SEO For Photographers - Search Engine Optimisation for Photographers

 

Link building methods

Link building is an important aspect of SEO. A link to your website from another quality, relevant site can count as a vote in favour of your website and can improve the ranking of your own website.

There are many ways of generating links to your website which can improve your search engine rankings.

There are free and paid options available and many can be time consuming but can be worthwhile in the long run. We have detailed just a few here:

Reciprocal links - you can approach other websites to ask for a link back in return for a link on your website. With Websites For Photographers there is a links page set-up specifically for this purpose.

As a photographer you should approach similar websites but not those in direct competition. A good strategy is to approach photographers covering other regions.

Reciprocal linking is not generally regarded as the best way to proceed, however, it cannot do any harm so long as you exchange links with relevant websites, particularly those already indexed by Google.

Links to your website can be optimised as well. Try to ensure that the anchor text of a link contains the main key words you are targeting. For example if you want to target the phrase 'Wedding Photographers Manchester', the link should look like this > Wedding Photographers Manchester. The anchor text is the text you actually click on in the link. Try also to add a title tag to the code containing the same phrase. All these details tell a search engine what the linked page is about. So long as the linked page is then optimised for that phrase, rankings will improve.

More links generated on this basis can improve the rankings and also generate direct traffic from these sites. The code should look as follows:

<a href="http://yourdomain.co.uk" title="wedding photographers manchester">Wedding Photographers Manchester</a>.

yourdomain.co.uk should be changed to your own website address and the title and anchor text changed to the phrase you are targeting. You can also add a description outside the <a> tags so visitors have more information about your website.

When approaching sites to add reciprocal links it is always a good idea to add the link to your own site first and send a link to the page in an e-mail request. Include in the e-mail, the code you would like to use in your reciprocal link. Remember to make a note of the sites you contact and those you have linked to. If you get no response you may wsih to remove the links after a period of time.

You may receive requests to link to your website from others. Try to ensure they add your link first and you can see where the link is on the site and if there are direct links to them from the home and other main pages. If there is no link from other pages, these links will be useless as a search engine cannot find it. This is also the case for links within flash files or framesets.

3 - way links - You may be approached to add a 3 way link. Reciprocal links are not always the best method to improve your pagerank as one way links are looked on more favourably by search engines. However, if you are approached to add a link to a website, in return for a link on a different website the site linking to you may be of poor quality or a link farm.

When asked to link to a site, this is the site that is being actively marketed so you need to ask yourself what benefit you will receive from the site linking back to you?

Directory links - Directory links can be a good source of traffic so long as they are relevant to the service you provide. Niche directories are generally the best type to generate direct traffic. www.ourweddingmemories.co.uk is a specific wedding photographers directory and this and similar sites should be considered. Most offer free listings in return for a link on your site as well as paid options. Our Wedding Memories also has a photographers blog system which is an ideal way of generating direct links to your own website. To add blog posts you need to be a registered photographer, so please complete the following form to begin.

Other more general directories can be used to acquire links. Although they may not generate much in the way of direct traffic, building up these links over time can improve pagerank and rankings on major search engines.

Article writing - Writing and submitting online articles is also a great way of generating links to your website. Good quality content can be used as well as the correct anchor text, so you can optimise all links within the article. We can provide an article writing and submission service for you or you can search for these services on the major search engines. Submitting articles can generate hundreds of back-links to your website over time.

Online Press Release - An online press release is similar to the article submission services but you need to submit to major press release outlets. These releases can be picked up by news editor and rss feeds on thousands of websites increasing the number of back links to your website. A press release will generally be picked up by Google and Yahoo news services within 24 hours. We can submit a Press Release for you for £500.00 so please contact us if you would like to use this service.

Social media links - Social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkdIn are becoming more important as far as search engines are concerned. A link on a personal profile is assumed to be important as it is deemed a recommendation for that website. The more recommendations for a particular site the more important that site will become in the eyes of the search engines. You can acquire Social media links in a number of ways. Create accounts with each service and add a public profile which includes a link to your website. Get contacts or friends on each service and post the link to their profiles, asking them to share the link with others.

With facebook, at present no profiles are public. However, you can create a profile and then create a facebook page which is public. As well as a link on your profile the page should contain the link to your website. Add some quality relevant content to the page and post your website link to the wall. Once the page is how you like it, share the page with your friends and ask them to 'Like' the page. This increases the viral aspect of the media. Search facebook for pages relevant to your own and 'Like' some of these pages. Once you like a page, then you can post a comment to the wall of that page and include a link back to your website in the post. The link should always include the http:// part. These links are public and will eventually be picked up by Google and other search engines.

When posting links to other pages you MUST ensure you do not post too many at once or it could be deemed as spamming and you may be banned from the service.

We suggest finding and liking around 5 pages per week and posting links to these. Diarise to do the same each week but change the copy in the post.

These are just a few link building methods but there are many more, too many to mention here. Please contact us if you would like to use our SEO or link building services.

When you have a lot of links pointing to your website, these will be picked up naturally and added to organically, increasing further the number of links over time. However, some links may also be lost so it is important to continue to acquire links depending on the competitiveness of the service you provide.

We can quote on all aspects of search engine optimisation plus link building options such as Directory and Article submission, press release submission etc. Please contact us for further details.