When you are trying to think of the next thing you can do to push your photography business to the next level, working on your website's SEO (Search Engine Optimization) might not be the first thing that comes to mind. These days social media and web marketing might be at the forefront of your mind, but good SEO practices can be used to market your business all day long every day and every night, not just when you tweet or write a Facebook post.
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In reality both social media and SEO should be tackled simultaneously from the word GO and author Zach Prez has recently written a couple of e-books on this subject aimed specifically at photographers. I'll review the second book at a later date but for now lets take a look at Photographer's SEO Book, a guide on how to tweak your website to rank better in search engine results on pages like Google and Bing.
The e-book is downloadable from Zach's site for $39 and I was initially quite surprised to see that is was only 33 pages long. I'm a fan of physical media and this is actually the first e-book that I've read but the immediate benefit can be seen as the author links to other online content and tutorial videos that he has done on Youtube. I've had the Dummies Guide to SEO on my office bookshelf now for over a year and up to this point I've managed to get through a couple of chapters of it. When I finished Photographers SEO Book for the first time, I realized that what you get with this e-book is exactly what you need to know and nothing more. You are paying for Zach Prez's extensive knowledge on the subject and for him to take the time to whittle it down to the facts and must-knows for photographers. How much do you charge for your time as a photographers ? It could be many hundreds of dollars an hours so I love that I don't have to wade through pages and pages of knowledge that is not relevant to me and my business. Zach has taken that effort out of learning what is, lets be honest here, quite a dull subject and I can better use my time to actually implement his suggestions. In short, don't be worried by the length of the book, this is highly concentrated, photography specific GOLD that will benefit any photographer. At my current rate of reading the Dummies SEO guide I might have had it finished by 2012 but would still have to sift out the relevant bits to apply to my business. The Photographer SEO Book can be read in a hour or two and you will come away with a confidence that you can really make a difference to the success of your business with the information you just received. I was truly impressed. In the past I've read books on other subjects that just leave you wandering whether it's really worth the effort of what they are suggesting. When I finished this book though I was literally running back to my computer to make changes to my website. Or at least I would have been if I wasn't already reading the book ON my computer. Thanks Zach you saved me another minute right there! Now that is efficiency!
Throughout the book Zach uses a fictitious SanDiego Wedding Photography business for his examples but everything is easily modified to suit any type or style of photography business. Some of the misnomers about SEO are explained and importantly, it is tells you exactly which things the Google search engine ranks highest. Did you know for example that you probably should not have any keywords in your metadata ? I certainly didn't and whilst I was aware of some things mentioned in the book, I was never sure of the exact importance of them compared to other SEO tactics. Overall it's just a great little book and Zach's informal writing style will have you breezing through it in no time. Right from the beginning he suggests reading it once and then again before making any changes to your site and I would agree with that. Read it the first time and then a second time at your desk ready to implement changes to your site as you go along.
If you get to the end of it and still feel like you want to take things even further you can actually hire Zach for a coaching session through his page . Zach's blog at http://photographywebmarketing.com/ also offer plenty more marketing and SEO tips.
There is a lot of information out there on the internet for almost any subject. SEO is no different, but save yourself the time and trouble of having to dig through thousands of pages trying to figure out who really knows what they are talking about. Zach Prez knows SEO and Photographers SEO Book is all you need to get your website on the right track.
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