SEO For Photographers Made Simple
If you’re still not 100% sure about this whole SEO thing, it’s possible you might be holding on to some of the more strongest SEO myths, which in turn might be hindering your efforts.
For example:
- SEO is too technical for the average professional photographer…
- SEO takes too much time…
- Only the big players need to bother with SEO…
- Social media is the new SEO…
- Google will do it all for you…
Before we continue, let’s take a quick moment to put these top 5 SEO myths and misconceptions to bed so you can move on and start making a real difference to your marketing…
Myth #1: SEO Is Too Technical…
The idea that SEO is too technical for the average professional photographer is really nothing more than a myth. We’ve already seen some evidence of this in the guide so far, but you’ll really see how non-technical it can be when we get to the specific checklists later on.
Yes, from Google’s perspective, the actual work of calculating search engine rankings using the astronomical amount of data they track every day is incredibly technical and involves a great deal of specialized know-how.
But, from your perspective (the only one that matters here), SEO involves nothing more than creating valuable and interesting content, with the right keywords in the right places, putting it in front of Google, and then stepping out of the way to let the search engines do their job!
There are no “ninja tricks” or mysterious secrets to SEO, at least none that give any positive long-term results.
In fact, if anyone suggests the idea of “tricks” or “secrets” to getting ranked higher, faster, then it probably involves what we call “black hat” tactics that will inevitably get you penalized by Google.
Basically, if you can string some sentences together that make sense to your reader and your target audience, that’s about the only real “skill” you need to get started.
Myth #2: SEO Is Time Consuming…
As I mentioned earlier on, SEO is really a by-product of good content-creation practices, rather than something you spend time to do to your content after you’ve created it.
Therefore, when you know what you’re doing (and you will after you finish this guide), it takes no more time to create a piece of content with good SEO built into it than it does without it.
It’s a little like driving a car; it takes no more effort to drive well than it does to drive poorly (although not many people on the roads these days seem to realize that).
Myth #3: SEO Is For The Big Boys…
SEO, despite its rather geeky sounding name, is for everyone – big or small – and the fact that photographers usually operate within a limited geographical market is actually a great advantage and benefit.
For example, my own SEO job on this website is made much harder than it would be for the average professional photographer because I have to consider SEO from a global perspective. I have readers and clients from all over the world, not just from my own city of Memphis, Tennessee.
Most professional photographers only need to attract clients living in their city, or at least from within a certain radius, making their SEO tasks much easier.
Myth #4: Facebook and Word Of Mouth Are All I Need…
Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter and word of mouth are all great marketing channels, but they’re not under your direct full control.
In fact, with the constant changes that Facebook make to their system, it seems that marketing is becoming a lot harder there. For example, not all of your page “fans” get to see all of your updates, although you can pay Facebook an advertising fee to promote your posts (not a bad thing, by the way).
If you put all of your marketing eggs in the Facebook basket, and that basket suddenly disappears or is replaced by a different one that’s not so useful, what are you going to do?
Right now, I see a lot of photographers relying heavily on Facebook to do much of their marketing, instead of focusing on the SEO for their websites, and I believe this is a big mistake that might cost them dearly in the long run.
Much better to focus your efforts on your home turf.
And, in any case, social media is a totally different kind of marketing to search engine marketing with a completely different mindset and intent in the mind of the user.
Myth #5: Google Does It All For Me…
This is one of the biggest and most common myths out there, and it’s costing photographers a lot in terms of website visitors.
Yes, Google is the one responsible for calculating your search engine rankings, but those rankings are only as good as the content in their search index.
To say that Google takes care of our SEO is like suggesting that a librarian is responsible for creating the relevance of all the books in the library. Clearly, that’s not true, and it’s up to us to make sure we give Google as much help as we can to make the indexing process faster and simpler.
