SEO Basics: Marketing Your Photography

Now that I made my website, the phone isn't ringing!!! What did I do wrong?

This is a simple post to get you started on being seen by Google search results. This is just a start. There are many other things that you can do with your site to boost your ratings, but you should do these things first or close to first.

First you must establish what kind of site is best for your type of work. If you are primarily a landscape photographer, you will have different concerns than a portrait photographer will have. Landscape photographers make the majority of their money off licensing their photos for advertising, magazine publications, and occasionally as art (if you're lucky.) Portrait photographers make their money off booking clients in person. It doesn't seem all that different, but consider these questions: 

• Does the creative commons copyright registration work for my needs? This is more than a simple yes or no based off whether you want to put yourself open to having your work stolen. Trey Ratcliff created his business model under the rationale that his photos get more visibility if they are seen and used by more people (without making profit off them), and that works well for him. I have created my business model in a way that tries to help maintain the privacy of my clients. Even though they sign a model release, it is important to them and me to make sure their faces are not used in association with things they do not support. With the exception of models and famous people, folks don't want to see their face on someone's blog, or worse, on some advertisement somewhere for something they didn't know they were endorsing. Knowing how you want your work registered can decide your targeted audience and influence your keyword selections.
• Who do you want your photography to reach? Landscape photographers would probably reply with "everyone." A portrait photographer would probably say "people in my region." 
• Do you want to have full control over your HTML / CSS? If you don't you might not be able to use avenues that others can use, but it cuts down on multiple headaches to use sites like Smugmug or Wordpress to create your sites and blogs. It's up to you.
• What do you need from your store? Do you even need a store?
• If you shoot portraits, what kind of portraits do you shoot? Most people don't shoot every type of portraits out there, so think about what kind you consider most fun to you.

Determine which meta key words you want to use, and start using them. Meta tag all of your photos as well so they show up in search results on their own. If you're targeting "everyone" you may want to use generic keywords, but if you are targeting a specific group, use more specific keywords.

Use <H1> tags to show the search engine what is more important. Maybe even use your keywords in that tag.

REGISTER YOUR SITE with Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Until you do that, their crawlers will not pick up on your site. And then start a link-building campaign. Get your site registered in directories, and that will boost your standing in search results.

Should you hire a marketer? If you find someone who is affordable, and can show you examples of their work (contact those people to make sure the marketer is not lying) then use your discretion, but from my experience, most marketers are not worth the money.