PART ONE... After my last entry on "SEO as it applies to photographers" I was asked a million times* "Yeah, great, we're all talking and engaging each other, but what the hell is SEO" ....Anyone want to guess? It's nothing to do with the name of a cracking 80's band, and it doesn't stand for Shutter Emergency Option either!...
Search Engine Optimisation baby!
Yeah, OK, great... But what is it? Well, it's the difference between having a post turn up in a major search engine and not. For example, if you google the phrase "SEO as it applies to photographers" there is every chance that my post will be near the top somewhere... but that's not even really it, because who is going to Google that exact phrase? They're going to search for something like "Photographer SEO" and they're going to end up on a website that sells a book on just that for $39.00 - That's a great idea, I could take a whole series of blog posts and write an eBook - but I digress... So, You see that initially, SEO is about getting your crap to show up in search engine results...
Let's face it, a lot of us don't have much that's worth reading, really, do we? I photographed Metallica, it was awesome... Yes, so have sixty million other people! But I want people to find MY photos and MY story about it.
So, let's start with Images... Let's take the image above for example - It's a nothing image, a self portrait of me. So, I could leave it called whatever it was called - Let's say DSC_0012.jpg for example... Instead, there are a few simple guidlines you should follow to attempt to get your photos into search - ALT and TITLE are key. ...The HTML for this image is below (Not in full) Can you spot the important bits?
img style="border: 5px solid black;" title="Simon-Pollock-Music-Photographer-Self-Portrait" src="http://gtvone.com/wp-content/uploads/s-600x680.jpg" alt="Self Portrait of Simon Pollock Music Photographer" width="600" height="680"
There's our start - If you're a photographer and you sit there puzzled at why your images never show up in search, start to think about how lame your photos are you name your images and if you even use the ALT tag at all.
You can RSS for part two (Next couple of days) or you can NEWSLETTER for the whole lot in about a week!
But most importantly, it's late and I'd love a coffee!!
No puppies were harmed in the creation of this blog and the * is actually for TWO people... not a million!