Getting Results with your Wedding Business on Search Engines

Lately I've had quite a few questions regarding how is it that I am able to achieve high rankings with my wedding photography website not only for just one location but multiple locations and cities. Currently I rank top 10 in Google for my top 3 cities in my area; Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota, etc and it's not as hard as you may think. Let's start off with some basics.

1. Get your site structure correct.

What I mean by this is, make sure you choose accordingly how you are going to layout your website if your just starting one. If you have one already, re-evaluate your website. Think about the navigation, content, and back-end (meaning is it going to be a Flash based website or an HTML based website). Recently I've seen tons of Bludomain websites pop up which is a great way to get a good looking website, but its Flash based so its going to be 10 times harder to market it for the search engines. (So just be aware). I am personally against a fully flash website. So I would stay away and create an HTML based site. * This also means having friendly urls if you have a blog instead of using domain.com/blog/post.php?id=150  instead use domain.com/blog/150

2. Think about your audience

Many people start writing website code and content without even thinking about their audience. Think about your audience before you get going even if its for a few minutes. I strongly ecourage you to do so. For example, do you want to target engaged couples, younger demographic or older, more modern or more hip, or maybe you don't care and just want to focus on geo-location. So how do you think people will search for geo-location based photographers? Will it be "Alabama Photographers" or "Birmingham Alabama Wedding Photographers" or "Birmingham, AL Photographers" ? What do you think? As you write your content use the phrases and terms you think your future customer may use and use a variety of terms.

3. Get Your Meta Data Correct

Meta data is what the robots or spiders see. Which includes a Title, Description, Keywords and along with some other options. However the most important is the title and description. (The keyword meta data tag these days isn't being used as much by the search engines due to spamming). Lets break apart the title tag. Here is what I see:

Bad example: Swift Kick Photography

Good example: Affordable Chicago Wedding Photography by Swift Kick

There are multiple techniques or methods to get a good title tag. You can even break it apart by using 3 cities example such as  Example: Tampa & St. Petersburg Wedding Photography by YOUR COMPANY. This all depends on what keywords you wish to target. So be descriptive. The same principal applies to meta-description tag.

One final note. The title tag should be about 1 sentence where as the description tag should be anywhere between 2 or 3 sentences (re-emphasizing your title tag).

4. Use tools but don't get overwhelmed technically.

There are many people who are tech-savvy and then there are people who THINK they are tech-savvy. You don't have to admit to me which one you are, but be honest to yourself. Often times the people who are some-what good with the tech stuff, usually understand and know how to use analyzing and analytical tools, however their judgment becomes clouded by over-analyzing the numbers.

For example, for a few months a new tool came out and it exploded on the Flickr photographers websites community for everyone to rank their website and see how its doing. The tool im talking about is websitegrader.com. Now it's a good tool, but it won't truly define how GOOD your website is. After all, a human is not ranking your website, a machine is and even though you play the game against getting ranked by machines or spiders, only a human can tell if your current techniques are appropriate for your business approach. To keep things simple: Tools are designed to be used as a guide, so even if a certain tool says one think have an open mind.

5. Keep your site updated and in check

This last part is the critical component to making it all work. If you did everything else right, setup your structure correctly, have good meta data, know your audience, back-checking and evaluating your progress, the only thing left is to update your site often enough. How often is often? Well this all depends on your competition, and your audience along with your business model. Some people like to do it daily (though not necessary unless your a HUGE company. I would say weekly or monthly is usually a good start. Usually a blog will help you do this often enough as the search engines do love new content. The more often you update, the sooner they come back and crawl your website.

There are plenty of other tips and techniques, but these are just the flaws that I see way to often in the wedding industry for wedding professionals. If you have an interest t read further read about email marketing, contextual linking or link exchanging, social media marketing, viral marketing, and other marketing techniques.