Hey Ninjas! It’s time to discuss another marketing strategy here in our blog and for today we will talk about:

5 Best OFF-PAGE SEO Techniques

for Photographers

LET’S START OF WITH THE BASIC. WHAT IS OFF-PAGE SEO?

Off-page SEO is all forms of activity (may it be through links, social media, influencers, and etc.) that happens outside your website that helps boost your visibility in search engines. The main goal of this marketing strategy is to drive traffic on to your website which in turn creates brand awareness. The more visible you are, the more audience you attract. Sounds kinda intimidating? Don’t worry, I got you. *wink*

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SEO is commonly divided into 2 categories:

On-page and Off-page SEO

On-page SEO is more about your photography website and its build/structure that makes it search engine friendly. Having great content that people will love is not enough if they are having a hard time navigating your website. Not only that, if your website loads slow and has many dead links, or if you have duplicate contents on your site, this will result in lower rankings in search engines. On-page SEO focuses mainly on the quality of your content as well as the technicalities. If you have this category down perfectly, your off-page SEO strategy will most likely be effective as well. Click here if you’re interested to know more about On-page SEO for photographers.

And here are some mini tips to enhance your On-page SEO:

  • Keyword Titles and meta description – the title tag and meta description are usually shown whenever you search the page in Google. It’s probably the most important factor when it comes to on page SEO. If you’ve checked my blog about On-page SEO (Step 2), I mentioned I used Google Keyword Planner to research about the most searched keywords to optimize my page. So use the right keywords, position it right and get searched!

  • H1 Title tag (or Headers) – this usually appears within the body text of the web page. It can be the title of the post, or any texts you want to highlight. Though this is not the strongest optimization you can do, it is still important because it will tell search engines and visitors what the page content is all about.
  • Alt tag images – it’s basically adding descriptions to your images, so it can easily be found in search engine results pages (SERPs). Clients are more likely to look at images when searching.
  • Fast loading images – Nobody likes a slow website. You don’t want potential clients to leave your website just because your images are not loading fast, do you? It’s 2019, visitors expect websites and images to load fast. When I say fast, I mean 3 seconds or less. A few more seconds and your visitor’s mind will wander and will probably leave your website. Not good! To get this right, make sure to optimize your images to less than 200kb and a page size of 5mb. You can check the page load time here: Pingdom Tools
  • Internal “keyword rich” links 
  • Low bounce rate – “Bounce rate is an Internet marketing term used in web traffic analysis. It represents the percentage of visitors who enter the site and then leave rather than continuing to view other pages within the same site.” This is kind of related to “Fast loading images” where visitors/clients will not wait for more than 10 seconds for your site to load. Thus, they will leave or bounce away. A bounce rate of 26 to 40 percent is considered excellent. 40 to 70 percent is average and; 70 percent above is alarming. So make sure you have a neat and friendly website, don’t upload high quality images (refer to Fast loading images), check your website’s load time, check broken links, etc. Not sure what your bounce rate is? Just go into your Google Analytics account > Acquisition > Overview.

Off-page SEO, which we will discuss more on this blog, focuses on the external factors that will bring traffic to your website. Here are the 5 simple yet effective strategies to get you started:

1. Link Building

Probably one of the most staple strategy used all over the internet, it comes 2nd to quality content. Once you’ve set up your on-page SEO in your website, let your quality content speak for itself and in order for other people to appreciate this, make sure it’s discoverable. I suggest building a natural/organic link, that means always strive to make great quality content worth sharing so that links will come gradually as Google values it more along with the experience that your visitors have on your site.

A great way to do this is through Backlinks. So what are backlinks? – it’s a link to your website that you get from another website. For example, after a wedding, share your photos with all the suppliers (makeup artists, celebrants, florist, event organizers, videographers, etc.) and mention that if they would like to use the photos on their website, to please credit you (the photographer) and add a link to your website. Build a good relationship! 🙂

OR you can write a blog post about a wedding you shot, add a link to all the suppliers and ask them to check it out and link back to you;

OR submit your wedding shoots to super popular wedding blogs like Hello May, Polka Dot Bride, The Knot, Easy Weddings, and many more, and try and get published;

OR pay for advertising on wedding directories and get a link that way.

2. Social Media Marketing

This technique is one of the best ways to build your reputation and create brand awareness. Although this is not an essential factor to contribute to your rankings, it is still best to utilize all social media platforms to create buzz on your brand. Plus, some platforms allow you to link back to your website which contributes to the first strategy – link building. Engage with your audience through your social media and maximize the platform to establish your presence. You can also reach out to “Social Media Influencers” who already has an established following. They can help you expose/introduce your brand to a whole new set of audience. This means more exposure and also more traffic for your website! Though we don’t really have influencers in our space, but again, if you can get a wedding blog to post your images on their social media it could be a really good way to get a lot of brides eyes on your work. I suggest you try and post atleast once a day! Easy!

Here are some top social networking sites:

fb Facebook         instagram Instagram      twitterTwitter        Pinterest_logo Pinterest          tumblr Tumblr

3. Local SEO

Gone are the days when we used to pull out our Yellow Pages to look for certain businesses in our area. People now rely on the internet to search for everything! This is where Local SEO comes in.

Local SEO deserves a blog post on its own but the main thing about this strategy is optimizing your website so that when people search for local photographers in your area, your business will come up in search engines. One way to do is verifying your business with Google My Business. Local citations also play a big role in local SEO. Make sure your business name, address, phone number, and website URL (NAPW) is listed on citation sites and business directories. This will contribute to your search rankings.

4. Forum Community

Join groups and participate in forums related to photography by replying to threads, answering questions and giving suggestions to topics you are knowledgeable of. That also goes without saying you have to keep yourself updated and relevant. The more you know about your craft, the more you can engage with other people and build relationships and trust. You can then establish your expertise and audience will gravitate more towards your contents.  Building a relationship is really what will get you the links and word of mouth you need.

Another way is by Guest Blogging. It’s an awesome strategy and has been one of the most effective ways to build link, and get the right type of exposure. There are heaps of Photography blogs that accept guest post like Lightstalking, Steve’s Digicam, PhotoPoly, etc. Set a goal, know your target audience and create high-quality content. This helps you increase your branding and promote your services.

5. Get Published

For me this is a really effective strategy and have worked based on my experience multiple times in the past. As mentioned. try and submit your weddings to popular wedding blogs (like Hello May, Polka Dot Bride, The Knot, Easy Weddings) and try and get published. This is a powerful backlink because it is coming from a big authoritative website and if your work get published, not only do you get the backlink, but you also get thousands and thousands of brides looking at your work. Exciting!

CONCLUSION

Off-page SEO has been around for years and has been proven effective. It will not be easy at first, but the pay off is worth it. You can find heaps of strategies and techniques online, so choose the best strategy that works for you and be updated. Ultimately your content should still be your #1 priority. Make an awesome content, put together a user-friendly website, learn how to promote your brand properly and the rest will follow. Finding the balance between on-page and off-page SEO is what will help you rank high in search engines. Feel free to click on that green chat icon at the bottom right for feedback and suggestions!