SEO for photographers

1. SEO for photographers - Introduction: Today, I'm teaching this class for photographers, about how you can rank higher in Google, and my name is Marjet Wullink and I'm a SEO specialist. I will teach you as a photographer, how to rank high and become better than your competition. We do this by showing you examples of how you, for example, can start to become a business photographer, or by becoming high in Google, with some business photograph keywords. But you can also change this to whatever photographer you are. The first lesson is about, who are you as a photographer, and which keywords can be set for you as a photographer, and how do you add that to your website? Then also, who's your competition? Can you beat them or not? That's what we are going to talk about then, about the images. How do you save them? Also, about local SEO. If you are a photographer in Amsterdam, or in London, then it's good to also mention that, and to tell Google that you are living in Amsterdam. These things we're going to talk about today in this class. Please join me, I would love to see you rank high in Google and then add that into the projects, so all the other photographers are also coming unenthusiastic, because they see that you are getting on number one in Google, and they like to get there too. That will be great. We can inspire each other by ranking high. I hope to see you in this class. 2. Your photographer services: Welcome to this class about how to do SEO for photographers. This first lesson is about who you are. If you are a wedding photographer, you're probably very busy in summer, but in winter, they're not so many weddings, so then you might want to do some side hustling, like making portraits for business people. That is a little bit harder if you're always selling yourself as a wedding photographer. Maybe then you can get traction for that by using Google. How do you do that? For example, you have a website and on your website there's a page with wedding photography that will be good. Then you make an extra page, and that page is called business photography or another name. It's very important that you give the different pages different names, and especially that you make for your different services, different names. 3. Name your services with Google Suggest: Now, we're going to focus on this business photography one. You have to think what other people are searching for. What I start to do then is that I search in Google for words, and why I do that is because actually Google has a tool and it's called Google Suggest. If you type into Google, business photo or something like that, then Google adds different keywords to that. You can see what people are searching for, and then you get a whole list of synonyms for the keyword that you want to make. You get a whole list of keywords sets. For example, I inserted business portraits into Google. Then, it says business poses, business portraits on locations, business portraits women or business portrait poses, but also I added business and then photo. Then, it says business photography, business photos, business photos stock, these kind of things. Then, you make for yourself a list with all the most important keywords that you think. It can only be max 10 because after you make this list, you want to add this list to the Keyword Planner of AdWords. I also added some other words like photography for bus, and then Google suggests also tells me something, photography for business marketing. This Suggest tool actually makes keywords by how often people search for it, but you still don't know really how often people search on these keywords. That's why we really want to look into that and see how often people search for these keywords. What I did is that I added this list, business photography, business shoot, business photo shoot, business portraits, photography real business and all the other ones into this Google Keyword Planner. 4. Bonus: Google suggest and blogging: The nice thing of the Google suggests tool that we just talked about, is that there's also different things like the business photography poses or the head-shot poses, you can make blogs for that. It's not going to be your main page but blogging is also very good for SEO. If you find the time and the energy to start blogging as well, and you find inspiration by using these keyword tools. That'll be a very good advantage for you as a photographer, you will be found more in Google and you will also rank higher on the keywords that you like if you are more active. 5. Keyword research for your services: How do you start with the Google Keyword planner? You need to have a Google account to use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner. Next to that, if you start to log in, you also need to fill in your credit card details plus you have to make a campaign. A campaign means that you make an advertisement on Google. Then this advertisement should even make clicks, at least like once a day, a click, otherwise, you don't see the details so well. Having a Google AdWords Keyword Planner account and having it the right way is a big obstacle for people to do keyword research. What I would suggest you to do is to think of somebody, hopefully is your friend, and they use Google AdWords, and then you ask them, can I please use your keyword Adwords tool, and I will add a link into the description so you can send this link to your friend who's already using AdWords, and then they can add your G-mail to their Google AdWords so you can just use this tool for free. That's actually my tip for starting this AdWords Keyword Planner because it's such a big obstacle to start advertising first before you can do keyword research. Let's