seo for photography - flourish · 2013-09-09 · link up – get backlinks a huge thing that search...

SEO for Photography

By Jill Levenhagen

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© 2013 Jill Levenhagen Photography – Do not copy

About Jill Levenhagen

I am a Photographer and Blogger. I have two photography blogs. One is called Jill Levenhagen Photography (www.jilllevenhagenphotography.com), where I blog about general Photography and also Lightroom. I also build and give away Lightroom Templates on my site. I use that as my “hook” to get people to my site and find out what I’m all about. My other site is called Find it FREE Photography (www.finditfreephotography.com). It is a resource site. On this site I link up to photographers and designers who are offering something free for photographers on their website, such as free actions or free presets or free Lightroom Templates! They may not have had the time to do all this SEO and so this resource site helps them get found, gets them backlinks in www-land, and gets them traffic. And it helps you…the photographer…find things without having to weed through Google. Getting noticed on the web is no small task. Social Media is providing us with all kinds of new and effective ways to connect to people. But without creating some authority for your brand, social media falls flat. People have to find you, and believe that you are something special. Coming up on page 1 in a Google search gives you automatic authority. 90% of people believe that you came up because you are a good company. I started my blog in March 2013. Nothing was happening. Trying to get myself noticed seemed impossible. In May I read a book called ProBlogger, and it set me on a whirlwind of learning that I hope never stops! Within 2 weeks of optimizing my blog with the techniques in this booklet, I was ranking on page 1 of a search for my top keyword phrase: free lightroom templates. Within another week, I was ranking page 1, position number ONE for just “lightroom templates”. SEO is a tangible process with tangible results. It is not about how much people like you or how well you can promote yourself. It is about knowing the steps to take, doing the work, and seeing results. Please keep in touch with me by sharing your successes with SEO! Jill Levenhagen Email: [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

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Introduction

We have all come into photography as artists. We have that “something” that makes our images unique. Maybe it is our eye for good angles, great light or the ability to bring out personality in our subjects. Then we may also have the magic touch with post-processing. So we decide to start a business. Business | Art Is that an oxymoron? Could there be two more opposite terms? So we become business people. We can fake it some. The business part is not the art that hangs on the wall. We muddle through and manage with the business. But what about the Marketing part of Business? Well, lately we have mostly turned to Facebook. Certainly every business needs a Facebook page these days. It is like the new Yellow Pages. (ref: the big Yellow Book that arrives on your doorstep each year that you are clueless what to do with) But we are frustrated with the arbitrary methods and un-measured results we see. We want our “Likes” to increase because it is the only measurement we have of our success. Does that tell us anything about whether people are hearing about our business? Or whether they will continue to? We have no idea if our business is being hidden in newsfeeds. The amount of “Likes” we have really tells us little about the success of our business and the efforts we are dedicating to our Facebook page. Facebook has become almost a “likability” endeavor. We are encouraged to share personal stuff and make potential clients LIKE us personally. THAT will make them want to hire us. It is somewhat “smoke in mirrors” in that we all know that people are not always what they project themselves to be. We can use Facebook to bump up our “cool factor”. And really, if you are already pretty cool (some of you are) then you are golden on Facebook. You probably don’t need this booklet at all. And if you really have a way of writing that you can make yourself look better through Facebook…great! That is your gift…go with it. That is not me so much…which is why I get frustrated. (I am cool, actually…you just have to meet me in person!) So, while having a Facebook business page is essential, in most cases it cannot be your only mechanism of marketing. I was frustrated with Facebook with my photography business and my blogging business. It seemed to be the only way to measure my success. And then I found out about SEO strategies. I guess I always viewed the results in Google as “the ones that come up first must be best”. And I now know that the ones who come up first are just smart! Hence, “smoke in mirrors” applies here too! Use your smarts to make yourself and your business “appear” to be better than it may really be. So we are talking about techniques and strategies here. If you employ techniques in marketing, you are working to project your business to be the best of the best and you want people to believe it. This booklet is going to teach you the strategies to market yourself using SEO. Smart techniques and lots of work can get you somewhere. And it is measureable. You can see whether your hard work pays off by watching your business move up in Google ranking. Then you will be sure that you are moving in the right direction and that your hard work is not in vain!

