Too Many Wedding Photographers? Not Enough Fish in the Sea?
by: Jesse Chatham



If you’re new to the wedding photography or a seasoned pro, you are surely aware of the plethora of wedding photographers out there. Each wedding photographer in your area represents someone who, friendly or not, is a competitor. That means that you are vying for the same client that he or she is. And with so many photographers willing to shoot for next to nothing, how can you not only get the clients you want but get them to pay you top dollar for your services?

Since I founded photographik in early 2005, I have observed the wedding photography industry explode with photographers. New wedding photographers are joining the ranks of photographik and other wedding directories on a daily basis. And while this is good news for us, it is not always such good news for you.

How Do You Set Yourself Apart from the Hordes of Wedding Photographers Online?

SEO!

It’s a “webified” world now. More and more, people are using the Internet for everything from shopping and banking to YouTube surfing and, of course, research and discovery. And it's in the area of research and discovery that I’d like to focus this article.

Let’s face it; if you’re not findable on Google, then you’re missing out on a huge market of potential clients who begin and end their research and discovery using Google and, lesser so, the other search engines.

Here are some SEO tips that should help you in regards to your search engine and online marketing tactics.

1. Page Titles! Appropriately naming and identifying your website using page titles is still considered the number one most effective thing to do in terms of SEO. But be smart with how you title your homepage and other pages. For example, if your business is called Joe Blow Photography and you’re based in Sacramento, California, it is better to title your page:

Sacramento wedding photographer, Joe Blow Photography

Or even better: Sacramento wedding photographer, Sacramento wedding photography, Joe Blow Photography

Why do this? Because adding a geo-centric element to your page title helps the search bots identify and categorize your website in their SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages). Additionally, people in Sacramento are going to search for photographers using keywords like “Sacramento wedding photographers” or “Sacramento wedding photography.” If you only name your website after your business name, you’re not going to get the traffic you’re looking for.

2. A good page title is only the beginning. Be sure to add the meta tag elements of “keywords” and “description” to your homepage and interior pages (if you have an HTML site).

What do those look like? Here’s an example.

<META name="keywords" content="New York wedding photographer, NYC wedding photographers, wedding photography in New York City, and so on">

<META name="description" content="New York wedding photographer, Joe Blow, specializes in capturing beautiful wedding photos for brides and grooms in New York, NYC and across the globe.">

3. Make good use of your homepage. Your homepage is the front door to your website. Optimizing your homepage’s content is of paramount importance.

4. HTML splash pages are still a great thing. While it is certainly possible to get a pure Flash site to rank in the top 10, a well-structured HTML homepage (splash page) is quite effective because the textual content is easily read and indexed by Google’s bots. Further, you can do some great internal linking to other pages of your site or other sites you operate.

5. Links! Links! Links!

But not just any links. Your site will need many quality, inbound links to rank in the top 10 for competitive search phrases. Finding quality sites that will link to your site is an art in itself. Anybody can do it but it does require skill, patience and an overall excellent understanding of what constitutes a “good” link and what doesn’t.

Also, you never want links from “bad neighborhoods”. And you don’t want to many links to pop up too quickly. This can be a red flag to Google. Everything needs to at least look natural, organic and above board. Incurring a Google penalty on your website is very bad for business.

Where can you find good, quality, inbound links? Well, photographik.org is a great place to start. With photographik, not only do you benefit from the traffic that we generate to your website, you also receive a great inbound link to your site from our page ranked, highly indexed and trusted website. Many of our pages have Page Rank (Google's system of ranking a web page from 0 to 10). An inbound link from photographik can help you in your SEO efforts. Additionally, photographik's unique, online marketing and link building application, Blurbits, is great for not only sharing your latest photo shoot with the users of photographik but creating inbound links from our site to yours.

The tips above are a brief overview of some of the key elements involved in ranking well on Google for your wedding photography business. Each one can be expounded upon further but the guidelines above should help you better understand the nuts and bolts of search engine optimization for your wedding photography business.

DISCLAIMER : The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent the views of photographik or any member of the photographik organization.