say that he did that, and you have a keyword AdWords account usable. You can look into the Keyword Planner and then you do the keyword research. Here I will show just a simple example of this business portraits, example of the business photographer. I insert in my list of keywords, and then I first see how often people are searching on a keyword. In the first column, you see the volume that people are searching for per month. Then in the second column, you see how good the competition is. So is it low, medium, or high? This competition is all in adverts. How many ads are there? You don't want so many ads above the organic results. The organic results are not paid results, and AdWords is the advertisements on the top of the Google results. It's better to have a low competition on your keywords. In that case, you can see, okay, what is the most volume would be good, but it's not always the best, and there's not so much competition in AdWords. Actually what's the best is if there is not so much competition on the organic side. In the next lesson, I'm going to show you how you can see that, how you can see what your competition is doing. But I also wanted to show you that underneath the list that I inserted, you see suggestions of Google, and that's really helpful because there, I see that I actually didn't insert the word headshots. In the first instance when I did the research, I didn't know about headshots because it's not in my terminology because I'm not a photographer probably and because I'm not using English as my mother tongue, so headshots is not something that I'm thinking about in the first instance. That's why it's really good that Google helps you to think and to suggest you keywords that you might have not thought about. But you do need to insert a whole list yourself, so Google can give you suggestions. That's what you see here, and for picking the right keyword, you need to know what your competition does. That's what we're going to do in the next lesson. 6. Who is your competition?: Who is your competition? Then we talk about your competition, especially in the Google search results. It could be that a bigger competitor of yours is maybe a competitor, but they don't even show up in the Google search results. We don't assume that they are competitors in this case. But what do we see if we see your competitors in the Google search results? Well, we see their SEO title, their SEO metadescription, and their URL, and those are very important things. If I look into your competitors, I always do a quick scan. If you pick a keyword set, maybe from a list of ten. These three, they really fit with me. I want to see where I have the most chances to rank high. Then you add them to Google, you insert them into Google and you see the whole list of the things of the competitors. But most of times first, you see Google maps, especially because I will use the example of corporate head shots photographer. What I see first is Google maps. Underneath that I see videos. I also seem between I see some advertisements and then pictures. Google Images and underneath, that's what we are talking about. You have to scroll down very much. This first thing, the Google maps. I'm going to explain how you get there in next lesson. Keep that in mind for next lesson. First, we're going to check out the Google search results in the organic search results. That's underneath here. You see that when I search for this keyword set, the corporate headshots photographer, then you see that the first on my list is Rory Lewis Dot studio. Maybe if you do it, you see something else because you have different history and you're on a different location. That's why you probably see somebody in America if you are American. I here see somebody that's in England, which is funny because I'm not in England. That's one thing why this is already a good one. Because nobody in the Netherlands or in Amsterdam is talking about corporate headshots. Photographer on their website. This might be a good keyword to use. What we see here is that this Rory Lewis uses corporate headshots in his SEO title. That's what we see here. Also he uses photographer, but that then at the end. In his metadescription, he also uses corporate headshots, but not photographer. You can do better in that way. That use also the keyword set into your meta or SEO description. Then we see the URL. Here you see that the URL is corporate dash headshots, but not photographer. You could also do better there to make it corporate slash headshots, dash photographer. If you do that, it might be already enough. But it might be that you need to do more, but that's not what we're going to talk about here is just we're going to see how good this competition is if you can beat them. Here I think you might be able to beat them especially because of the location. Because in the Netherlands, for example, there are not so many people yet talking about this keyword set. Next thing is that he doesn't use it perfectly already in his SEO title and its URL. That might be a really good keyword for you. This is how you do a quick scan of your competition, looking at the Google search results. That's how I use it. How do you let Google know where you are based? That's what we're going to talk about in the next lesson. 