Google Rank?

[ChristopherCoy]

Tonight I was discussing internet marketing and web presence with Brittany and that got me to thinking. So I 'graded' my website, and have gone on to reading more about increasing web traffic. THAT led me to Google where I typed in "google rank for so and so's photography" (not mentioning names), and this particular website was ranked #1 for Business > Arts and Entertainment > Photography > Photographers > Portrait > North America > United States > Texas in the Google Directory.

Now no offense to the owner if he is a member here on TPF, BUT the home page is a bit bland. And that kind of puzzled me a bit, because here I am trying to get this esthetically pleaseing 'flashy' flash site up and running, and this guy has a white page with black text and he's ranked #1.

So, is this "Google Rank" something that is accurate and can be relied on? Or is it one of those things where you kind of have to read between the lines, and find out exactly WHAT ELSE he's doing to have that kind of rank? Or is it that he is just #1 in that very DEFINED categroy?

[sparkyjr]

i don't know a whole lot about the subject, but Flash sites don't rank as high as html sites. it's all about written content when you're referring to search engines. I'll be interested to watch this thread and see what others have to say.

[ChristopherCoy]

Originally Posted by sparkyjr

i don't know a whole lot about the subject, but Flash sites don't rank as high as html sites. it's all about written content when you're referring to search engines. I'll be interested to watch this thread and see what others have to say.

Thats something else that I learned tonight. Flash sites are 'incapsulated' so the search engines can only 'read' whats on your 'splash' page. For instance, my blog is housed within my flash site, so it isn't even visible to the public unless I (or someone else) referres them to the direct link.

Which now has me thinking about redoing the entire damn thing... again! But if the saying third time's a charm is true, then its my time.

[kamekaze]

Originally Posted by ChristopherCoy

Thats something else that I learned tonight. Flash sites are 'incapsulated' so the search engines can only 'read' whats on your 'splash' page. For instance, my blog is housed within my flash site, so it isn't even visible to the public unless I (or someone else) referres them to the direct link.

Which now has me thinking about redoing the entire damn thing... again! But if the saying third time's a charm is true, then its my time.

Here is something quoted off anOTher board I post on, should help you get a good start. Just ignore the now sub in your business everywhere it says Raleigh Wedding Photography | JColman Photography and you should be golden

What I would do:

1. Create a text rich splash page (html, or php, or whatever)

2. Write a 500-1000 word introduction explaining your history in Raleigh, blah blah blah. Use the terms "Raleigh, photography, photographer, photo, north carolina, wedding, bride, etc." Make it readable and DON'T just pack in a bunch of nonsense.
* Use the term "Raleigh Wedding Photography | JColman Photography" (no quotes) as your TITLE
*Create a compelling meta description using the term "raleigh wedding photography"

then submit your URL to google, bing, and yahoo if not done already.
Add your URL to Google
Bing URL Submission
don't remember yahoos, google it

Also, for posterity, use a service like ping.fm to ping that front page (it'll get indexed faster).

3. Write 5 or so 350-400 word articles about wedding type photography (things to look for when hiring a photographer, blah blah bla) and in those articles link back to your site using "Raleigh Wedding Photography" as anchor text. (i.e. If you're looking for a photorgrapher experienced in Raleigh wedding photography, I'm available to do whatever you want...)
*When you submit these articles, use the tools I linked to above to get some ideas for keywords to use in your article titles. Don't use Raleigh Wedding Photographer because Ezine will outrank you no problem... Then again, if you don't want to do all of teh above and have your site in #1, a GREAT way to leverage that traffic is to write an article titled:
5 Things To Ask When Looking For a Raleigh Wedding Photographer.

***If you did that, the article would almost certainly pop into position 1 (even with mywedding having the backlinks) and everyone that clicked to read it would have the option to go to your website in the author bio box. It's a very powerful technique to get very targeted traffic.
This is a decent example of what I'm talking about( Informal Wedding Photography New Orleans Style For Your Big Day ) That photographer is obviously targeting the phrase "creative wedding photography"... every time someone reads that article, at the bottom, he has a call to action to get them to come look at her site. I'll bet it generates decent traffic for him.

