How did I get listed so highly on Google and in Google rankings? I am going to give you some simple tips that will help you out, which will be followed later this year with a full course to learn the Business of Photography, where I share my tips and tricks to get photographers better acquainted with success
Rank number 1 on Google for Photography and SEO for Fashion Photographers. Many Photographers really struggle with the concept of working with Website SEO and letting their web content or photographers portfolio get seen – Search Engine Optimisation. I rank on page one of Google for the keyword search Fashion Photographer UK or fashion Photographer London. My website www.jamesnader.com
What a result, it has been this way for over 12 years and even though it fluctuates on occasion mostly it works. It drives interest to my work and has repeatedly got me bookings and has enabled me to escape the clutches of photographers agents who rake in over 20% of your hard-earned cash.
So what do I do? How did I manage to get listed so highly on Google and in Google rankings? I am going to give you some simple tips that will help you out which will be followed later this year with a full course to learn the Business of Photography where I share my tips and tricks to get photographers better acquainted with success
1. DO YOUR KEYWORD RESEARCH.
So ranking for Fashion Photographer is a major investment with time, but it can be done and doesn’t happen overnight and possibly not at all but it will push you up the rankings. There is any point trying to rank for a one keyword phrase as this narrows down your options so and if the photographers keyword only gets a small amount of traffic – similarly you need to know if you are trying to rank your site for a highly competitive keyword, as it may be beyond your capabilities to do so. It’s important that you find a keyword string that will allow you to get seen and probably most have gone. The best way is to initially use google to type in your keyword choices and see what comes up. There are many tools that can be used to help you manage your keyword search and final choice of photographers keywords. I will post the links below.
2. ALLOCATE CERTAIN KEYWORDS TO CERTAIN PAGES.
Once you have a positive search string such as mine Fashion Photographer UK. Then you need to weave this into your pages. It’s also a great idea to weave this keyword into your website pages to echo the same as the home page. Its also wise to look at slight variations on your chosen keywords and weave these into relevant pages i.e. Location Fashion Photographer, UK FashionPhotographer or Fashion Photographer London or New York Fashion Photographer
allocate certain keywords to certain pages of your site – a common mistake is to keep allocating the same keyword for lots of different blog posts – try to keep your main keyword for your home page only and spread your other keywords throughout the site.
3. SEO FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS – USE IMAGE ALT TAGS AND ALT TITLES.
Alt tags are like descriptions for your images, they translate your image for search engines. Without them, your images are pretty much non-existent for the worldwide web. Every image that you submit to your WordPress or website should be highly optimised. In plain English, images to be edited and then named relevantly to your webpage where they will sit. When you upload most website hosts, WordPress or third-party hosted websites will allow you o enter your alternative tags and image tags. Thes tell google what is there and helps description of the page and thus you get a ranking. Your pictures will also turn up in search results for google images which is another way that people can search for you and your work.
Images should be at 72dpi and you can use https://tinyjpg.com/ to render your images even lower in size, optimised websites are quicker to load and Google prefers to see fast loads and this helps your ranking overall. Use this link to see if your website fast https://tools.pingdom.com/
4. BUILD LOTS OF INTERNAL LINKS BETWEEN SITE PAGES.
Google wants to rank sites that provide a good customer experience – good site navigation between pages is fundamental. Ensure your site menus are logical and easy to use. Throughout your blog posts and site, pages ensure you link to other relevant pages on your site – this makes it easy for Google’s bots to index your site, and also increases the time your clients spend on your site. The bot likes to travel around a website’s content and not through it! keep it engaged!!!
5. PHOTOGRAPHERS H1 TITLES AND TITLES FOR PHOTOGRAPHY SEO.
Headings are a way to logically organize content on the page. The heading tags – H1-H6 – are also intended to allow designers to control the style of the page. A good large header H1 tag where ever is good for Google. It shows to Google that this is relevant and more important text, however, sometimes the font looks far too big for your design so the header or title tags can be reduced to H2 or H3 titles.
Headings signify topics, which is why they are important for SEO. The largest words before a body of text are very likely to give a clue about the content of that text.
6. PHOTOGRAPHERS WHO WANT TO GET WEB SEO IN PHOTOGRAPHY NEED WORDPRESS.
So once upon a time, I was a director of my own production and interactive agency and we had hand coders which were great but slow. These days it’s easy for photographers to display their work on various portfolio websites such as Squarespace, Photoshelter, Flowthemes, etc. However, there is one major problem with using these online portfolios. They are generally not that good for SEO for Photographers or for optimising your photography keywords for success. I have used them all and for a while but the best way for every photographer is the way I will be explaining in one of my live seminars.
