High Performance Photoblogging – August, 2009Posted by drfl on August 11th, 2009

In a continued effort to provide more information to photographers, once or twice a month I am going to offer a post entitled “High-Performance PhotoBlogging”. These posts will deal with blogging effectively, marketing photography, and news from the world of photography. 

In late May of this year I had the opportunity to listen to Guy Kawasaki speak at a conference in Las Vegas. A self-avowed “Technical Evangelist” and a very engaging speaker, he currently has the 88th most popular blog on the Internet today where he offers tidbits and advice for those looking to utilize the latest tools for marketing. Besides being an Apple fellow and numerous other accolades he is the founder of Alltop.com (mentioned in my SEO for Photographers series) and as such he is very in tune with the world of blogging and microblogging – better known as Twitter. I follow his blog “How to Change the World” constantly as I find the information entertaining and useful from a marketing and business perspective.

Last November he posted the article “Looking for Mr. Goodtweet: How to Pick Up Followers on Twitter”. While it focuses on the world of Twitter, many of the tips are useful from a blog perspective. Here are a few of the items I took away from the post:

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When a Photograph is Not Worth 1,000 Words – SEO Tips for Photographers – Part IIIPosted by drfl on August 7th, 2009

Concluding this three part series, in today’s post have five more tips to help photobloggers and photographers market their websites and heighten the visibility on search engines.

One point that is stressed often, and I mean often when it comes to Search Engine Optimization is get links pointing to the website.  Once again, get links pointing to the website.  Of course, for photographers looking to market their sites, this seems like a chicken and egg dilemma.  If no one knows the site exists, how do links get created?  The answer lies in actively seeking out related sites that are free that allow profiles with website addresses, contacting other photographers that link, and using other reputable business resources to list the website. 

First, related photography links – Betterphoto.com, TrekEarth.com, and Photo.net all allow free accounts in which you can post a profile.  Within this profile they allow links back a website.  This will add three incoming links immediately. 

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When a Photograph is Not Worth 1,000 Words – SEO Tips for Photographers – Part IIPosted by drfl on August 6th, 2009

Continuing on from yesterday’s post, When a Photograph is Not Worth 1,000 Words – SEO Tips for Photographers – Part I, in today’s post have three more tips to help photobloggers and photographers market their websites and heighten the visibility on search engines.

Now that I had incorporated the phrases into my pages I had to craft my sentences in ways that it made sense to the readers, but still relevant to the search engines.  This took a few iterations with some trial and error to craft sentences that seemed to flow well, but contained the words and phrases I wanted.   If I placed these terms too many times in my pages, the search engine will think that it is a blatant attempt at artificially increasing the placement and actually place the page lower and furthermore, the reader would leave uninterested. 

Tip 4: Use the chosen words in a logical manner that is easy for both humans and robots to read.  Keep the pages clean with little or no advertising and have a structure that is easy for the searcher and search engines to follow.

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The Photographer’s EphemerisPosted by drfl on July 16th, 2009

Today I am introducing a tool that should be on every nature photographer’s computer – “The Photographer’s Ephemeris”.  Beyond providing dawn and dusk times, this little tool utilizes Google maps and shows exactly how the sun and moon will line up on any given day and time.  While this information is readily available having the visible information and being able to easily plan ahead makes this a worthwhile download.  The best part – it’s free!  The tool is currently in beta and so it is in the testing phase, but unlike some of Microsoft’s and Adobe’s products, I have found it to be fairly reliable (on a PC).  You will need Adobe AIR to run it so be sure to download that first – the instructions are on the website.

To download this fine tool visit http://stephentrainor.com/tools.