SEPTEMBER 2011 for photographers SEO

Hello, Photographers. Im Chris. Youth High School Photography St. Louis, MO Ladue Horton Watkins OneLouderPhoto.com PhotoShelter.com 5 32 College 2 Washington University (in St. Louis!)

What Well Cover Today...

• Whats the Goal of Search Engine Optimization?

• What is SEO?

• Why should you care?

• What SEO looks like in 2011

• The Factors that effect SEO

• Just Do It - Step-by-step practical SEO

There once was a man...

• Googled cowboy boots

• Clicked justinboots.com

• Found a nice pair

• Ordered online

• Tried them on

• Much happiness

MAD LIB: Deconstruction A __________ needed some ______________, but didnt know much about them. So he Googled for ______________, and clicked on one of the top search results. The website, _______________, was information-rich, and he was able to learn more about ________________ without having to pick up the phone or send an e-mail. guy cowboy boots justinboots.com cowboy boots cowboy boots

MAD LIB: Making it click A _______________ needed a _____________ , but didnt know much about it. So he Googled for ________________, and clicked on one of the top search results. The website, __________________, was information-rich, and he was able to learn more about _____________________ without having to pick up the phone or send an e-mail. magazine editor concert image Elton John Photos onelouderphoto.com concert photography

The ones that got away

• Caiman Crocodile Belly

• $1,295.00

• Page 12 of Google

(1) The Goal of SEO Searching for your own name and finding your own website is not SEO. The goal is unsolicited web traffic.

(2) So what is SEO?

• missouri photojournalist

• central west end portrait photographer

• best st.louis wedding photographer

• stl botanical garden stock photos

• frontenac family photographer

Good SEO anticipates what your customers are searching for How do you rank for the terms you need as a photographer?

I dont care about all that SEO stuff. I just want my website to look good.

• 48.4 million daily newspaper Audit Bureau of Circulation

• 285 million watch TV monthly Nielsen A2/M2 Three Screen Report

• 28 billion searches monthly official stated figures Google

(3) Why should I care about SEO?

We Asked Photo Buyers http://www.photoshelter.com/mkt/research/

Internet Search Engines? Part of their image buying routine. 61%

(4) What SEO Looks like in 2011

• Universal Search and the SERP

• Local Search

• Google Images

• Social Media

• Long Tail Search

This aint your uncles AOL.com

Universal search & SERP

Local search is huge google.com/places

Google Places Page

Google images

A tree falling in the forest

OMG. Good news for photographers?

The Long Tail matters

SEO doesnt exist without good content

• On-page factors only account for 14% of SEO, but without content, theres nothing to index

• Unique page titles with relevant text!

• Descriptive pages with unique content

• Longer pages seem to rank better

So what is good content?

(5) Factors affecting SEO SEOMoz, 2011 Search Engine Ranking Factors

On-page: Title and meta description

On-page: Title and meta description

On-page: Title and meta description

On-page: Title and meta description

On-page: Relevant text

What we see

What Skynet Google sees

You must build links

• Link to yourself:

• • Build a blog

• • Join trade and community sites

• Get others to link to you:

• • Guest write articles on other sites

• • Shoot something interesting

• • Use social media

• • Get influential sites to link to you

Every link is an endorsement or vote.

Anchor text matters

• POORLY OPTIMIZED Grover took some shots of the Empire State Building.

• STILL POORLY OPTIMIZED Grover took some photos of the Empire State Building.

• OPTIMIZED Grover took the best photos of the Empire State Building .

Socialize

(6) Just do it!

• Create a keyword hitlist of 20-50 words that you want to rank for

• Compare this to the Adwords Keyword Tool to refine the list

• Run searches against the terms in your list to assess the competition

• Run a backlink analysis so that you can understand which terms are attainable

Step-by-step to practical SEO

Sanity check your keywords google adwords keyword tool

Assess your online competition

Backlink analysis majesticseo.com

Monitor your results

• Google Analytics can tell you if SEO is working.

• % of traffic from search engine.

• # of keywords driving search traffic.

Dont be the needle in the haystack

• Increase your online footprint

• Publish more pages of content

• Publish on more websites

• Make it easier for people to find you on the places where they hang out

Im not making this up

• If your website and marketing efforts dont include SEO, youre missing free traffic

• Effective SEO results in real sales and revenue

• SEO is a long-term commitment, so start today!

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