7. Beat your competition locally: Beat your competition locally. That's this next lesson, and you can do that by creating a Google business account. You just go to google.business.com and you click on the green button on the right and that says, Start now, and then you start up your account. So you insert your Gmail address and your password. If you don't have that yet, you just create a Gmail account because that's anyway, very handy to have if you want to do more with SEO. There you type in your business name. If you already exists as a business and Google already knows you, your existing business might pop up and then you can ask if somebody else has this business name or, you know that could be, then you can ask if you can manage it. Because sometimes you're inserted into a database and then Google had this database, is like a business database and they add your business into the Google Maps without you knowing about this, this might happen. So maybe you're already existing there. Then you have to start to manage that account and not to create a new one. But if you're not yet there, you can create your own Google Business Location. So that's what you click on then, create a business with that name. Then you type in all your details, and you follow the guidance of Google, which is that you have to insert your address and then you get a postcard sent to your address, or they can verify your location with your phone number. So these two options are possible. If you are verified or almost verified there but you at least can login, then you have to do more things than just what Google suggests to you. So they say, first like, Create a cover image, do this, this and this. So you follow also these rules of Google, but next to that, it's good to do some other things like the title of your business. Maybe your name is Mary Poppins, and then you add to your business name, Mary Poppins dash or something else or a dot or whatever you want. Then you say, Corporate Head Shots Photographer, for example. Then if you want that to be your main keyword, you add that to the title of your business. Okay, this is not totally allowed by Google, but as long as you're not Shell or a big company, they might be okay with that. It's not allowed, especially if you don't want to do it, I get that. If you're a little bit bold, try it, otherwise, it's also okay. Then we add it somewhere else. So think about that, maybe you just do photographer, if that's not yet in your business name, that would be already great. Then you go to the Info tab, and on the Info tab you. For example also in the Info tab, there's also where you can adjust your title, so that's what you'd also have to do there. You adjust your title at Info. Then you go to add your categories. Can be wedding photographer or the photographer options that already you have, you add there. You add of course your URL. So the domain name. That's very important because Google is matching the words that you have on your website with the words that are searched in Google, and if they are on your website, then you also pop up in Google Maps higher, so that's important. Add your URL. Then add the keywords that are important to you in your description, here underneath. Then there is another option which is important, which are the labels. Add there the keywords, the 10 most important keywords for you in the label. So Corporate headshots Amsterdam. That's what you do, business photographer Amsterdam. All these different combinations is added there, also the location. So that will be good. Now I'm also already seeing something else like that you should add Amsterdam or your town or your city to these keywords and that's important. That on your website, if we're now letting go of the Google business. So on your website, you make one page for this Corporate headshots photographer. It would be good if it's Corporate headshots photographer Amsterdam, for example, especially if you have a lot of competition. Then you don't have to add those keywords in that right set in your texts, but just sometimes add Amsterdam or your city on different points into your page, that will be good. Other SEO hacks for photographers is what I'm talking about in the next lesson. 8. SEO hacks for photographers: SEO hacks for photographers and then especially on your page. What a lot of photographers have, is that they want to use to the highest resolution of their images on their website. The other thing is that they like to use a lot of images on the website, but no text. These things are not the best if you want to rank high in Google. That's what we're going to explain in this lesson, that you can use a good resolution, but make it a good balance between a good resolution and how high weighted your images to load so it's quickly loaded for a web page. This is what my intern, Asmay is going to help you with in the next lesson. In the next lesson, we will or Asmay will help you with using Photoshop and Lightroom, and then you can see the balance in where your image becomes too heavy and where it's still good for uploading to your website. She will help you to make your pictures ready for web. After they're ready for web and you think now this is good enough for me and must be good enough for my website, then you save your images with keywords. Your file name has the keywords in it so it's like corporate-headshots-photographer.jpeg because pictures, real photographs will be saved as JPEGs. If you have other images like logos or something like that are more PNGs, JPEGs will always be smaller for the web to upload. If you give your images the right filename, you can upload them to your website. There you add an alternative texts and also this alternative text has keywords in it. That's the whole step with the images, so the filename and then the alternative text and then you can upload them. Once they're there on your website, you actually have to check what they are. Are they background images? Or does Google see them as real images? Real images are better. Real images are seen by Google as being very good to illustrate what the text and the page is about. Background images