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Archive 2012 · My report on your SEO

  
 
TomHarmon
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · My report on your SEO


michael_antoi wrote:
Hey Tom, I've recently added that blurb of text onto my front page.

www.knmphoto.com.au

Is this what you are saying about front page text? It's ugly as all hell but if it will help my SEO then I guess I will have to put up with it.

Yeah that looks pretty good. You could probably make it a little smaller so it's not so in your face.



Mar 14, 2012 at 09:07 AM
MBMK
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · My report on your SEO


Tom, you are the man! Thank you for your time. It's always great to have people like you on this forum, that take their time, to help others here, for the better. Appreciate it a lot!


Mar 14, 2012 at 09:23 AM
Ziffl3
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · My report on your SEO


Thanks Tom.


Mar 14, 2012 at 09:37 AM
JR Magat
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · My report on your SEO


Thanks Tom for your assessment and write up! I used to have "Detroit Wedding & Portrait Photographer" in my title and didn't realize that should only be "Detroit Wedding Photographer" for google/keywords to recognize it

Backlinks is also something I wasn't very familiar with, so thats also good information that you provided



Mar 14, 2012 at 02:55 PM
eNoBlog
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · My report on your SEO


patrickphoto wrote:
I would reconsider the 300 words to max instead of minimum. Not sure where that number came from, but you can hurt your PageRank with that many or more.


300 words is not a huge amount of text, and neither would be 500. Most blog posts are somewhere in that range. I ended up with just a few over 300, btw.



Mar 14, 2012 at 05:18 PM
eNoBlog
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · My report on your SEO


Tom, on a related note, what's your take on Google+ helping out your SEO. I spent sometime updating my G+ profile with links to my site and keywords that line up with how I want my site found. Not sure if it's doing much at the moment.


Mar 14, 2012 at 05:20 PM
TomHarmon
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · My report on your SEO


eNoBlog wrote:
Tom, on a related note, what's your take on Google+ helping out your SEO. I spent sometime updating my G+ profile with links to my site and keywords that line up with how I want my site found. Not sure if it's doing much at the moment.

I've been slacking big time on Google+. But it's suppose to help out with google's me 'Social Search' that everybody hates. But honestly, I haven't been on Google+ in months and I don't know anyone that has.



Mar 14, 2012 at 06:21 PM
calebcook
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · My report on your SEO


Hi Tom - thanks for all of your work on this.

Do you know if grammar makes a difference for the rankings? For example if you wanted to rank for kids photography would you be better using the keyword "kid's" or "kids"? Or would it depend on what the person typed into google anyway?



Mar 14, 2012 at 09:05 PM
TomHarmon
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · My report on your SEO


calebcook wrote:
Hi Tom - thanks for all of your work on this.

Do you know if grammar makes a difference for the rankings? For example if you wanted to rank for kids photography would you be better using the keyword "kid's" or "kids"? Or would it depend on what the person typed into google anyway?

Google usually bypasses punctuation, so I'd just leave it out.



Mar 14, 2012 at 09:24 PM
patrickphoto
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · My report on your SEO


eNoBlog wrote:
300 words is not a huge amount of text, and neither would be 500. Most blog posts are somewhere in that range. I ended up with just a few over 300, btw.


I wasn't, nor do I think Tom was, talking about blog post length, but instead the SEO block text, what is often called "site description" by Google.



Mar 16, 2012 at 08:41 AM
joelconner
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · My report on your SEO


Update for us...we started working on some of the things Tom talked about, and in a few days, we went from the top of page 6 to the bottom of page 3. Not all the way yet, but getting better placement!


Mar 16, 2012 at 12:30 PM
eNoBlog
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p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · My report on your SEO


patrickphoto wrote:
I wasn't, nor do I think Tom was, talking about blog post length, but instead the SEO block text, what is often called "site description" by Google.


I think he was talking about content, not just description, which could be a metatag or something other than text on your page... let me re-check what he said...

Here it is: "And onto the block of SEO text. Yup, it sucks. Yup, it looks terrible and ruins some design elements. But it’s vital to showing Google what your website is about. The general consensus is that at least 300 words is needed. So it’s up to you how you want to work it into the design."

Hmm. Maybe Tom should clarify what he means by SEO text, but at 300 words, whether you call it a "post" or something else, text that appears on a page at that length goes beyond mere description. It has to read more like a short essay or -- yes -- blog post, or "about me" statement.



Mar 16, 2012 at 04:53 PM
eNoBlog
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p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · My report on your SEO


Well, regardless of my [probably] inaccurate understanding, adding that block of text to my front page seems to have helped more than the other enhancements I've been making recently. I now appear toward the top of page 2 when I Google "Downey California Wedding Photographer" -- A sitemap.xml submittal to Google webmaster tools and adding fresh wedding related content to my blog (2nd page down in hierarchy, aka, "Articles") probably helped as well. Since I started doing this, I noticed that while "wedding" as a keyword on my site was way at the bottom (drowned by a bunch of photo-technical content), adding fresh blog entries with wedding related content moved the "wedding" keyword to the top of my keyword list on Google web master tools. Very, very interesting stuff.

I am working on getting my site added to Google Places, like Tom recommends, and will see what that does. I've also been interacting more through Google+, keeping up a #weddingsocal hashtag for a wedding vendors circle for the Southern California area. This along with links to any fresh wedding-related content I add to my site may also be bumping things along.

