SEO……what is SEO? Well I know what it stands for but quite honestly I don’t know a lot about it. It is a mystery to me and I know it is a mystery to many photographers out there who are mostly just holding their breath and hoping they can get their site a better ranking in google…..just how to do that is the question.
Zach over at Photographers SEO Blog and Book agreed to answer some questions for us and all of you. Make sure you read all the way through so you don’t miss the generous gift Zach is offering.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for search engine optimization. If they had just called it Google-boost or something I think there would be less confusion. It’s the process of updating (optimizing) your website or blog so that you have a better chance of appearing higher in search engine results. If you update the phrase of your homepage title to include a couple of the keywords you are trying to rank for, that is SEO. If you add your blog link to a couple of blog directories, that is SEO. Pretty easy, huh?
How important is SEO?
I guess that depends how many visitors you want to your website and ultimately how many new clients you want for your business. Some photographers are happy with posting a website or blog and maintaining a business via word of mouth referrals. That is all that will happen if you don’t actively put SEO effort into your site. Your site won’t rank for anything.
If you do some minor SEO work like choose the right keywords and add links back to your site, you can quickly rank for most local search terms.
Google will typically generate 50% or more of your site traffic, and the links you build (called referral traffic) can generate another 25%. That means SEO can multiply your website traffic by 3-4x. For me that is 3-4x more NEW client requests per month and they in turn refer more clients. Search traffic is the starting point for so much business that I can raise my rates 25% or even 50% and still keep the same volume of new client requests. For me SEO is the easiest, cheapest, and most important marketing a photography business can ever do.
Is doing my own SEO hard? I don’t know anything about it
SEO is not hard. An oversimplified Google takes the search text and looks for sites that use the similar or related text. Then it returns the websites that are the most popular (have the most links pointing to them). In concept this is easy to understand and just using quality keywords and getting good links to your site can take you a good distance. There are other considerations that also help like URLs, image names, etc. But a focus on text and linking is a great start and can be done relatively quickly for any type of website.
Since almost 50% of the clicks go to the top 1-2 results, there is a big difference in ranking #1 and #10. The payoff comes in learning the extra little details to boost your position from ten to one and that usually takes a lot of trial and error or online research. Hence why I wrote my book.
What is sandboxing? What causes google to sandbox a site?
If Google is the parent of my website then it would put my new website on timeout (in the sandbox) by not allowing me to rank high for pretty much anything. You might get put in the sandbox for adding a bunch of links on spam sites, purchasing lots of links in a short time frame, or throwing mashed potatoes in your brother’s face. Stay away from link offers that are too good to be true and your site will be fine.
How important are meta tags or keywords to SEO?
How do I choose the best meta tags/keywords for me?
Ask a normal person if they are optimized for search and they will say “Yeah, I’ve updated my meta tags.” Unfortunately, the easy way to optimization was so often exploited that almost all search engines stopped using meta tags in their rankings.
But there are 2 types of meta tags. Meta keywords and meta descriptions. Meta keywords are worth less than… hmm… something not worth anything. They do not help your rank, expose your words to competitors, and too many of them can be seen as spam so I do not use or recommend them on any website. Meta descriptions, however, appear on the search results page. Although they don’t help your page’s rank position, some good marketing text might entice a user to click your link, and therefore it can be important.
I wrote a post on my blog Meta Tag Gems for Photographers that talks about writing the best meta data.
Do blogs help SEO?
Blogs are the Viagra of SEO for websites. Did I answer the question? I think more people are signing up for blogs than Viagra now too. If you are a photographer, then you need a blog ASAP. Blogs are highly valued by Google, quickly appear in results, pre-optimized with links, and the list goes on. It will give you a completely new website that can rank in Google (that means 2 listings and double the traffic). Plus it will help you rank for a lot of niche terms that you would not talk about on your regular website. For example if you write a blog post about a specific wedding venue that you photographed, then your blog post might rank for searches about that venue and brides will be calling you to book their event. Whoa! By the way, WordPress is the best blog system for SEO and Thesis is the best WordPress template for SEO purposes.
My website is built in flash, can I get better SEO with a flash site?
Oops. Not counting the Terminator, machines like Google can’t read Flash. That means all the great text and pages within your Flash site are probably invisible to search. Non-flash sites have a greater chance of success, but Flash sites can still rank very easily by putting text at the bottom of your homepage and building some links to your site.
Why do my site rankings fluctuate so much? One day I will be on page 1 and the next I will be on page 3 then back again? (slight exaggeration :-P )
Actually, I wouldn’t expect that much fluctuation, but ranks do vary from day to day. In one tiny example I posted something on my blog that I added to some social networks including my Twitter page. That day I help the top 7 ranks for one particular term, but later in the week most of them fell off of search. Why? Probably because the text was no longer on the top of those social sites anymore so Google didn’t see it. That is one illustration of how the people ranked below me were affected by new posts and new text that was posted on the Internet for a short time. The best way to maintain a steady rank is to have lots of links pointing to your website.
More important than your rank, is how much traffic you get from the rank. I would rather be ranked #10 for a broad term that gives me 100 new visitors per month than #1 for a very specific thing that nobody searches for and drives no traffic. So don’t get caught up in watching your rankings.
I check mine once per month using a tool called Rank Checker. It’s a Firefox plugin that allows me to save all my key phrases in a list, then click a button to see where I am ranked across the 3 major search engines for each phrase. I also follow which keywords are sending me traffic from my Google Analytics report. If I start getting traffic for “best San Diego photographer” that means I probably rank for it and maybe I will write some more content with “best” at the beginning.
Can you tell us a little about your book and what kind of info it has in it?
Photographers SEO Book gives photographers the best advantage for getting high in Google without the need for technical skill or time to do a lot of online research about SEO. It offers step-by-step instructions that I have followed successfully across pretty much every different photo website system and blog there is. It not only explains Google, but offers cut and paste keyword examples, optimized homepage text, 50+ recommended photographer link locations, Google Analytics setup steps, and lots of tidbits of advice.
Let’s say you spend $100 on your website per year to get 2 new leads per month ($4 per lead). What’s the ROI when you invest $39 one-time on SEO and double that to 4 new leads per month? I said it earlier about myself, but it applies to everyone: the photographers who invest in SEO will get more business and be able to charge higher rates than they did previously.
Thank you SO much Zach!
I now have my own copy of The Photographers SEO Book and I can personally attest to the fact that it is full of quality information and so many awesome ways to help your SEO, and the best part is it is easy to understand and follow for someone like me who is not very tech savvy! :-P
Zach has so generously donated 3 download copies of his book to twophotogs to give away to our readers..how amazing is that??!! Who out there does not want their site to be easier to find?
All you have to do is post your comments (yes, you can enter twice by leaving 2 comments in a random order) below, and maybe leave a little love for Zach to thank him for his time. 3 random winners will be chosen on Monday next week. If you don’t win, or are super eager to get started on your SEO today head on over to Photographers SEO Book and get a copy.
Good luck!
by Danna
59 comments