Online photography lessons & affordable photograhpy seminars for photographers of all skill levels

Hello all,

Long time no see huh? Well thanks for hanging in there everyone and thanks for your patience!
I am just writing to say that I didn’t forget about you all. I have been knee deep in wedding photography this year. I do have a lot of great shots to show you all and discuss so look for more posts soon.

So great news on the Sponsorship front… The inLIGHTin Workshop is now sponsored by BRNO, maker of the BaLens white balance accessories. I have been using these for a while now and have even written a post about it way back when. Check it my article on how to Get Accurate Colors in Camera to read more.

Anyways, they are great people with a great product so show your support and check them out. If you want to pick a couple up then you can visit their ordering site here: http://www.balens.ca

Their website is www.balens.ca.

Thanks for stopping by!
~Mike

Jump to the end for FREE book offer from Zach!

Zach Prez has been helping small businesses and organizations get better search results from their websites for 6+ years. Before that he was marketing and building websites, including for intel.com where he launched his career. So when a photographer friend asked him for SEO tips to get her business off the ground he jumped at the chance. She rocked it in Google, and soon the Photographers SEO Book and Blog was born…

As many of you may already know, I changed my photography business name from Michael Alan Photography to Paramour Photography back in 2009. I did it for a slew of reasons (from people spelling Alan wrong to wanting to transform it into a husband-and-wife business) and it has been well received so far. However, I had to get my name out there again and get people to see my business and I needed to do it hasta pronto! I got worried and picked up Zach’s book on a whim. After reading it and implementing his techniques, I noticed that not one but THREE of my sites were on page One of Google within a couple weeks. I was floored. I was hooked and have since picked up his online videos and am getting even better results… Since then, Zach and I have been regularly conversing with one another and have become good friends.

I got a chance to sit down with Zach and rack his brain on SEO and what it means to you. This is one interview that I would not skip over!

inLIGHTin: So what exactly is SEO?
Zach Perez: SEO stands for search engine optimization. If they had just called it Google-boost or something I think there would be less confusion. It’s the process of updating (optimizing) your website or blog so that you have a better chance of appearing higher in search engine results. If you update the phrase of your homepage title to include a couple of the keywords you are trying to rank for, that is SEO. If you add your blog link to a couple of blog directories, that is SEO. Pretty easy, huh?

inLIGHTin: Just how important is SEO?
Zach Perez: I guess that depends how many visitors you want to your website and ultimately how many new clients you want for your business. Some photographers are happy with posting a website or blog and maintaining a business via word of mouth referrals. That is all that will happen if you don’t actively put SEO effort into your site. Your site won’t rank for anything.
If you do some minor SEO work like choose the right keywords and add links back to your site, you can quickly rank for most local search terms.
Google will typically generate 50% or more of your site traffic, and the links you build (called referral traffic) can generate another 25%. That means SEO can multiply your website traffic by 3-4x. For me that is 3-4x more NEW client requests per month and they in turn refer more clients. Search traffic is the starting point for so much business that I can raise my rates 25% or even 50% and still keep the same volume of new client requests. For me SEO is the easiest, cheapest, and most important marketing a photography business can ever do.

inLIGHTin: How hard is it for someone with little or no experience to do SEO on their own?
Zach Perez: SEO is not hard. An oversimplified Google takes the search text and looks for sites that use the similar or related text. Then it returns the websites that are the most popular (have the most links pointing to them). In concept this is easy to understand and just using quality keywords and getting good links to your site can take you a good distance. There are other considerations that also help like URLs, image names, etc. But a focus on text and linking is a great start and can be done relatively quickly for any type of website.
Since almost 50% of the clicks go to the top 1-2 results, there is a big difference in ranking #1 and #10. The payoff comes in learning the extra little details to boost your position from ten to one and that usually takes a lot of trial and error or online research. Hence why I wrote my book.

inLIGHTin: Can you tell us a little bit about “sandboxing” and what causes Google to sandbox a site?
Zach Perez: If Google is the parent of my website then it would put my new website on timeout (in the sandbox) by not allowing me to rank high for pretty much anything. You might get put in the sandbox for adding a bunch of links on spam sites, purchasing lots of links in a short time frame, or throwing mashed potatoes in your brother’s face. Stay away from link offers that are too good to be true and your site will be fine.

