Using meta descriptions

This week I’ve been learning about meta descriptions and why we need to use them if we’re going to attract attention from the right people in search engines. If we take a look at the picture above, we can see the meta description for my photography site. It’s the part at the bottom of the image that starts ‘Contemporary wedding photography...’ If no meta description is entered for a page, it will pull up the first text on that page as a default. The problem with this is that this text might just be an introductory paragraph on your page which won’t necessarily contain the right keywords, and it might cut off mid sentence. This is because search engines generally only display meta descriptions up to 160 characters. To write a meta description, think about how you would summarise your site in a tweet (with a little bit of leeway!) It should say what your site is and include your main keywords. The meta description should be a way to show Google what your site is and what it’s all about. It will see the way you’ve described your site and know exactly what it is dealing with so it can select your site more easily when people search for your terms. Not only that, but it’s useful for the person doing the searching to be able to see what they’ll find on your site without having to click onto it. If the summary makes it look relevant, they will be more likely to enter your site. The reverse is also true: if your site doesn’t seem to contain what the searcher is looking for, they won’t need to come onto your site, which might help to reduce your bounce rate – a sign that people are leaving your site soon after clicking onto it. Meta descriptions are hugely helpful but often overlooked, so make sure you’ve got yours sorted!

Choosing SEO keywords for photographers

This week I’ve been thinking about why SEO is so important for photographers in particular. Obviously it’s crucial for anyone trying to run a business or promote their work online, but in a competitive industry such as photography, it’s absolutely essential that you do everything you can to make sure people see your work before that of your competitors. If you’re in a fairly niche market, you can be pretty sure that it won’t take much work to get yourself to the top of the Google rankings and get yourself seen. However, a quick search on google.co.uk for ‘photographer’ returns 266,000,000 results, so we photographers are going to have our work cut out trying to get ourselves seen amongst all the other people vying for attention. So, as tempting as it might be to target ‘photographer’ or ‘photography’ or even ‘black and white photography’ as your keywords, unless you have a mega budget behind you, it’s just unrealistic. So you should think about your own niche through which people can find you. This is where your Google Analytics data comes in handy. When people have found you in the past, what have they searched? Play on this to discover your niche. It might be that you specialise in portraits of pets, or you might operate in a relatively rural location around which lots of weddings take place. Maybe you use an unusual lens that produces a particular style of photo. Whatever it is that makes you unique, use it to your advantage and make sure that you can be found by anyone who wants to find that specific niche. For example, I can target 'wedding photography Surrey' as I work with a lot of clients and venues in Surrey to target people searching for a specific location. The main thing to remember is that the bigger your SEO budget, the broader the keywords you can target, but if you know you’re on a limited budget, don’t throw money away on keywords you can’t afford to fully attack. Once you gather speed and build up confidence in your SEO abilities, you can explore a wider range, but to start off with, keep it simple.

Using keywords to promote your photography

This week, I’ve been learning more about using keywords on my website to spread the word about my photography. I’ve discovered that there’s a bit more to it than I first expected, and there are lots of subtle ways to weave in the right blend of keywords to make your photography site SEO friendly. The first thing you need to do is figure out what people are searching to find your site in the first place. If you use Google Analytics or anything similar, check out the keywords people have been searching to find your site. Once you have this, you can think about putting them, and their variations, onto your pages. It’s not about ‘keyword stuffing’ though. If you have a new set of photos – for example, black and white family portraits – you should obviously use these terms on the page featuring these pictures. However, you can’t use it every other line or Google will recognise it as spammy. Instead, you should mention your chosen keyword just a few times on a page – ideally near the top and near the bottom of the text and a couple of times in between. You should also think about the other terms people might use to find that page. For example, ‘black and white photoshoot’, ‘monochrome photography’ or even ‘photographer in London’ or wherever you’re based. If you wanted to find your work on the internet, what are the terms you would most associate with what you do? Keywords are the way to guide people to your photography. There are a lot of photographers who want to promote their work online, so you need to make sure you stand the best chance of being noticed by using the right language to get yourself seen online. If you want to see an example of how I've used keywords on my site, click here to see how it's done.

Why Do I Need SEO For My Photography Site?

It’s all very well having an amazing photography website, but if nobody can find it, what’s the point? 

As a wedding photographer in London I want as many people as possible to see the work I do, so I’ve been looking into the mysterious world of SEO to see how I can get more people to find me and my photography work on the internet.

One of the most important things to think about when you want to promote your photography website is to constantly create new, interesting content for your website. By that I don’t mean you should be changing the text on every page every single day, but it’s good to focus your updates on one particular part of the website, such as a blog.

It’s important to add fresh content to your site because it shows Google and other search engines that your website is up to date, and every time you update your site it attracts the attention of Google again. Obviously if you’re a photographer, you’ll always be out and about and working on new products so you’ll always have new things to talk about in your blog.

For example, if you’ve spent your day shooting a wedding and want to tell people about it, blog about it! If you’re experimenting with new styles, blog about it! If you’ve discovered a photographer you really love, blog about it! It’s all about providing informative content that your readers will like and that Google will recognise as something relevant to your site.

So what are you waiting for? Get your photography noticed and set up a blog!

See some of my work at www.photographybykrishanthi.co.uk