How Search Engines Decide

There is an unending supply of web-articles that will give you all the things to do, as I am doing here. But this what you need to understand: There is not just one thing you can do to make your site rank. It is always a mixture of things. Why? Because if there was just one thing, the system could be hacked and we would only see spammers at the top of Google. What Search Engines do is find ways to measure your value, your validity and your relevancy. They connect all different kinds of elements, and have complex algorithms that combine all the information about you in order to rank you. They connect to your blog, find your name, see your social media, and measure how other valued websites interact with you. They ALL matter – together. Following is my list “so far” of the things I have done to rank my site. I recommend doing it all!

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Keyword Worksheet

To begin optimizing for Search Engines, you have to know your keywords and keyword phrases. Fill them out here for your reference. Write out Keywords here:

Write your top 5 Keyword Phrases here

To do at home: Research your keyword phrases by doing Google searches on them. Click on the top-ranked photographers and find out why they are ranked for those words. Remember the words you used to search for them…how do you find those words in their page? Look at their Blog Titles. Right-click on pages and images and choose “Inspect Element”. This will show you what titles and Alt-tags they are using.

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Absolute Must-do: Verify your website

Get accounts in Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools and add your site and verify them. You can do this with your Domain provider (like GoDaddy) just by signing in and connecting. You can also so this by adding metatags to the Header of your blog (a little more difficult). If you use the Wordpress SEO by Yoast plugin (free to download from your blog Plugin settings), the Settings page has a place on the bottom to paste the Metatag that you can get through the Webmaster Tools sites. For Google, they suggest another option first, but just click the “Alternative Methods” tab, and click on HTML tag. Then they will give you a Meta-tag to paste in the line in Yoast. Save the settings on the SEO Yoast page. Then go back to the Verification page and click “Verify”. Here is an image tutorial for Google, and the process is similar for Bing.

Highlight Meta Tag

Choose Alternative Methods

Choose HTML Tag

Choose Add a Site

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LINK UP – Get Backlinks

A HUGE thing that search engines value is your incoming links, or backlinks. Outgoing are nice, but incoming are gold. The more high-profile the site linking to you, the more it helps you. This is a big way search engines determine your value, validity and relevancy. How do you get backlinks?

Hook up with other photographers who are in different niches (Weddings, Seniors, etc)…get a network where you refer to each other and add links to your websites. This only works if you have niches and don’t overlap.

Hook up with friends who blog about photography in general, and offer to guest post about something you know about.

Use Pinterest to get links coming in. (more on Pinterest later)

*You can submit template examples to Jill Levenhagen Photography’s Lightroom Template site…you will get your image listed with a link to your site.

Blogrolls are nice. If you want to list other bloggers or photographers in a blogroll on your site, they might do the same for you.

Offer a “free” product for photographers…like a preset or action on your blog, and ask other people to link to it. Submit it to “Find it Free Photography” to be listed.

Figure out ideas. This is an important thing to sit around and brainstorm about.

Domain Name

Consider spending the $10 and buying more domain names. Research shows that keyword URLs helps SEO. Not as much if they are forwarded and not the main domain name, but it still helps. Buy additional keyword URLs, even the .net ones and forward them to your site. Example

Now go to Blog, under SEO (the Yoast Plugin)

Paste Meta Tag Here

Save Settings

Go Back to Google and click VERIFY

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www.freelightroomtemplates.com forwards to www.jilllevenhagenphotography.com, which is my free LR templates site

Another reason to purchase keyword domain names is to keep other competitors from purchasing them and using them.

Optimizing your Website/Blog

There is not just one thing you can do to your site to make a post or page rank. If you do only one thing listed here, it won’t work. While Search Engines use external things like verifying, backlinks and your social media to determine your value, validity and relevancy, it is your website that tells them WHAT to rank you for. What keywords do you most want to be ranked for? And you can’t just tell the bots once, you have to tell them in multiple places so they are absolutely sure what your blog is about, and also what every single blog post is about. You will be overlooked if you don’t do multiple things to keyword your blog…things that work together that drive home your message to Google…”Rank me for THIS PHRASE!” SITE TITLE Your Site Title is rarely seen by people visiting your site because you most likely are using an uploaded Logo. When it is seen, it is because it is in search results or someone is snooping around your blog to see how you do your killer SEO. So it is a valuable thing to add a Keyword Phrase or two to your Site Title, in addition to your Business Name (see the example on page 3 – Lemongrass Photography – the actual site title is revealed when you hover your mouse over the Logo). Research shows that your site will rank better the earlier search bots see your keywords. So you might consider putting your keywords before your business name. Change your Site Title under Settings in Wordpress. Examples: Free Lightroom Templates | Lightroom Blog | Jill Levenhagen Photography Jill Levenhagen Photography – Indianapolis Senior Photographer