4. Submit those articles to a directory like EzineArticles Submission - Submit Your Best Quality Original Articles For Massive Exposure, Ezine Publishers Get 25 Free Article Reprints or Article Search Engine Directory: GoArticles.com

5. Post some comments on strobist.com (actually participate in the conversation) and put your link in the url box

6. Put your web address in a signature file in any of the forums you go to..
* Search out some local forums for this. You can do regular photography forums for the backlinks, but you'll probably get more traffic (and definitely more clients) from local forums.

7. Post on those forums

8. Sign up for a google account (if you don't have one already) and go to the "Local Business Services" link and submit your business to google. What that does is puts you up on the very top with a little map every time someone IN Raleigh searches for that term, and a lot of the times when people outside of Raleigh search specifically for "Raleigh Wedding Photography". You'll need a phone number to verify the listing (use your business phone).


That is very simplistic, but with the competition on page 1... that should get you to the 1st page of google fairly quickly.


You may also want to hunt out some directories and post yourself there as well. Sites like Wedding Photographers - WedFog: Wedding Photography Demystified and such.

[Michael_ky]

Originally Posted by kamekaze

Here is something quoted off anOTher board I post on, should help you get a good start. Just ignore the now sub in your business everywhere it says Raleigh Wedding Photography | JColman Photography and you should be golden

Thanks John for the insight. Regards - Michael

[alamoshutterbug]

Chris, I don't understand what you were searching for, but if you do a search for "texas portrait photographer" he is nowhere near the front page. But anyhow, his site is HTML, and it's old (this is a good thing for google; trust and whatnot). Google gives no points for looks, just content.

Posting to blogs will not do all that much since most blogs nofollow the comments section (I know of one that doesn't). It will drive traffic, and the links will get followed and the site indexed, but no link juice will flow. I know of one other non-blog website related to weddings that will let you get "followed" and keyword based links published, if they are good enough to get voted on. I'm not freely giving these site's addresses out, but if you listen to my next piece of advice you shouldn't have any trouble in finding out yourself.

Learn the google search operators. They are invaluable for getting information about yours and anyone else's website. "link: anysite.com" will be a big help.

Get the firefox SEO toolbar. It has a lot of cool tools, but the most important IMO is the "nofollow link" detector. Makes any nofollow link bright red and hard to miss. When I find a new site that may help me get links out, the first thing I do is turn on that tool to see if it's worth my time. It usually isn't.

Once you get to a big city, getting on the first page is rather difficult via organic ranking. My old site is at page 2 and my new blog at 3 for "austin wedding photographer". It's been about 6 months since I moved here, and it's been a slow inexorable climb to where I am since I moved (started out at 10 and 26 respectively). At some point during that time Lawrence Chan did a seminar here and everybody started to do the same things across the board, which helps nobody if you think about it. Sad too, because many of those that went to the seminar now forsake the readability of their content to a degree to get ahead and it doesn't rank them any higher. Hint: the title of every blog post should most definitely not be "Sanger pet photographer"; one or two posts is fine, but not every stinking one (yes, there are some out there that have just about every post title on their blog mangled into some presumably SEO friendly claptrap) If all of your H1 tags say the same thing, Google will eventually call shenanigans (that was my "moderation is key" lesson)

One photog I have worked for that is on page one got there in part by never getting rid of an old site or domain. Looking at the rest of page one for that term (austin wedding photographer), one site is a BIG html website with the most desirable keyword based site address EVAR. There are quite a few splashed flash pages with blogs and even one old school HTML site that needs an update for the viewers but has been around so long it still kicks butt on the SERPs. If you move on to page 2,3,4 you will find a lot of flash and some standalone blogs (note that many of these use Wordpress with the very well wrought Prophoto WP theme; it's rare I will find a tofurious theme (it happens, but it's rare (did find one Thesis theme and, no surprise here: no blogger sites)))

Local search is about the easiest way to page one since it rotates it's stock for the "7 spot" (the top 7 you see on page one in the map) You have to work up a nicely developed listing though; as always Google wants and rewards content. But it does rotate you out of the 7 spot after a while, so it's not foolproof.

SEO is so multifaceted that you shouldn't get too deep into it. It will help, but it won't be the "be all and end all" of marketing. It can be a time waster. The advice given above about generating content is the best advice to give. Generate good indexable content following a few rules without forsaking your readership and you'll be well on your way.

Here is a good reference about SEO. The experts are never in complete agreement if you'll notice. Also note just how many different things can be done.