inLIGHTin: How important are meta tags and keywords to SEO and how do I choose the best meta tags or keywords that are right for me?
Zach Perez: Ask a normal person if they are optimized for search and they will say “Yeah, I’ve updated my meta tags.” Unfortunately, the easy way to optimization was so often exploited that almost all search engines stopped using meta tags in their rankings.
But there are two types of meta tags. Meta keywords and meta descriptions. Meta keywords are worth less than… hmm… something not worth anything. They do not help your rank, expose your words to competitors, and too many of them can be seen as spam so I do not use or recommend them on any website. Meta descriptions, however, appear on the search results page. Although they don’t help your page’s rank position, some good marketing text might entice a user to click your link, and therefore it can be important.
I wrote a post on my blog Meta Tag Gems for Photographers that talks about writing the best meta data.

inLIGHTin: I have been concentrating way more on my blogs than my flash sites hoping that they will help my SEO efforts. How do blogs help one’s SEO?
Zach Perez: Blogs are the Viagra of SEO for websites. Did I answer the question? I think more people are signing up for blogs than Viagra now too. If you are a photographer, then you need a blog ASAP. Blogs are highly valued by Google, quickly appear in results, pre-optimized with links, and the list goes on. It will give you a completely new website that can rank in Google (that means 2 listings and double the traffic). Plus it will help you rank for a lot of niche terms that you would not talk about on your regular website. For example if you write a blog post about a specific wedding venue that you photographed, then your blog post might rank for searches about that venue and brides will be calling you to book their event. Whoa! By the way, WordPress is the best blog system for SEO and Thesis is the best WordPress template for SEO purposes.

inLIGHTin: How about my Flash website? Does that help my SEO?
Zach Perez: Machines like Google can’t read Flash. That means all the great text and pages within your Flash site are probably invisible to search. Non-flash sites have a greater chance of success, but Flash sites can still rank very easily by putting text at the bottom of your homepage and building some links to your site.

inLIGHTin: Why does one’s site ranking fluctuate so much?
Zach Perez: Actually, I wouldn’t expect that much fluctuation, but ranks do vary from day to day. In one tiny example I posted something on my blog that I added to some social networks including my Twitter page. That day I help the top 7 ranks for one particular term, but later in the week most of them fell off of search. Why? Probably because the text was no longer on the top of those social sites anymore so Google didn’t see it. That is one illustration of how the people ranked below me were affected by new posts and new text that was posted on the Internet for a short time. The best way to maintain a steady rank is to have lots of links pointing to your website.
More important than your rank, is how much traffic you get from the rank. I would rather be ranked #10 for a broad term that gives me 100 new visitors per month than #1 for a very specific thing that nobody searches for and drives no traffic. So don’t get caught up in watching your rankings.
I check mine once per month using a tool called Rank Checker. It’s a Firefox plugin that allows me to save all my key phrases in a list, then click a button to see where I am ranked across the 3 major search engines for each phrase. I also follow which keywords are sending me traffic from my Google Analytics report. If I start getting traffic for “best San Diego photographer” that means I probably rank for it and maybe I will write some more content with “best” at the beginning.

inLIGHTin: About how long does it take for you to notice results?
Zach Perez: For me, or the average person? LOL. Google will pickup text changes to your blog typically within a week and to your website typically within 1-4 weeks, depending on how frequently Google checks you out. You can see if Google has noticed your latest changes by clicking the “cached” link that appears after your (or any) search result listing and it will date stamp the last time that page was indexed. So if you see your latest keywords present on the cached page, then your rank is as good as it gets for your on-page changes.

It’s hard to know how long Google takes to find all the links you’ve built to your site (the most important part of ranking well). Depends on how many links, and what sites/pages you’ve added them to. If you’ve done a good job and added relevant links to a few web directories, a few forums, a few blogs, and cashed in all your favors (links from clients, partners, related vendor sites, etc) Google should find all of those links and give you credit within 6 weeks or so.

Short answer – about 2 weeks for a small bump with text changes or 6 weeks for a significant bump with link building.

inLIGHTin: Is there any way for us to monitor our SEO efforts?
Zach Perez: Absolutely, it wouldn’t be worth implementing if you could not effectively monitor ROI. The top 3 I use are:

* Rank Checker (Firefox Web Browser Plug-in): which phrases rank well using a keyword list that you upload
* Google Webmaster Tools: which phrases rank well and which are the most clicked
* Google Analytics: how much traffic you get, broken down by keyword or other website that links to you

I have an SEO Video Training for Photographers that covers this. The key ingredient is to do some SEO, see what sticks, and learn from it. Otherwise you may be wasting your time optimizing for LA wedding photographer and never ranking for it, or missing tons of useful SEO information from your Analytics reports.

inLIGHTin: Any suggestions on how to use Social Networking like Facebook and Twitter to help improve your SEO?
Zach Perez: Good question. The thought used to be that a photographer could build one of these sites and maybe have two things that could not rank in search. Not true. Facebook and Twitter rank poorly for photographer terms that would bring you new clients. And if you don’t use it right, you wind up dumping loads of time into maintaining a Facebook page that doesn’t bring in new business. But you wouldn’t know that because you don’t have Google Analytics setup to monitor it that way.

