I’ve heard it all before when it comes to SEO. People don’t know how to use it, don’t know why it’s important. I hear a lot that people think “I’m getting hits off of my Facebook page, why do I need SEO on my blog? People never go there anyways.”
SEO is a way to get NEW people to your blog. So what’s the catch? You have to know what to put in your keywords when you’re posting. I always try to use the 5 rules:
1. Title – Put your location in your title. In my last home, I would have titled everything “Athens, GA _______(wedding/baby/newborn/family) Photography | Real Title of Blog Here” You don’t have to do it every time, but you do want to do it for big locations around your town.
2. Location. Name drop, baby! Were you at a cool park or an urban area of your city? Tell them you shot in Hyde Park or SoCo. Did you go somewhere else cool? Name and link to the ice cream shop you shot in front of, and let the shop know you were there and you love their butter pecan! Location is one of the biggest key words.
3. Type of shoot. Let’s run with that ice cream shop description for a second – somewhere in your tags or text, it should say “Athens Ice Cream Engagement Sessions” or the like. Even if the person who searches “Ice cream engagement sessions” isn’t in Athens, they can still be inspired by you – and more talk about you means more street cred.
4. Categorize. Every time you don’t properly categorize a post on your blog, you miss out on a big keyword opportunity.
5. Tag, you’re it. TAG IT! For some things, like wordpress.com and blogger, which are free blogs, tags are bigger than just one site’s organization – they’re linked throughout the site, and become incredibly important for people to find you. Tag the kind of session, the style (vintage/modern/backlit/whatever you feel should go here), big things in the session (any shops visited, parks visited, location, props like ice cream or bunting flags). Keep tags uniform. You should also have some tags in the alternate text (or “alt text”) of your photos – if you aren’t able to use alt text, no worries, though.
Those are my five rules for SEO for photographers – did I miss anything?
