S.E.O and Your Photography Business / by Christian Webb

seo Sometimes,  people get excited by the idea of putting up a web site.  They get a name, start to get things together and eventually (hopefully), get their site up and think that's it.   Done right?  "I'm now official and in business."   Well,  there's more to it than that.  I want to take the time to talk about some of the business side of things and what I've been learning.  Specifically, when it comes to my website, this blog, social media and SEO (Search Engine Optimization).  When I first decided to get a website,  I took the time to do some research, figure out what type of site I wanted/needed.  After getting advice from an already established photographer friend,  I went with Livebooks.  Using Livebooks I was able to build, design and tweak my page before publishing it and having it "go live." Once the site was up and live,  I managed it accordingly,  adding new content when I had it and tweaking as I went along.  Eventually,  I realized I should probably have a separate Facebook page specifically for my photography business.  So, I went through the steps and got the FB page.  At some point, I knew I wanted a blog.  I had previous blog experience so this wasn't too much of a new venture however,  I was using WordPress for the first time and doing most of the work myself.  Oh, and did I mention Twitter?  Well, I figured I should probably have a separate Twitter account as well.  Now I had 4 sites to deal with. (there's always  flickr, Tumblr and Pinterest to add as well! But not now! )   My website pretty much was my main concern as I pay $39 month for it.  (Pretty reasonable and great hosting by the way).   I figured, well,  as long as the site is up and people can come to it, that's all that counts.  In the meantime,  I completely neglected the FB, Twitter and the blog.  Until recently that is.   I wanted to stay on top of things and get things going.  But first,  I started looking at things from a more analytical perspective, wondering;  How much traffic am I getting if any? How do I get subscribers? How do I get followers? Is anyone seeing any of this?  The hard reality was,  NO!  Immediately I was determined to figure out how to change that.  Besides actually adding new content and posting more regularly,  I knew it was really about SEO but didn't know the details of how to handle it.  I kind of figured it was all handled somehow by Livebooks or the my Worpress hosting company.  Not the case.  I  Googled everything I could about SEO and set my mind to learning what I needed to learn in order to get my sites fine tuned and working to my advantage.  The amount of information is overwhelming and all the tweaking that has to be done to maximize your site(s) can drive you crazy!  Google Analytics,  AdSense, meta tags, title tags, adding the right tags to the photos you upload, backlinking and Google WebMaster Tools.  CRAZY!!   Fortunately,  I had some help from a great customer support resource at Livebooks.  He walked me through some critical steps I needed to perform in order to get my main site optimized.  In turn, I used that info to go ahead and optimize my blog site.  A major help to me is the All In One SEO pack plugin which really helps to manage many of the SEO tweaks needed.    It's all coming together and hopefully soon, I'll notice the changes.  So all that out of the way,  I still had to make  sure that all sites were connected and optimized for mobile devices (iphone/Android phones and tablets).  Yet ANOTHER task to be taken on!  Well,  again, I did some research, got some help and got it all figured out.  Well,  most of it.  In closing,  just wanted to share all of this because I know a lot of others looking to put up sites either personal or business who may need to look into getting the most of their efforts by paying attention to SEO.    Even more so if it's all about business.    Getting your domain name, hosting and getting a site up and actually "live" is JUST the tip of the iceberg!  Getting it verified, noticed and keeping traffic flowing is the rest.  Hopefully I've helped out anyone who may have been neglecting SEO as well.   And, if anyone has even further tips and tricks they'd like to share with me,  feel free to comment below.