Thanks, Tom, for the advice. I can't say for sure that it helped, but all evidence seems to point that way. Now... on to figure out how I can crack the harder and highly dense Los Angeles market.



Mar 16, 2012 at 05:08 PM
TomHarmon
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p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · My report on your SEO


joelconner wrote:
Update for us...we started working on some of the things Tom talked about, and in a few days, we went from the top of page 6 to the bottom of page 3. Not all the way yet, but getting better placement!

That's so awesome. I'm happy it's working for you.



Mar 16, 2012 at 06:34 PM
TomHarmon
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p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · My report on your SEO


eNoBlog wrote:
I think he was talking about content, not just description, which could be a metatag or something other than text on your page... let me re-check what he said...

Here it is: "And onto the block of SEO text. Yup, it sucks. Yup, it looks terrible and ruins some design elements. But it’s vital to showing Google what your website is about. The general consensus is that at least 300 words is needed. So it’s up to you how you want to work it into the design."

Hmm. Maybe Tom should clarify what he means by SEO text, but at 300 words,
...Show more

For me it's a lot simpler. Adding the 300 to a static front page gives Google something to crawl and gives it an idea of what your site is about, so it's not just googling keyword after keyword. It's not a thing that needs a lot of thought, just a description of what you do with a couple highlighted keywords.



Mar 16, 2012 at 06:36 PM
DavidWEGS
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p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · My report on your SEO


Tom,

It was nice of you to offer this to so many FM'ers. good for you. I offered something like this about 6 months ago, but received largely criticism for putting it to high on the priority list.

I do believe SEO helps to get people to look at your site and probably brings you some business if you are on P1 and more so in the top 3. However, it does not find the perfect clients for you. You have to use the initial visit your potential client makes to your site, to establish with them exactly what to expect and give them reason to choose you.

Aside form the more personal aspects of getting booked (personality, brand, quality of work, etc.), the other MAJOR aspect of your SEO efforts is tied to the number of visits your site receives, the frequency of those visits. The time spent on each visit. Unique visitors versus repeat visitors (ironically, you want the repeat visitors, but its the unique ones that give your site more juice).

Just wanted to add that note to the efforts you are putting in for so many. I applaud you doing so.

Regards, D.



Mar 17, 2012 at 08:59 AM
TomHarmon
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p.2 #17 · p.2 #17 · My report on your SEO


DavidWEGS wrote:
Tom,

It was nice of you to offer this to so many FM'ers. good for you. I offered something like this about 6 months ago, but received largely criticism for putting it to high on the priority list.

I do believe SEO helps to get people to look at your site and probably brings you some business if you are on P1 and more so in the top 3. However, it does not find the perfect clients for you. You have to use the initial visit your potential client makes to your site, to establish with them exactly what to expect and
...Show more
Thanks David. We appreciate the extra knowledge..



Mar 17, 2012 at 11:02 AM
eNoBlog
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p.2 #18 · p.2 #18 · My report on your SEO


TomHarmon wrote:
For me it's a lot simpler. Adding the 300 to a static front page gives Google something to crawl and gives it an idea of what your site is about, so it's not just googling keyword after keyword. It's not a thing that needs a lot of thought, just a description of what you do with a couple highlighted keywords.


Tom - I think you are dead on here!!! Within a couple of days of implementing your advice, my site got onto the 2nd search results page when I search for "<my city, state> wedding photography." Search for "<my city> wedding photography art" or "<my city> wedding art" and now I'm the 1st or 2nd search result (including ads!) on the first Google search page. When you look at how Google lists it, the text it brings in is right out of the 1st sentence in that 300 word summary statement. This was the culminating difference in getting my SEO fine-tuned, after sitemap generation, adding wedding specific content (posts) to my underlying blog, key-wording in the meta data, etc., which had given me mixed results.

Incidentally, if you read my 300 words, it reads like a mini-essay or artist statement. I wanted it to read "real" rather than like a smattering of keywords first because I care about what appears on my front page, and second because I was anticipating the "smattering" approach would run afoul of Google's algorithms. Sure enough, someone recently pointed out that Google's algorithms are about to get a lot more "semantic," possibly penalizing some of the SEO strategies many have implemented. Just though I'd mention that... here's the link.



Mar 19, 2012 at 09:53 AM
eNoBlog
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p.2 #19 · p.2 #19 · My report on your SEO


One other interesting tidbit... my key-wording, as Google webmaster tools sees it, has improved substantially within the last week or so. Whereas before "wedding" was at the bottom (not to be seen) of the list, last week it jumped to #6 in the relevance list, and today it's #2. Interesting stuff.

BTW, this thread on a related forum outlines some of what I've been doing to improve my SEO.



Mar 19, 2012 at 10:03 AM
TomHarmon
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p.2 #20 · p.2 #20 · My report on your SEO


eNoBlog wrote:
Tom - I think you are dead on here!!! Within a couple of days of implementing your advice, my site got onto the 2nd search results page when I search for "<my city, state> wedding photography." Search for "<my city> wedding photography art" or "<my city> wedding art" and now I'm the 1st or 2nd search result (including ads!) on the first Google search page. When you look at how Google lists it, the text it brings in is right out of the 1st sentence in that 300 word summary statement. This was the culminating difference in getting my SEO
...Show more

This is great! I'm glad my advice helped you get to the top.

And I did see that about getting penalized with over optimization, but if your text reads naturally and you don't do any keyword stuffing, I think you should be just fine.



Mar 19, 2012 at 02:24 PM
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