Week 7 - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tip

I have had a lot of requests for more information on optimizing your blogs for Search Engines.  As you know, blogs are a great way to drive traffic to your website and they are indexed separately from your website, so if done right, you can take 2 of the 10 results shown on page 1, knocking your competition off the page!  I started brainstorming for this post and then I remembered a great article on this topic that I read on SEOCopter.com.  The author of this does a pretty good job with his tips on optimizing your blogs, so I thought I'd offer it up here.  I should reiterate, I am not the author of this article, so any typos aren't mine! lol.

 ---start original article---

Getting quality and targeted traffic to your blog is one of many key objectives for any blogger. And this can be only possible if the blog is well optimized and search engine friendly so that the ranking in the search engine result page (SERP) increases and receives more organic traffic through search engines. To obtain better position in the SERPs, there are few proven SEO techniques and tips that can help to make the blog more search engine friendly.

Here I have discussed some of those proven SEO techniques to help you get targeted traffic to your blog.

1. Content is King. Quality and informative content will keep your readers coming back to your blog more often looking for new and fresh content. Use catchy titles with one or two relevant keywords and also some relative keywords in the content so that you can get good ranking in the SERP for many long tail key phrases. You can also refer to any keyword suggestion tools available on the web to get an idea of all the relative keywords for your posts.

2. Update your blog regularly. It helps both from search engine as well as human visitor’s point of view. It Search engine spiders crawl your site more often so that the newer posts indexed quickly. Also your readers who do start trickling in have the urge to continue reading your posts. The more regularly you update your blog, the better it is from all aspects.

3. Start social bookmarking your blog and get it noticed in pinging sites and as these are places where bloggers can get extra traffic from other bloggers. It is essential to do this in order to get the traffic you deserve. Blog ping service notifies the weblog services such as Blog Search Engines and blog directories that your blog has been updated. Thus enabling them to index your blog fast and make your content available for a larger audience.

4. Start indexing your blog in popular search engines like Google, Yahoo etc. so that your posts are crawled by the search engine spiders and your blog will rank for more number of keywords in the search engine result page.

5. Start submitting your blog to blog directories so that you get more number of back links for your blog. We all know links are one of the most important factors that can affect your ranking heavily and directory submission is one of the easiest ways of getting one way links.

6. Comment on other blogs of same niche as you but don't spam them with just 'nice blog' or 'nice post' as these comments don't have any weight. Try to engage with your fellow bloggers by leaving quality comments as that will inspire them to automatically visit your site where the comments link back to.

7. Place your Blog URL in forums and in your email signatures as this can bring extra and free traffic to your blog.

All the bloggers like to see visitors arriving at their blogs and putting their comments regarding the posts. And getting traffic to the blog does not happen automatically unless and until we do some promotional effort like I discussed here in this post. We have to promote it in order to gain the most of our blog.

---end original article---

Hopefully this helps shed some more light on Optimizing your Blog for Search Engines.  Feel free to email me if you have any questions specific to your blog!

-Eric
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Week 6 - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tip

I was sitting here trying to decide what to use for this week's SEO tip when I noticed a tragedy.  Facebook is down!  Well that got me thinking about how important Facebook is to photographers and it reminded me of a great article I read on the Blog of one of our competitors, Photobiz.  It was written by a family who owns a Photography studio in Atlanta.  They give tips and advice for making Facebook successful for any photographer and I didn't feel right not sharing it with my readers just because it's on my competitions blog.  So, take a look at the Photobiz blog post on Facebook Growth here.

Now, tying this into SEO is simple.  A few weeks ago I blogged about the importance of building a network of links.  Having 3000 facebook fans, like the Williams family does, is a great network.  Every time they post a link back to one of the pages on their website, that link immediately gets added to 3000 webpages on the internet.  Not only will it drive direct traffic to your site, but it'll give your Facebook page and website more Google-cred.

-Eric
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Week 5 - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tip

Build your network.  Link building is a very powerful SEO tool.  To put it simply, the more paths the search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc) can follow back to your website the better. 

For example, let's assume you are a wedding photographer in Florida.  If Google is on a website talking about wedding photographers in the Orlando area, and you have a link on that website pointing back to yours, then Google will see that as a relevant link and give your site more SEO credibility.

This concept may sound very simple, but be careful. You have to watch how many links you post in a short time frame, and you have to watch where you post them.  There are a lot of sites out there that the Search Engines see as malicious, pointless, link farms, etc.  To really do this properly, we recommend really studying the art of SEO and Link Building, or hire a professional to do it for you.  It's worth every penny, and we aren't just saying that because we offer the service.

-Eric
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Week 4 - Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tip

To Flash or not to flash...that shouldn't be a question.  I'm not referring to something you'll see a fat hairy guy do at the mall after hours, I'm referring to your website.

Many photographers are drawn to websites built entirely in Flash.  Why wouldn't they be?  Flash sites are great looking, have cool effects and are generally very easy to self edit.  There is one major flaw though, they are NOT search engine friendly.  There are things you can do to help, but ultimately, you will never show up on the search engines with a Flash website nearly as well as  you will with one built in HTML/CSS.  And by the way, an HTML site built right can be just as easy, if not easier, to self edit.

The way I like to explain it is this.  Flash is like a rated R movie, but Google is only 12 (literally, look it up on Wiki).  If your website is built entirely in flash, search engines can't see your wording, pictures, alt tags, etc.  It can't see anything besides titles and meta tags.  These are great; but they aren't enough to get you to page 1. 