are seen more like a web design item, like giving them atmosphere, but not really giving more explanation about what the page is about, that's why they are less important and real images are more important. If you can do a quick check on images, so hoover with the mouse over the image then click on your right mouse. If it says download or save the image, then you can save the image, then it is a normal image. That's a quick check. If that's not possible, then most of times it's a background image, so then you have to add somewhere else on the page, another real image hopefully this possible within your website CMS, because that will be really good. If you cannot do it because maybe you said, "I don't want people to steal my images." That's possible, then you can never right-click on anything on your website. I don't think that you can avoid people stealing your images because they can just screen shot and then they have your image as well. Maybe not in the highest resolution as if they can save it, but still. I think it's good to just keep it open because nowadays you can get a big fine for using somebody's images so therefore, it will not be done so often anymore. Then after the images, now you did the images very well on your website, it's good to add of course, the SEO title and a meta title are the same. Sometimes we use SEO title, sometimes we use meta title. Then you have also the meta description or SEO description. I already taught this in the other lesson. You can learn more about this in my first class about SEO, which is called: The first steps of SEO. You can search on my name and then you see my first lesson SEO, follow that one because that's where the basics are, but on-page SEO. Then you'll also see, what I already taught in the first lesson about the URL, that's very important. That the URL, there are keywords in it and also, if you change the URL, you have to make a redirect. This is also what you can find in my first lesson so go to that one because otherwise, you will find yourself having some error pages and Google doesn't like that. Get to that first lesson where you will learn about that. Next to this, it's good to use a heading one at least, and some subheadings in which you also add keywords and then some paragraphs with text. If you want to do more with the text and optimize more text, please go to my first class about SEO. There you learn about how you can optimize your page for Google. Here I just said, if you're a photographer, you use so many images then use the images in the right way. That's what I was talking about in this lesson. Let me know how it's all going. Don't expect miracles that in two days you're on top of search results, but in one or two months, I would like to see in your projects that you have rankings on the first page, for example. Please make a screenshot of your keyword search with your ranking. That will be great because everybody gets more enthusiastic about it and then people would love to also do this class and get that ranking. That will be really helpful for everybody to see how you can grow in Google. Now, you can see the next lesson which Asmay is going to teach you about Lightroom and Photoshop. Give a big applause for Asmay because this is her first lesson on this platform. I will see you in my next class. Thank you. 9. Export images with Adobe Lightroom: My name Ms. May and I'm an intern from [inaudible]. I really like to say pictures and videos in my free time. Therefore [inaudible] me, I could teach you a little bit about how to export your pictures for web. There are basically three things that you have to keep in mind. The first one is the title of your image. The second one is the keywords that you add to the image. The metadata and the third one is the file size of your image. Most people use Lightroom's to exports their pictures. Some use Photoshop. Some use another program, but personally I use Lightroom and sometimes Photoshop. Therefore, in this video, I will teach you how to export your pictures in Lightroom and in next video I will teach you how to export your videos in Photoshop. Why don't we get started and jump into Lightroom. Once you open up Lightroom, make sure that you are in the library module which look like this and say for example that I want to export this picture. This is a picture I took during my road trip in the United States in Joshua Tree National Park. There were three things that I had to keep in mind. The first one is my metadata that can be seen on the right in the screen and I start with the metadata itself. There are two kinds of metadata that you can add, which is the EXIF information and the IPTC information. The EXIF information is information that the camera automatically adds to it and it's basically information about the picture itself. You can see that I use an ISO of 1250,. My focal length was 16 millimeter. I used a Sony camera for it and you can see when I took the picture. You can choose to keep this information in your picture. You can leave it out. It doesn't really have any SEO value. Your other information is IPTC metadata, which stands for International Press Telecommunications Council and it's basically a standard that was added for the press. You can add information about your picture and about who took it and the copyright status in here. What I find very interesting is the keywords all the way up top. Say I wants to export this picture with the keywords astrophotography, Joshua tree. This is where I can have those keywords. I say astrophotography Joshua tree and now it will be added to that picture. That's all I have to do it in Lightroom or well, in the library module, then I go to export and here you can see that I made for use