Photo by Blue Fountain Media
“SEO” might get thrown around like a marketing-speak buzzword, but if you’re in the business of, well, almost anything, it’s actually something you need to know. Search engine optimization is necessary for just about every business. Still, many small business owners and sole proprietors seem vexed by what it means and what it does.
To put it technically, search engine optimization is how your website communicates to a search engine that you exist and can respond to the query the user is typing into the engine’s search bar. Keywords and phrases are like little beacons of light calling search engines and searchers to your shore. More basically, it’s how Google knows to turn up your website — and not yours competitor’s — first when someone goes looking for you or someone like you.
So how do you make search engines work for you? SEO coach and strategist Gary Hughes says it’s best to start with your keywords, and make sure they’re built into your site and heavily in use on your blog. (Not sure you should have a blog? Here’s why you definitely, definitely should).
“If you don’t have your keywords set up, Google is not going to be able to make that connection between the user and you.”
To help you call your search ships to shore, Gary put together a list of rules explicitly dealing with SEO for photographers. Specifically, he called out these four rules for picking better keywords.
Think like a client, not a photographer. “Portrait is a word photographers use, it isn’t a word people use,” Gary explains. Specifically, he saysm “portrait” is a word photographers use to describe their products to lend specificity and value, but it is not common parlance. Someone looking for family portraits is much more likely to use a search akin to “family photography.” Of course, the exact phrase you’ll want to target will be determined by your region, but the real point is to use the same words the consumer uses, not the pros in the field.
Don’t pick a fight you can’t win. Every photographer has some competition, and it is very likely that in your market there are already other photographers using Google’s keyword planner to compete for traffic from highly-searched phrases. So, says, Gary, “Don’t go out and pick the biggest baddest keyword.” If the traffic is high, but the competition is, too (something a keyword planning tool can help you suss out), move on to another target. Sometimes that’s the difference between “local wedding photographer” and “local wedding photographers” with that plural “s” making the term a viable target – high search volume with medium to low competition.
Look for the low hanging fruit. “We want the keywords no one is paying attention to,” Gary advises. As a photographer, you likely offer a range of services, so if you can write blogs, create pages, and run ads to the target keywords that no one else is competing for, you’ll probably get more traction. As Gary explains, a low competition keyword phrase with 170 searches a month, an admittedly low number, is still 170 people looking for that service.
Cast a wide net. Gary says that “people have to see you several times before they make that purchase,” so don’t hesitate to think big and try keywords for people who are searching for services adjacent to the ones you offer. For example: optimized blogging about regional wedding venues, something you, as a photographer, know a lot about, is one way to get your name in front of a couple before they are even looking for a photographer. That way, when the prospective clients do type “local wedding photographers” into Google, they’ll see a name they’ve already seen before, and you’ll benefit from that subtle, but important top-of-mind effect.
Optimizing for search is an evolving practice. Your options for improving your website’s standing are extensive and exhausting, but don’t let the tidal wave of all the things you can do overwhelm you. Gary encourages you to develop a strategy and stick to a schedule for rolling it out, “the best way to do it so it doesn’t take over your life is to set one hour a week and make it happen.”
For a tsunami of action items for improving your SEO strategy check out the complete How to Improve Your SEO class.
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