We can spend all day, night and the next day talking about SEO for photographers and creative small businesses. You can pay lots of money for seminars, learn online about the latest techniques. You can hire a special SEO (search engine optimization) team that will guarantee search results for a pretty good sum of money monthly with a year commitment. You can spend all your time trying to learn Google Analytics and SEO best practices instead of putting your energy towards your business’s purpose.
Does putting lots of effort towards SEO work?
Some times. SEO strategies typically improve your ranking. We do offer SEO evaluations where I go through each detail of your on site and off site SEO, giving you a detailed list of action items. You may then choose to implement these items yourself, or hire us to do it. I’ve also seen lots of photographers and creatives hire the wrong SEO team, and waste time and money.
I have made the mistake myself of targeting the wrong keywords. I thought I knew what people would be searching for and didn’t do the research before creating content for these terms. Long tail keywords (really long description phrases) and very specific searches can definitely yield results, but doing research first to make sure they get at least some searches is really important.
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If you were to take ONE step to improve SEO for your website…
The action item that matters most is that you are creating quality content related to your industry on a regular basis.
What does quality content for SEO mean?
This means if you are a photographer, you are showing off your work maybe once per week, or whatever you can commit to. In these blog posts, you are including written words and images. Each page or post should correspond to one topic that you want to get found for.
If you are a wedding photographer, this may be a venue or “punk brides with converse shoes”… don’t be afraid to get specific. Maybe only 2 people search for punk brides with converse each month but they may be your ideal clients.
On your home page, you’ll do your broad terms such as “Washington DC wedding photographer” but then everything you write is about whatever topic relevant to what you do that you are covering.
What about other types of content that photographers can create?
Don’t only show your work, talk about what you do. Give advice. Show off your knowledge and show off who you are. Maybe you love horses and went to the horse show last weekend. Okay that’s not wedding related but if the horseshow in the same town as that quaint inn that features high end weddings, then the town is relevant for SEO.
Get creative, create content, show off who you are and what you do.
I’m an artist, photographer, and visual person. What if I don’t like to write?
No one said you have to write. You have to share. You can create videos, podcasts, interviews… any kind of content that works for you. Search engines do like words though, so if you want to try writing, I really like this Hemingway Editor tool to help you improve without taking too much time.
If you don’t love an aspect of your business, outsource it. There are people that will write your content, optimize your images and prep them for you, so you can get back to doing what you do best. It’s a leap of faith to hire someone early on in your business, but once you’re established hiring a virtual assistant or blog post writer is something to consider.
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Is creating content enough for good SEO?
No, but it’s certainly the best place to start and it’s something that anyone can do. You can learn how to add alt tags to your images and use Yoast SEO to see how your target keyword is doing. You can learn Google Analytics, hire someone to look at it, or use a simpler plugin for tracking your stats. Creating content is something you can do today, without any additional skills, so it is the best place to start.
There is always more you can do but that is true of most things in life. I advice clients to have their sites setup to be SEO friendly, create good content regularly and not drive themselves crazy analyzing their numbers every day. It’s all part of the puzzle: social media, website, content creation, SEO, opt-in offers and more. It can easily get overwhelming if you look at it all at once. So start small with creating a new page or blog post for your website that shares what you do, your knowledge or who you are.
Interested in redesigning your website or an SEO evaluation? Send me a note.