presets decline a preset that I have right here exports its to a full quality. The Instagram post presets that I have exports to a lower quality so that it's already compressed a little bit and Instagram doesn't have to ruin it further with its compression and then I have two precepts for the web. I have a high-quality presets, which makes files a little bit bigger, but it's very good for a portfolio and I have low-quality web presets, which is mainly good for blog-posts and smaller pictures on the website. This one also limits my file size. I'll walk you through in a little bit. My export location is choose folder later. Once I hit the Export button, I will get asked where I want to save the picture. I rename it to a custom name and which was the second thing we have to keep in mind. This is where you save it under your keywords. In my case Astrophotography Joshua-Tree. Then the file settings the JPEG with sRGB and here I say limit file size to 250K. If you can limit it to a 150, that's better. Because the lower file size, the quicker your pictures will load, the more Google will love it. Then you can see the resize to fit the set on the long edge with 1200 pixels and a resolution of a 100 pixels per inch and I say it's sharpen for screen with a standard amount. Well, then I hit Exports. I get asked where I want to save my image. I say in my desktop and you can see on the left-hand side that is exporting. Once that is done, I will see that my picture, astrophotography Joshua Tree is now my desktop. If I click on Get info, you can see the title. You can see that it is smaller than 250 kilobytes, and I have the keywords added to it. Now all I have to do is just upload it to my website and change the old information of the image and keyword stare as well and I'm done. To show you the outer preset I have no high-quality. The only thing that's different here is that I haven't limited my file size. Don't do this whatever picture I just said quality to 85 and here I say, my resolution will be 300 pixels per inch and not a 100 pixels per inch. I hope you learned something from this class. In the next video, I will show you how to do all this in Photoshop. 10. Export images with Adobe Photoshop: Now that we've learned how to export your photos in Lightroom, it is time to export your photos through Photoshop. Let me open Photoshop and I show you how it works. So as you can see, I've now opened Photoshop and here you can see an image I took during a concert last year. This image that you currently see is a raw file, which means that it's way too big to upload to any website. There are two things that I have to do, they're are changing the image size and then I have to export it as a JPEG. So to change up your image size, you first go to the Image and then Image Size and here you can see that my current image size is almost 69 megabytes, which is way too much. Current dimensions are still my raw file dimensions, so also way too big for any website and you can see that the resolution is 300 pixels per inch, this is a print resolution. We're first going to change depth to a web resolution and web resolution is 72 pixels per inch and you can see that now that I've changed the resolution, my dimensions have changed as well. You can change it to any dimension you want. Since we went for 1200 on the long side in the Lightroom example, we're going to do that here as well. So I've now changed my resolution and my file size or my image size and now you can see that it went from 86 megabytes to 2.75 megabytes, which is a lot smaller already. So you press Okay and now you want to export this picture as a JPEG picture. In order to do that, you go to File Export, Save Folder. Originally, you always end up on this screen the original screen, but I prefer for a screen to export for whip, you can use JPEG Medium or JPEG High. Usually, JPEG medium is already enough, but if you look at this screen, this screen compares four different export sizes. So this was the lowest here, a middle size, which is the same as the one on the right hand corner somehow and here on the left you can see original size, so the current size, which we just set 2.75 megabytes. You can see one image will look like once you've exported it, so here you can see this very sharp. Here with JPEG medium, you can see that it's a little less sharp and we do want the highest amount of sharpness in the picture. You can see that the size of this image will be 87K, which is on the low side, so you can go a little bit further up. So I will change my sittings to JPEG high, and now you can see that in the high-quality file size or high quality file, my file size will be 188K, which is around the 150 that we set is a nice threshold. So here you can see that my image will look pretty sharp, almost as sharp as the one on the left. These settings are the best for my picture at this moment. So then I just press Save, and I'm being asked where I want to save in, so I change my filename to my keywords so I'll save as my keywords are Freek-guitar and I say Save. So then we can compare the images. This is my original file, you can see that it's 25 megabytes. This is the one I just exported, which is almost 200K, which is a really nice file size for web. To see the full picture, this is the raw file, so the 25 megabyte file, and this one is the one I made ready to upload to web. You can barely see any difference and this one is just a little bit smaller. Well, no, it's a lot smaller and good to upload online. So I hope you've learned something valuable today. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask them either in the comments below or on Instagram and for now I just want to thank you for watching this class.