IMAGE FILENAMES There are two main things search bots look for in images: filename and Alt-tag. The title is rumored to be ignored, but the caption will be indexed. A caption is great but many times for aesthetics, we just don’t want to add a caption. That is okay because the filename and Alt-tag are the main factors in image optimization. Change all your Image Filenames, adding keywords after the unique filename. Do this for all main images/logos on your website/blog, and do it for all blog posts going forward. I even went back to every post and page I already had published and renamed my images and re-imported them. A filename accepts phrases, so use keywords with spaces as a phrase, and separate phrases with dashes. Use a unique name for the beginning of the filename, or keep the number that your camera named it, then add keywords after. Example Filename: Logo Red – free lightroom templates – lightroom blog – lightroom tutorial.jpg Notice how I used the word lightroom multiple times, but in phrases. Renaming can be done easily in Export in Lightroom under Rename/Custom Text, or you can manually change them in your hard drive. This is not the same as METADATA. Metadata is not searchable with search engine bots. You certainly should add it, but it does not have an effect on your SEO. (see Lightroom Export example on the next page)

http://www.freelightroomtemplates.com/

http://www.jilllevenhagenphotography.com/

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You might think, people don’t search images for my keywords, so I can skip this. It is true that good image optimization will help your IMAGES come up in Image results in Google, and that is a BONUS to all of this. But, the reason to optimize your images is to give the search bots more opportunities to see your keywords and be convinced as to what is the subject of your post. Image optimization is essential! Note: Images slow down websites. Another factor in how well you rank in Search Engine results is how fast your site loads. Page Speed makes it easier for Google to index your site and index it more often. As a photographer, you want the best possible representations of your work, but consider using Photoshop’s “Save for Web” and other Optimizing tools if you want to make your page load faster. Getting your image sizes down, at least for your headers and images on your navigation pages are essential, even if you don’t do this for your blog posts.

IMAGE ALT-TAGS Keywording the Image Alt-tag is not something you can do in Lightroom or externally. This is done inside your blog. When you import an image into your blog, you have the option to add text to the Alt-tag when choosing the image, upon placing the image in your blog post. Add Keyword Phrases to the Alt Tag. The Alt-tag accepts comma separated values, so you can just type your keywords like this: Example: free lightroom templates, free lightroom collage templates, lightroom print templates, lightroom tutorial, lightroom blog Much is discussed on the web about Keyword-stuffing Alt-tags. People say not to do it. But you should know that keyword-stuffing is accessive. That is like if you took the above Example and added 20 more phrases to it. You probably can’t think of enough keywords to become a stuffer!

Now do yourself a favor, and make an Export Preset and call it “Renamed for Blog”

Choose Edit

Then Choose “Insert”

Choosing “Insert” will insert (Custom Text” in the box up top after Filename. Then click “Done” and it will take you back to the Export Panel. You can now enter the Custom Text you want to use (Your KEYWORDS) in the Custom Text Box.

Using Blogstomp? Keyword Rename the files you are importing to Blogstomp before they get there.

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If you are using Blogstomp or some other way of auto-importing images to your blog, just click on each image after it is imported into your blog post, and click the little picture icon. This will take you to the panel where you can add an Alt Tag.

BLOG POST TITLES I know you want to put a cute title with your clients names. But, if you are blogging to help yourself, you have to have a keyworded title. Some examples:

Not useful for your SEO Better for your SEO

Married: Jill + Aaron Indianapolis Wedding: Jill + Aaron Gabby turns 1! Gabby turns 1! – Indianapolis Child Photographer

Jill + Aaron Jill + Aaron – Indianapolis Wedding Photographer The main thing is to get your keywords in the title.

Alt Tag

Click here

Enter Alt Text

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CUSTOM URLS FOR BLOG POSTS When you make a blog post, the URL shows up at the top and there is an Edit button. The blog post will mirror your title, but it doesn’t have to. You can make it something different or just add a few keywords to the end.

Wordpress SEO by Yoast Plugin – get this plugin and at the bottom of every post you will have an interface with Yoast that will help you title your post, keyword it and add a Meta Description that shows up in the search engine results. I love the Meta Description because it allows you to control what people will see when your post comes up, instead of it automatically pulling the first few sentences of your post.

