Recently, SEO has been a hot topic with photographers and there seems to be a mad dash to the first page of Google. Some of us have even paid big bucks for someone else to set this up for us. All of the hype surrounding SEO is for good reason! Studies have shown that 75% of search engine users rarely go past page 1 when searching for valid content. So it’s not really surprising to find blog posts, classes, and workshops being developed and presented.
SEO is the acronym used for “search engine optimization”. Essentially, this is defined as the process of setting up your website for higher visibility through search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! or Bing. There are certain changes you can make to the “back end” (dashboard) of your website that will help boost your page rankings (a measurement of your website’s importance).
Search engines “crawl” websites looking for keywords in order to rank visibility by importance. These keywords are the most important thing you can set up in order to boost hits on your website. This can be done on many different levels throughout your dashboard, regardless of your web platform, in order to ensure that you’ll be seen.
Let’s dive into a few basic things you can do NOW to help boost your page rankings.
1) Place keywords in your website title. Depending on your web platform, there are some plugins you can download that will do this for you. If that’s not an option then make sure you put them in your titles manually.
2) Place keywords inside of your post’s tags. This is a visible area of your blog posts that can become a valuable place for you to load with your keywords.
3) Change the file name of every single image on your website. Changing the titles and Alt Text of all of your images will help quite a bit. For instance, when someone searches Google for “Your Area Photographer” results will pop up containing text, articles, and images. If you want your pictures showing up in those search results be sure to change your titles and alt text.
4) Place even more keywords inside of the footer area of your website. Your footer area, depending on your settings, will more-than-likely show up at the bottom of all of the pages of your website. This gives search engines even more options to crawl your site for relevant words.
I’m sure you’re noticing a pattern here! Yes, keywords is one of the first changes you can make to your website right now that will have an impact on your page ranking. You’re now giving Google/Bing/Yahoo reasons to plop your website listing in search engine results because it thinks your information is relevant to the search. However, you have to be sure to use a variety of keyword choices so Google doesn’t blacklist you for keyword cramming. This is very important!! Don’t use the same set of keywords over and over again. Switch it up a bit to improve your chances of showing up in search engine results, and protect your website from being shunned by Google.
Notice: You will not notice a huge change in your rankings immediately. It does take some time (sometimes weeks) for search engines to crawl your website. Just be patient. I promise you’ll notice a difference!! And in the meantime, check back here for more tips on how to boost your SEO.
