Starting a Photography Business: Part 11 – What are Keywords?

Google made the news today about how it lists searches and it helped me decide to write this article now. Worth bearing in mind is that although Google has more users than other search engines we shouldn’t neglect the other search engines and their criteria, 20% of all users are working with Google’s competition.

One of the best ways to get the search engines to work for us is to have a site that is keyword ready. Keywords are easiest described as a word that a customer will type into a search engine to find a product. And luckily Google offers a free Keyword Tool which allows you to type in a list of your keywords individually so you can see how many times in the last month people have used the word in a search.  You might be surprised by what it throws up and which words you consider to be a keyword to your product that just doesn’t feature on the radar of a consumer.

Taking one of my photos for an example, I have a photo of Italy in my collection; it’s of the Faraglioni rocks off the island of Capri on the Amalfi Coast, which are two limestone rocks that rise up out of the sea. Because I know the name of the rocks it was going to be one of the keywords for not only the photo name but the write up in the homepage and the page section however the google tool showed me that no one has searched for them by name then or now as I’ve just had another look as I’m writing this piece. So I no longer have it featured as a keyword, however Capri, Sorrento and Amalfi Coast have millions of searches so I now know what to concentrate on.

It’s a really good idea to sit down and make a list of your keywords and then use the keyword tool. Maybe like me you’ll discover the words you consider vital aren’t at all to potential customers. The tool also shows you closely related searches and this for me is where the nuggets of gold are, it’s amazing what people will search along the way, and remember we are essentially lazy when we use a search engine, we know it’s a fantastic tool and will find us related options too, so as businesses we need to watch out for that and check regularly to make sure our site keywords are still relevant.

Now going back to last weeks article, am I going to list my photos by place names? No I’m not, however you can still list keywords in the admin area of your site unseen by your customers but read by search engines, so we can be quite crafty here.

Another area that is important to the search engines is the meta description. This is the page description that is listed on the search pages. Here you can add a short sales message to catch the eye of someone who does a random search again using keywords.

It’s really easy to get carried away crow barring keywords into the text we write on our sites and in the meta descriptions, yet remember they have to read well and make sense to the reader we can’t just merrily drop them in wherever the fancy takes us and ideally a keyword needs to be mentioned in the script on your page two or three times and each page if possible to have around 250-350 words on it. Now for someone like me who likes to write you’d think I’d find this easy but Eee! Guess which photographer and writer is struggling with that one?

Notes

• Make a list of your keywords and use the Google tool that is above; and be prepared to discover that your list isn’t always what people are searching, this is a great research tool.

• I come back to recommending without receiving any royalty payment, the book Get into bed with Google by Jon Smith it has so many tips in it that I couldn’t possibly begin to write here, some for pre website and production and others for post.  I have found it so helpful.

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Ruth Bayley

Living in the beautiful rural county of Yorkshire it was perhaps natural for Ruth to have an affinity with the countryside and its wildlife. Creativity is Ruth’s driving force finding an outlet in television & radio she worked for many years as producer for BBC & ITV.

However a love of photography and for being surrounded by nature called her to go back to her photography training and bring pleasure and joy to people through her connection with our planet.

Staying in the moment when taking her images allows her to experience the natural magnificence unfolding before her eyes. It is this moment of mediation, of gratitude, that she evocatively conveys through her images.

www.healingwithphotography.co.uk