BLOG CATEGORIES You need to Keyword your categories. Even if you don’t change your current categories. Add some Keyword Phrase Categories like “Indianapolis Senior Photographer”, and add all your posts to one of those categories. You can have a problem if your categories are all listed in your Menu and you don’t want “Indianapolis Senior Photographer” to be in the dropdown. But there are usually ways to leave out a category in menus. You will have to play around with it.

Click Edit

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FIRST PARAGRAPH OF BLOG POST One thing most photographers do is either jump right into posting pictures and don’t have anything to say, or they have a cute story about their client and use that as the first paragraph. BIG mistake. This paragraph is really important as a drive-it-home-factor in search engines ranking your keywords. It is like Google will actually rank your keywords better if they see them in all these places I am mentioning. The first 150 characters of your post are vital to include keywords. It is good to make them conversational and not a list, and not the same for every post. This is hard since you don’t like your clients to think you are spamming their blog post with keywords. But hey, it is YOUR BLOG…you didn’t blog for them. You are blogging for your business. And, that doesn’t mean that the other text in your post is not searchable, just not weighted as much for Google bots. You should add your main keyword phrase a few more times in the text of your post. Another great practice in the text/body of your post is the use of “Linked Text”. This is when you mention something, and you highlight it and add a link (Highlight the text and press the Link/Chain Icon in the tools menu…then add the link in the pop up box…make sure to check “Open in a new window”). Google bots love Linked Text…it sees it as important. So make sure you don’t just say go to this site HERE and highlight the word HERE. Instead, you should highlight the name of the site and add the link. Then the name of that site is the TEXT of the LINK you added. This can be used for Vendors or Events or Venues. Using Linked Text is smart.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON BLOG OPTIMIZATION Optimize your blog. Optimize the static pages of your blog. Try and put some time into optimizing past posts. When you start to post new content, put some thought into every post. The posts will rank within a few days if all the other things are already in place and you carefully keyword them. One last example. Let’s say you are a wedding photographer and you want to rank for a venue. Mavris is a new hot wedding venue in Indianapolis. If you wanted to rank for Mavris with brides searching, you might use the keyword phrase “Mavris Wedding”. In that case you want that exact keyword phrase in the Title, the URL of the post, the first 150 words of the post, the category if possible, the tags, the image filename, the image alt-tag, and it helps to use it as linked text. And not just the word “Mavris”. Use the phrase “Mavris Wedding” in your post and highlight it and have your entire phrase be the highlighted text that links to Mavris.

Site Stats

If you do all this work on your site optimization, I would think you are going to want to be watching your numbers. Site Stats for your Wordpress blog are available. You must activate Jetpack in Wordpress. After activating, choose Configure on the Site Stats. You are likely blogging on a hosted site with Wordpress.org. Jetpack has to be activated with a Wordpress.com (NOT Wordpress.org) account. Maybe you have an old blog or personal free blog from Wordpress.com. Go ahead and link it to that username…it doesn’t matter. If not, just sign up for an Account and that will link you. This is kind of a strange thing, but it is how they set it up. If you don’t use Wordpress, you will find site stats in Google Webmaster Tools, and more if you sign up for Google Analytics. I find it easier to monitor my Site Stats from the blog. And one of the easiest ways I do it on a daily basis (when I’m not logging into my blog on my desktop) is to use the Wordpress app. This app is AWESOME! Just get the free app and log into your blog, connect again to Jetpack, and your blog and site stats are on your phone!

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This is what the Site Stats page looks like in Wordpress.

Gravatar

www.gravatar.com Add your Gravatar so that your photo will come up with your search results. Your Gravatar is associated with your email address, so you need to use the email address associated with your blog. Your Gravatar image will follow you anywhere on the web that you use your email…like in comments you make on other blogs where you enter an email address in order to post a comment. Your Gravatar will show up beside your comment. You can set up different Gravatar images and profiles for different emails that you use. That is helpful if you have multiple, unrelated blogs.

http://www.gravatar.com/

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Pinterest

Pinterest is awesome for business. Not only do some Pinterest Boards now show up in Google results, Pinterest is its own search engine. You have to stop thinking about Pinning so that local people will find you and hire you. Your presence on Pinterest is for LINKS. You build the links by uploading images to Pinterest, or by pinning from your website, but the important part is the optimization you do for your pins and boards. Here is an overview of what you should be doing to get your pins to show up when other people SEARCH Pinterest for keywords:

Keyword your image pins from your site for the keywords you think people are using when they search for inspiration on Pinterest.

