into clickbooq. Then log back into Google to see who is checking out your website, what keywords are sending you traffic, etc. Google Analytics is the only tool I use and recommend for web stats.
A Little More SEO Help Will Be Needed
Since clickbooq sites are mostly Flash, a lot of your ranking ability will depend on how many sites link back to you. Linking is by far the number 1 factor in Google ranking. The Photographers SEO Book is the perfect resource for links, with over 50 suggested link locations and some great tips about image labeling, blogging, etc.
Zach strongly recommends SEO Interview with clickbooq Founder Michael Heu
Get the clickbooq SEO How to Guide
clickbooq users can download the Photographers SEO Book here for $39 to get the clickbook SEO How to Guide ($10 value) included for free. That’s 5 bonus pages with screenshots of clickbooq specific advice for making the most of your clickbooq SEO features.
Photographers SEO Book offers easy to read and deploy steps for getting your site in Google. Photographers who read it immediately know what to rank for and why, plus how to SEO their sites with the right photography keywords and link building techniques.
- Over 25 pages of proven Google knowledge
- Perfect keyword text for your homepage
- Over 50 hand-picked link ideas
- Help making your images visible to search
- Google Analytics, blogging, SEO tools…
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Really dude these info for optimize the wedding website is very helpful and i am also looking for such an information ..,..,
Thanks for the kind words. You should pickup a copy of the book – it will really help your title and homepage text (onpage factors). You should see an instant rank improvement for your Spain wedding photography site. But I would narrow your market to focus on something more attainable than all of Spain
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