Search Engine Optimization

[Tim Armes]

Hi,

Following on from my post about building a good web site, I thought that it might be valuable to everyone here to talk about search engine optimization (SEO).

I'd love to be able to share my experience in this area, but alas I don't feel that I have much to share. This is the extent of my knowledge based on the research that I've done:

1. Search engines need text to index your site. That text should be written with SEO in the back of the mind. Try to use key phrases and keywords that you think your clients will search for.
2. The HTML 'title', 'description' and 'keywords' fields should be used appropriately.
3. One of Google's key considerations is the number of high profile sites that link back to you. Generating valid links to your site is imperative (but not necessarily easy).
4. Blogging is an excellent method of driving traffic to a site. The constant refresh of data and new material increases your page ranking.

If you have any other advice then please share it with us.

I've also been trying to find internet based directories of photographers, but most of them seem badly designed and tacky. Are there any serious directories that are actually used by potential clients?

What else can be done to bring potential clients to our sites?

I hope that we can help each other out by pooling our experience together....

Tim

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi,

Following on from my post about building a good web site, I thought that it might be valuable to everyone here to talk about search engine optimization (SEO).

I'd love to be able to share my experience in this area, but alas I don't feel that I have much to share. This is the extent of my knowledge based on the research that I've done:

1. Search engines need text to index your site. That text should be written with SEO in the back of the mind. Try to use key phrases and keywords that you think your clients will search for.
2. The HTML 'title', 'description' and 'keywords' fields should be used appropriately.
3. One of Google's key considerations is the number of high profile sites that link back to you. Generating valid links to your site is imperative (but not necessarily easy).
4. Blogging is an excellent method of driving traffic to a site. The constant refresh of data and new material increases your page ranking.

If you have any other advice then please share it with us.

I've also been trying to find internet based directories of photographers, but most of them seem badly designed and tacky. Are there any serious directories that are actually used by potential clients?

What else can be done to bring potential clients to our sites?

I hope that we can help each other out by pooling our experience together....

Tim

How about a link page. I would go to say 10 links per day. If everyone did that, that would be great. We can arrange them by topic or alphabetically. You would come to OPF always from your website link to us.

How about that?



Asher

 

[Brian Schmittgens]

If I'm not mistaken, registering your business with Google (list a physical address) and getting a bunch of reviews really helps as well.

 

[Matthew Hamilton]

I would also like to add that header tags are key in increasing traffic to your website. Making sure that they are words that people are searching the most for. Do some keyword research for what people are searching for the most and make that your H1 tag and then add a bunch of H2's with supporting content.

 

[Adam Khan]

I work as a professional SEO and to be honest, there's a ton of easy things you can do to rank fairly quickly.

I would focus on the on-site factors you can do easily such as optimizing your title tags for each service/content you have for relevant keywords. For example: if you have a service about portraiture photography, you'd put that in your headings. But obviously, a little keyword research and browsing through your competitors can help you identify easy to rank for keywords.

Optimising your content is another, having lots of written and quality content which answers questions around a subject matter and is authoritative is content google really values. i.e. your competitor is ranking for a search term and has fairly short uninformative content, this opens an area for you to come in and write a more informative lengthy piece.

Another important thing is to get backlinks, these are links from websites. You shouldn't get any random link that's irrelevant because that can work against your website when you're trying to rank for keywords and potentially get your site deindexed. What you should do is try to get links from authoritative sites, sites relevant to your niche and sites that don't look spammy.

If anyone is interested I could potentially write up an article about top tips to improve your site.