On the boards you use for your business, go into the Board and make sure you have the Category set to Photography. This is vital to people finding you.

While you are in your Board, go ahead and add bunches of keywords to the Board – Description. Most people will never read that, so load it up.

The more Pins you have for your own website, the more links you have. The better you keyword your pins, the more people see them and the more “clicks” you get to your site…that is what you want. That tells the search bots that you have good enough content on Pinterest that people are clicking over.

Google+

One more social media outlet, right? Well, notice that Facebook and Twitter are not on this list. Not because they are not relevant to your business, but because they don’t help your SEO. You should have a Facebook business account. That is an absolute must. You could benefit from a Twitter account. But

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as far as Google+, it will actually contribute to better SEO. Again, it is one more way that you convince Google that you are real and relevant. And not only that, I have actually started to see my own Google+ POSTS come up in search results. I was shocked. I had posted a months-old blog entry. So the search bots are now indexing the text of the Google+ post and putting it in search results. This actually came up on page 1 of a search for Facebook Timeline Templates. AHEAD of my website posts!

So set up a business account. A business account will help your business to come up on local map results and has a place for your clients to rate your business. Doing this doesn’t guarantee you will come up for local searches. There are articles about optimizing your Google+ Business page for local SEO. So read up on that. After creating your page, post all your blog links to it before you start finding people to follow. Then after you have your page ready, do a search for “photography” and click the tab “People”. Then all the people who have mentioned photography in their profile description will come up. So just add a bunch of people and some will add you back. Search for your local friends too. Then just go in there and post your new blog posts when you have something new. You can be as active or not active in Google+ as you want…but just make sure you have an account! As far as having a personal Google+ account. This is a good idea too, just for extra proof that you are human. If you have any service or product that extends beyond local clients (photography products, etc), then you need to have a personal account.

Additional Thoughts

Re-Index your Site – This is important for your To-Do list AFTER you optimize your site. Remember how you set up your account in Google Webmaster Tools and Verified it? Well, now you have an account in Webmaster Tools. After you have made all the changes that I have suggested here, you need to go into Webmaster Tools and tell Google to “find all your changes”…or re-index your site. Google will get to it eventually, but this makes it faster and cleaner. So just go to your account and click on your site name. Then in the left column, choose “Crawl” and “Fetch as Google”. Find the red button that says FETCH. Press it. Wait for it to submit. Then press “Submit to Index”. Google gives you 500 “Fetches” (just verifying everything is working okay), but only 10 times that they will let you Submit to Index (actually indexing your site), so do it only when you have made a lot of changes to your blog. Flash-based Websites - Something to be aware of is that Flash Websites are considered a thing of the past and not at all acceptable in current web design. Web Design has to be relevant to the mobile user, and Flash is not. “Responsive” web themes is the new buzz-word in design. A responsive site is one that conforms its design and images to different sizes of screens so that the mobile and tablet users will be the best experience.

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You must replace Flash sites for your future. It will hurt your business not only because of less people being able to view your site, but because of the lower rankings you will receive in search engines. Using Different Domain Names for your Website and Blog – Some people have built a website first and then added a free blog and link to it in their menu. This is a disaster for your SEO. A blog is essential to getting ranked in search engines. If your blog and website are both competing (because Google sees them as two websites), you will never have good SEO. Make sure your blog and website are the same. I suggest you use a blog platform to build your website. Most websites are built with a Wordpress theme. Or, if you are photographer, you can use a photography theme like ProPhoto…which is a Wordpress theme. Just make sure that your website and blog are not two different URLs…but that the blog is just an extension of your website. www.yoursite.com/blog

Please visit and SHARE my websites:

JL Photography | Free Lightroom Templates www.jilllevenhagenphotography.com Find it FREE Photography www.finditfreephotography.com Jill Levenhagen | Portfolio www.jilllevenhagen.com IndyCar Mom www.indycarmom.com

Resources I have found helpful:

Book: ProBlogger – Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett Websites: www.problogger.net www.viperchill.com www.roadtoblogging.com

http://www.jilllevenhagenphotography.com/

http://www.finditfreephotography.com/

http://www.jilllevenhagen.com/

http://www.indycarmom.com/

http://www.problogger.net/

http://www.viperchill.com/

http://www.roadtoblogging.com/

seo for photography - flourish · 2013-09-09 · link up – get backlinks a huge thing that search...

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