What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization: SEO is the organic, natural or unpaid traffic to your website. Think: How You Get Found on Google.
Why is SEO important?
1. Getting traffic to your website can boost selling products and services.
3. To increase the quantity and quality of traffic to your site.
4. It is more cost effective to improve SEO than it is to spend money on marketing. Think: Organic reach vs. paid reach.
5. It works! Your website ranking can improve in as little as one day with minor changes.
Ways to improve SEO
Strategically, the right terms and phrases are effective in increasing SEO
Webpage titles
Keywords
Website description
Image titles
Alt text
Blogging
Links + Backlinking
Site Titles + Descriptions
Each page on your website should have a different title, description and set of keywords. Some sites are defaulted to titles like 'Home' or 'Blog' (often seen when someone posts a link to their website on Facebook) and titles like that do nothing for SEO.
Title Examples
Business Name | Popular Search Term for your Industry
Business Name | Location or Popular Search Term for your Industry
Business Name | Type of Content
Description Examples
Business Name, Location, Type of Work You Do, Popular Search Term for your Industry, Areas You Serve or Page Content (can be written like a paragraph)
Keywords
Keywords are terms or phrases that lead people to your website through a search engine result. Google Analytics is able to tell you the most popular terms for your own website but generally these can be used:
· Locations (city, state, park, beach, etc.)
· Venue Name
· Photography styles (lifestyle, studio, fantasy...)
· Types of photography (wedding, newborn, maternity...)
· Services offered
· Products offered
· Taglines
· Travel
Image Titles
Images titles should be the name and/or location and/or type of content
Image Title Examples
business-name-location-type-of-content
client-name-venue-type-of-event
(USE DASHES, NOT UNDERSCORES! and all lower case letters)
ALT Text
Alternative text is the image name that search engines will grab at. If you already named your images correctly there's usually no need to change this. Remember that alt text should read like a sentence so no hyphens!
your business name + location + type of content
location + type of content
your clients2 name or business name + type of content
Links + Backlinking
Links: Hyperlinks or images linked to other websites or different pages on your own website.
Backlinking: When others link an image or hyperlink in their blog post back to your websites homepage or a blog post.
Google Analytics
Google analytics can not only help you with SEO but it can help with the overall design of your website. It has been able to answer questions like:
What keywords are being searched that leads people to my website?
How many site visits do I get on average daily? weekly? monthly?
What areas are the people searching my site in? What Country? What City?
How many webpages are visited total?
How much time do they spend on each webpage before leaving?
How much time do the spend on my website total?
What is the most popular landing page? Is it the homepage? The blog?
What is the most popular exit page?
What days are my website visits most popular?
What hours are my website visits most popular?
What operating system is being used? What browser (Open and edit your website in each to see how other users see your site)
What device is used most? Laptop? Desktop? Mobile? (Visit your website on each to see how user friendly it is)
Blogging
BLOG TITLES ARE IMPORTANT! Here are some examples of formats that are great for SEO
your business | location + type of content in blog | popular search term
client name | location + type of content in blog | popular search term
popular search term | client names + location + type of content in blog
popular search term | location | client name or your business
Links
Be sure to use hyperlinks to websites of any locations/venues or vendors/creatives that contributed to the session or event. When someone searches for a location, vendor or product your blog pot will likely come up in the search engine results. If you give images to other creatives to blog or share make sure it is being reciprocated through backlinking to either your website or blog!
Tracking your success
Pick two popular search terms to search everyday. Track your progress by writing down the page number you appear on everyday. I knew going in that Wix did not have great reviews for SEO but I was still determined to figure it out because I loved it. On my first day I could not find myself on a google search result but I started making changes on my website and blog everyday and I could see the benefits. On day one I was nonexistent, day two I was on page 18 and I moved up a page everyday until I got to page 9 by day ten.
Fun Facts
01. Your SEO results will vary by user. Search engine results are influenced by the user's location.
02. Links to your homepage should be limited internally (example: linking your logo to redirect to your homepage should be the only link going to your homepage within your own website). Links to other pages on your website or blog posts are golden.
03. Changing the alt text on images already on your website is more time efficient than deleting them all, renaming and re-uploading.
04. Backlinking will produce someone else's images on your search engine results and vice versa.
05. You can see results in as little as ONE DAY!
SEO can be overwhelming and don't get discouraged if you don't get on page 1 of a search engine. There are a lot of people in this industry and there are people who have held high rankings for years. Thanks for reading!
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