Today’s tutorial on how to maximize your site and use SEO comes to us from Kim Larson of Life is Art Photography. Her information is great and easy to follow and will help you to improve your website for search engines. A huge thanks to her!
It is always important to keep your website optimized so potential clients can find you via search engines, especially if your business relies on them finding you by searching for terms like “photographers in yourtown” or “yourtown Wedding Photography”. Flashpalette’s editor allows you to keep your website updated with some important “Search Engine Optimization” techniques:
In your editor, look at the Search Engine Settings. Your keywords should be any words or phrases that you think a potential client should use to search for your website in the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN/Live Search). Some good keywords to use may be “wisconsin wedding photographer” or “Seattle wedding photographers”. You don’t want to have too many keywords, or Google may penalize you for “keyword stuffing”. Nobody knows the exact number because the search engines keep it secret, but most people aim for 5-10 good keywords (or phrases).
Your Description should be a nice overview of your business and should also include some of your keywords. Mine includes, “Artist Kim Larson specializes in Wisconsin wedding photography, and also provides senior graduation photography, family and childrens photography.” Again, this should not be too long or the search engines may penalize you for “stuffing” your description with too much content. Two to three sentences is ideal. The description may show up in search engine results, and many times directory websites such as photolinks.com will automatically use and display your description when they add your website to their directory – so grammar is important!
Now in your editor, look at the main Website Settings. Your Website Title is also very important! The title is what shows up in the very top menu bar of your browser.
The attached image shows a great example of a website title by a tree farm. At this time of year, they are selling Christmas Trees, so the title of their website is set to “Christmas Trees by Tate’s Trees”. Notice that their important keywords (“Christmas Trees”) comes before their business name. Search engines put higher preference on the words found toward the beginning of the title.
Your title should describe what you do before who you are. My homepage title is “Wedding Photography by Life is Art”, because right now I am in full swing booking weddings for next year. Do not make your title more than 10-15 words, or you may also get penalized by search engines for “stuffing” the title. You should also put a different title on each page of your website and make it relevant to the page – so if you have a page about senior photography the title should be something like “Denver senior photography by Life is Art”.
It’s also important to keep your keywords, description, and titles up to date. You don’t have to change them often, but make sure they remain relevant to your website content and your business. Then let the new clients come rolling in!
Shannon