If you have a website built entirely in flash, we can help.  Email us your web address and I'll reply with how we can help.  And don't worry, we won't ask that you get rid of your flash site.  Just check out a couple of our clients (Ashley Munn Photography - Waco, TX or Daisy Mae Photography - Hutchinson, KS) to see what I mean.

-Eric
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Day two of Photoshop World Las Vegas is done!

We just finished up with day 2 of Photoshop World in Las Vegas.  The turnout was amazing!  We signed two new photographers whose websites we'll be debuing in the next couple of weeks, and we talked to many others whose sites we'll be doing soon! 

We were fortunate enough to meet with Linda Haulbrook Evans, who joins on our discussions, contests, etc on our Facebook page.  Check her out, she's a concert photographer and event writer in the Las Vegas area.  She's on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/photodivalv (@photodivalv) and Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/PhotoDivaLV. 

Tonight we'll be heading over to the Midnight Madness Party here at the Mandalay Bay.  If it's anything like the House of Blues Party was last night, it should be a blast.  I'll post pics and a blog about it tomorrow. 

Thank you again to everyone who stopped by my booth today (booth 347).  If we were swamped when you came by and we didn't get a chance to talk to you, please stop by and see us tomorrow! 

-Eric
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Partying at the House of Blues

 Alright, so last night after the convention was the House of Blues after-party.  Being exhibitors, we were lucky enough to get tickets to this event and it was awesome.  There was great food, even better drinks and to top the night off, Scott Kelby's (http://www.scottkelby.com) band rocked the house.  With hits from all era's, it was music for everyone.  Scott played the keys and did vocal for a lot of the songs.  They also had a female lead singer who was AMAZING.  They started off the night with Baracuda and everyone was instantly in party mode. Here are a couple pics from the night.  I apologize for the grainy pics, I only had my point and they just didn't turn out very well. But I guess hazy pictures go along with my hazy memories, lol.

Today we look forward to another great turnout at the convention and then tonight we're off to the Midnight Madness party.  I have no idea what to expect at this one, but if it's half as good as last nights party, then it should be a great time. 

-Eric
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Our Trip Here!

Alright, I know this is a little out of order since I posted from the convention first, but it's a story worth telling, even if it's late.  lol.

So in preperation for Photoshop World Las Vegas we commuted 4 hours to drop off our 2 year old daughter, Madeline (see pics at http://www.daisymaephotography.com/), at her grandma's.  We decided to pull into a Wendys's for frosties, which with a 2 year old, means getting out and eating them inside or else!  We pull into a parking spot next to a car with 3 or 4 guys in it.  No big deal, didn't think anything of it.  I get out of the car and get my daghter out.  We cross the parking lot and as quick as we step up on the sidewalk, the guys jump out of their car with guns and rob an ATM as it's being filled by Brinks!  Can you believe it!!!  I grabbed my daughter and bolted inside Wendy's as quickly as possible and next thing I know, the guys are peeling off up the road.  CRRRRRAAAAAZZZZYYYYYY.

Now, THANK GOD that everyone was alright and nobody got hurt, but this couldn't have happened at a worse time.  We had been away from our daughter for more then 1 night, and we were preparing for a 5 days seperation because of Photoshop World in Vegas.  Regardless though, my wife and I were strong and just gave lots of extra hugs and kisses before our goodbye.  It's amazing how things like this can really make you realize what is important in life. 

After this, we head home to finish packing for our trip.  When we get there, we go to pre-board our flight online, only to find out it was cancelled!!  It's 11pm and our flight was supposed to be at 7am the next day, and they just decided to cancel it!  What else could go wrong.  We tried calling Frontier and spent 2 hours on the phone, only to be told we needed to talk to the ticket counter to get help.  So we loaded up and left for the airport.  Needless to say, we had absolutely no sleep in the airport.  We get to the Frontier counter and have to stand there until 5am.  The lady there was helpful though, and was able to get us a United Airlines Flight that met up with our original flight at our layover in Denver.  Great News!!  Or so we thought. 

After our flights, we go to get our bags and low and behhold, they didn't make the new flight!  Yep, now we are in Vegas with no clothes.  At this point we are wondering if someone was trying to tell us something, but we made the best of it.  We ended up getting our bags around 10pm that night and ever since, everything has been going right. 

So, moral of the story, when things just seem like they are working against you, think about the story you just read.  If I can get through an armed robbery at 10 feet, a cancelled flight and lost luggage, all within 18 hours, then you can get through anything that life throws at you!

Thanks for reading.  Again, this is me blogging live from Photoshop World!  It's tons of fun and we are meeting tons of photographers!

-Eric
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Photoshop World Convention - Day 1

We are about 2 hours into the Photoshop World Convention in Las Vegas and it's going great!  There are exhibits from all of the industry leaders like, iStockphoto, Veer, PPA and so many more.  In the booth next to us is Topaz Labs.  They are running live demos of some of their software and it looks awesome.  I'm sure you can check it out on their website at http://www.topazlabs.com/.

I've had a ton of people come up talking to me about website design and SEO.  We also had a lot of interest in our new Email Newsletters (to your customers) which we'll be launching next month.

That's it for now, much more to come.  Also, I'll post about our trip here later today.  From lost luggage to armed robbery.  It was a crazy trip to say the least.  Look for that later today!

-Eric
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