SEO Basics for Photographers
SEO is important for any business looking to be successful online, including photographers. Prioritizing your SEO is an important part of your marketing strategy when you rely on search results to bring you new clients. Ranking higher on Google also improves the perception of your business.
So, what exactly is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Essentially, SEO is the process of improving your website to rank higher on search engines like Google. This means the difference between appearing on the first page of search results vs. beyond the dreaded “next page” button.
Using Blogs To Improve Your SEO
There are many ways to improve the SEO on your website, and one of the best ways is through blogging. Pic-Time’s new blogging tool makes it simple to create and publish blogs from within your client gallery workflow. This makes it easy to create a constant flow of blogs and keep your posting schedule consistent.
Keywords
Keywords are words and phrases that appear in your blog posts and make it possible for people to find you through search engines. They can broadly connect with your business or be hyper specific and descriptive. Keywords can and should be used in nearly every part of your blog - from the title, description, headers, image alt-text, and of course the body text of your posts. Properly utilized keywords can improve your SEO and help your ideal clients find you.
How To Choose Keywords
Your keyword selection should reflect your ideal clients. You’ll want to choose words that may come up when someone is searching for photographers like you. These can be location specific, related to your photography style, or the types of photoshoots you want to focus on. Specific keywords are more likely to attract targeted traffic to your blog, rather than broad categories everyone will be using. When potential clients search for certain keywords, they’re usually looking for a photographer that is relevant to their needs.
Try focusing on what you think your potential clients want and need. For example, add your location to location based descriptions, ie: “[Location] based wedding photographer”; fill in adjectives that describe your photography style, ie: “Candid wedding photographer”, “artistic wedding photographer”, “film wedding photographer”; and describe your specific type of packages, ie “elopement photographer”, “boudoir photographer”, or “family photographer”
Tip: If you want to do more in-depth keyword research on the top keywords for your industry, try a free tool like Ubersuggest to search for keywords related to your specialty.
Alt-Text
Image descriptions are a detailed text description of your image. Also known as alt-text, this description is used for screen readers or when images fail to load properly. Image descriptions serve a practical purpose, but you can use it to your advantage to increase the SEO of your photos.
It’s important that alt-text is written in full sentences and sounds natural when read aloud, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make it work for you. Keep in mind your ideal audience and how you can organically include descriptive keywords, locations, and business names. For example, “Couple eloping under a bridge” could be more effective as “Couple in wedding attire elope under the St. Johns Bridge in Portland, Oregon.”
Tip: You can easily add alt-text and update file names right in the Pic-Time Blog SEO settings,making this a step that can fit right into your blogging workflow.
Linking
There are a few different types of links you can incorporate into your blog posts, all of which help boost your SEO.
Internal linking is when you include hyperlinks in your posts to other pages or posts on your own website.
Backlinking is a link back to your post or website that appears on another website, which can be achieved through guest blogging, online reviews, or comments.
External linking is achieved by including links to reputable outside website sources.
Using a mix of these linking techniques can help your SEO by helping search engines determine the usefulness, validity, and quality of your site content. The more backlinks and external links you have leading to and from your website, the more likely you are to show up in search results.
How Often To Post
Updating your blog and website is an important part of staying relevant for search engines, which can help your SEO ranking. Blogging 1-2 times per week is a great place to start. It’s important, however, to be sure that your focus is primarily on creating relevant content. Your blogs should be useful to your audience, and showcase your best work for your current and future clients.
Luckily Pic-Time makes it amazingly easy to put together beautiful posts. You can add blogging into your gallery workflow with only a few additional minutes, and stay consistent in your blogging schedule as a result!
Start Your SEO Journey Today
We hope these insights help you as you start your SEO journey. We know SEO is an important part of why photographers blog, which is why Pic-Time Blogs are fully optimized for SEO, with features to get the most out of your blog posts.