You said social networking… I use Twitter to network with people that can spread the work about my content - that means build links, which improves my SEO. I meet people that were otherwise untouchable that I can now chat with about doing a guest blog for, or get guest content for them on my site. It’s either more free content for my site (good for SEO) or me spreading the word about my content in an attempt to build links, or offer a new article with links in it (that helps my SEO).

Then there’s the social search game. People you are loosely connected to in social circles like Google profiles may see you in their search results. Its hard to tell the future adoption rate of that yet, but I like to be a part of it.

inLIGHTin: So let’s switch gears and talk a little bit about your book. I know that it personally has helped my SEO efforts for my on photography business by leaps and bounds!
Zach Perez: My Photographers SEO Book gives photographers the best advantage for getting high in Google without the need for technical skill or time to do a lot of online research about SEO. It offers step-by-step instructions that I have followed successfully across pretty much every different photo website system and blog there is. It not only explains Google, but offers cut and paste keyword examples, optimized homepage text, 50+ recommended photographer link locations, Google Analytics setup steps, and lots of tidbits of advice.

Let’s say you spend $100 on your website per year to get 2 new leads per month ($4 per lead). What’s the ROI when you invest $39 one-time on SEO and double that to 4 new leads per month? I said it earlier about myself, but it applies to everyone: the photographers who invest in SEO will get more business and be able to charge higher rates than they did previously.

inLIGHTin: Your products have helped me tremendously. Do you plan on coming out with anything else?
Zach Prez: Yeah. I learned a ton in the last couple years from photographers and from working with some of the major website template companies that serve photographers. I’ve also been getting some product ideas from a community run by the founders of ProBlogger.com. Anyway, I don’t want to pre-release anything quite yet but subscribers to my website and Twitter will get the first word when the next big thing happens.

Thank you SO much for your time Zach! I am a living testament that your book and instructional videos have really helped me. As mentioned before, I now have THREE sites of mine showing up under “Buffalo Portrait Photographers“! It’s absolutely amazing how I got to that point in such a short period of time thanks to you!

View Zach’s website here: SEO For Photographers
Pick up his Book and Videos here: SEO Book and Video Tutorials for Photographers

NOTE: Zach has so generously donated a copy of his book to ONE LUCKY PHOTOGRAPHER…how amazing is that??!!

Here are the rules: All you have to do is post your comments (yes, you can enter twice by leaving a multiple comments in a random order) below, and maybe leave a little love for Zach to thank him for his time. 1 random winner will be chosen on April 2nd, 2010 .

If you don’t win, or are super eager to get started on your SEO today head on over to Photographers SEO Book and get a copy. This has been the best purchase I have made for my business in a REAL long time. You all know that I don’t endorse anything that I don’t believe in or support so trust me this is legit!

Good luck in the contest!
~Michael

Hello fellow inLIGHTin’ed Ones.
Mike here just letting everyone know that The inLIGHTin Workshop is back in business after a little hiatus so I could spend some much needed time with the family. It was hard being a new father to be running my photography business and doing the daily blog posts over here.

But I have things prioritized better. Time is now also more on my side (outsourcing work is a beautiful thing!) so I can get back into full swing with The inLIGHTin Workshop and doing something that I love.

I haven’t been slacking off though. Take a look at what I have been up to.

Here’s what is in the works:
- I have an eBook on how to get into the business of photography. It is my little crash course to awesomeness. That will be available for sale at the storefront by Summer.
- I plan on finishing up that workshop DVD which has been in limbo for a while.
- I plan on holding some group inLIGHTin Workshops around Buffalo and am accepting invites to give workshops in your hometown. Contact me at mike at inlightinworkshop dot com if you are interested.

Thanks for you patience everyone! I know there have been a lot of new mailing list subscriptions over the past couple months so expect some nice newsletters soon with some cool freebies and fun stuff like that!

Take care,
~Mike