Getting to page number one on Google and many times at position 1 has been a great achievement. The most success has been with being in control of my own website and yes this is a comprehensive learning curve but the power of this knowledge gives you the edge over your competitors. WordPress is a free platform and you can either use their hosting with a free account or install a free-standing version into the route of your domain www.jamesnader.com/blog so Blog is the directory where mine is. This is a process I will go through you personally in a webinar video you can sign up to. So many ways to do this but my way works and I have been successful with my website ranking high on page one for Fashion Photographer UK for over 12 years.
I will post a link to more info here soon. Register your interest here by just letting me know your email
7. PHOTOGRAPHY BACKLINKS ARE IMPORTANT.
Your website gets listed higher if you have super backlinks from good-standing companies, people or blogs.
If people like your work, allow then do feature you and your work in their own blogs. Students love to fond work that inspires them and then reflects on this in their own blogs. This is classed as a backlink. You can buy these from Fiverr but DON”T as these will damage your ranking. The offered services from portals to get 1000’s of backlinks are not going to work and they farm these. They are bogus and do nothing at all! It’s best to build up relationships online and get people to feed off your work.
8. SUBMIT A SITEMAP TO GOOGLE.
For your website to show up in search results, Google has to know about all your site’s pages and index them. This can happen organically over time, but a sitemap is a faster way to “help” Google. If using WordPress, this feature should automatically be included in the excellent “Yoast SEO” plugin
9. YOUTUBE VIDEOS ON YOUR PHOTOGRAPHY WEBSITE.
Google owns YouTube. YouTube is the second-largest search engine in the world. Google, therefore, loves to show your videos. Start creating content or slideshows of your portfolio work, upload them to YouTube using the same process of headings, titles, tags, and descriptions. Then embed that saved YouTube video in a blog post on your website. You can also add a backlink to your site on YouTube as part of the description of the video.
10. SOCIAL SHARING BUTTONS ON YOUR PHOTOGRAPHERS BLOG.
It’s a good idea to use your website and add social sharing buttons. If your website is interesting, people who read your content and like it will share it with their social media. You should also try using Quora to answer a post relevant questions.
11. SUBMIT TO DIRECTORIES SUCH AS ENTIRE WEB.
It’s important that when you have a completed photographers’ website or fashion photography blog, that you submit the URL to all of the major search engines including the main ones Google and Bing. You can go to the Entire web and this will automate your submission process for all except the latter. It’s also my practice that I submit each post or page also over time.
12. BLOG POST WITH A PURPOSE WITH KEYWORDS AND FOCUS ON OPTIMISED PAGES.
Want to dominate those local search results? Get some nice reviews via Google Maps, and you’ll soon find you start to rise up those A B C D map links 😉 Sadly it’s not easy for clients to do, as they have to jump through Google accounts loops, etc. You might be thinking right about now, “I’m a photographer, not a writer.” However, blogs are proven traffic generators, and they allow you to make your photography more personal. If you aren’t exactly a wordsmith, here are some tips that will help. You can also hire a professional content writer.
- Use a primary keyword Fashion Photographer UK ( MIne) in the title and the first paragraph of the content, and sprinkle secondary keywords throughout. Keep density to 1 – 3 percent overall.
- Keep it simple and tell a story. On point blogging ins every time. If you have information like this page keep it clean and a simple layout.
- Make the content visually pleasing and scannable, with short paragraphs and plenty of white space
- Use meta tags, H1 title tags, and h1 – 4 tags for headings and subheads.
- Don’t be lame and copy content from other websites. Write your own as it can be traced!
13. Get your address and contact information on the footer of every page of your business
Another signal to Google on your “local” geographic location is, of course, your address It also makes a big difference with potential clients! The truth is I don’t do this as a rule as numbers and addresses get spammed. I learned the hard way so it’s really down to you. Local business is good for using addresses but national and international I choose not to.:)
JAMES NADER – SILVERGUMTYPE – a quick review of SEO for Photographers but should give you a heads-up!
So you have the basics of getting seen online I am planning a module written by me and a video with me going through what I have learned over the years. I think it’s about time that people help each other and soon I will be producing a subscription video allowing photographers to learn SEO and WordPress and getting your photography business seen Successfully placed websites re great for bringing in clients and business.
