Google’s Social Search, SEO and the way we network
What’s the news on Social Search?
If you have been paying attention to the search world at all, or even CNN, you may have seen that Google introduced a new “feature” to their search results called Search Plus Your World (or Social Search.) In case you haven’t been following, here are some interesting reads:
The Official Google announcement says
Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Today, we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.
Facebook and Twitter are among those who aren’t very happy. Neither is privacy watchdog EPIC who filed a complaint with the FTC arguing that “Google is using its search engine to create an unfair advantage for its social network. The report says Google is highlighting results from Google+ at the expense of pages that might be more relevant.”
And how does this affect SEO? Well, there are a multitude of conflicting opinions on this. To be honest, I expected to come to work last Monday and just get to doing some SEO. Because of these changes, that didn’t happen. What is the good of helping my clients rank well on page-who-cares if social search will mean more?
How does this affect/change things at High on SEO?
After a week of deliberating if I should be focused on social search, I’ve determined that for now, I’m not going to focus much on it. I want to see how the FTC complaint works out, given that EPIC previously challenged Google and won.
What I do know now is that networking is changing. Sure, you still need to have coffee with that great wedding coordinator who liked your work. You may need to poke around a bit and network at bridal shows or whatever. Put your business cards in people’s hands.
BUT
Social search means you only get found if you’re social. You want to win? You have to play the game. It doesn’t help to be Michael Jordan if the game is baseball, if you know what I mean. Whatever the current networking “game” is – it helps to play. I cannot suggest you join Google+ and start doing everything you do on Facebook there, but if you don’t you may end up shooting alone in the gym while everyone else plays outside.
For the record, my Google pages are: Personal and Photography.
Read the official announcement and try it out to see for yourself what Social Search will mean for you.
Read MoreGetting High on SEO in 2012
Welcome to the new blog and site! Hopefully this format works out better for me as that last blog just wasn’t … good. It was frustrating trying to post new content and I’m hoping this is a step in the right direction!
Anyhoo – new pricing is now LIVE online!
SEO pricing
Check that out! I’ll also have some new success stories soon to post. I’m working with a large batch of clients at the moment and trying to get analyses done for them. The wait list is sadly back on…so if you want to get High on SEO, the earlier the better.
Look for some new SEO tips in the coming weeks! I am back and glad to be posting again! I have a lot to share and talk about so bookmark the blog, come back or add us to your RSS reader. http://feeds.feedburner.com/Highonseo to subscribe.
Read MoreThe World Series and Smallball: SEO Strategies
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
So I promised a World Series blog and with Game 3 later tonight, I figured it would be a good time to talk game strategy and how you can improve your SEO. (Hint: if you know nothing about baseball you may have to skip this post.)
Baseball “experts” almost all picked the Texas Rangers to win this series. 21 out of 25. Their reasoning was fairly consistent and clear: the Rangers hit more homeruns and pitch better than everyone else and thus they’ll win. Game One, however, went to the Cardinals. This would lead you to believe that the Rangers didn’t out-pitch or hit the Cardinals as the experts predicted, right?
Wrong.
In Game 1 of the World Series both teams had 6 hits and 0 errors. Our brains trick ourselves. 6 hits each should mean whoever had the “bigger and better” hits should have won the game, right? The Rangers hit the game’s only homerun. Their starting players had one more hit than the Cardinals starters. The best hitter on the Rangers outhit the best hitter on the Cardinals. So how did the Cardinals win? How does this have anything to do with SEO?
In baseball, like most sports, there are many ways to get to the desired result (winning.) The Cardinals won the game with singles. All of their runs came by way of single. SEO is like baseball that way. You have many ways to get the same result. You can build your team like the Rangers (hit homeruns, pitch well) or you can play “small ball” – hitting lots of singles, sacrificing something for a better result elsewhere and making tweaks rather than wholesale changes.
Hitting Singles
You can definitely succeed with homeruns. When I make on-site changes to a client’s website I’m trying to fix “everything at once.” That’s basically going for a homerun. Almost always in baseball a homerun hitter is also among the leaders in strikeouts. When you swing for the fences you can often miss.
Hitting singles means taking the small victories. Do little things right. Title your blog posts appropriately. Go back and add tags to your old posts. Track your social media presence. Make your site 100% crawlable. Commentstorm your weekend away. These are small changes that affect you in the long run. When you make small changes and incremental improvements you are hitting singles. Just remember: the Cardinals won Game 1 based on two singles that scored three runs. Texas’ homerun scored two and they lost.
Sacrifice for a Better Result
As I discussed in the SEO depth vs. breadth discussion, you can’t have it all. Your site will *never* be ranked #1 for every known keyword. It’s not possible! Every choice is a sacrifice. If I choose to write a post about seo services for photographers I’m not writing a post on seo for wedding professionals. My word choice will either reflect a target audience of photographers or other wedding vendors.
When you make your choices, make smart choices. Don’t leave out your main keywords and insert more nonsense. Your blog posts are already full of “am, the, in, on, an, my” Try and fill them with relevant, interesting keyphrases and keywords. Try to use keywords that relate to your title. To fully understand seo strategy, you need to understand that you are *always* sacrificing one keyword for another. You can’t use photographer and photography in every sentence. ”We had fun being wedding photographers for Amy & John for their Carolina wedding photography at their wedding this past Saturday at a great wedding venue in Charleston.” Admit you have to sacrifice, choose what’s most appropriate and hit another single.
The SEO Twins: Tweak and Test
Your site may need huge SEO changes. It may only need slight adjustments. You won’t know without extensive testing. So try it – change your title, write a different sort of header for your new blog post, alt keyword images in one post and not another. Testing Google is how you solve the riddle. If you are not testing something on your site right now, you’re wasting time. Go run a test. Start some sort of SEO test. Whatever you need to improve try to think up one way you could do it better and do it. Then watch what happens on Google. If it works, do it more or do it again! Test, test and more test.
Do baseball teams tweak & test? According to 2007 statistics, Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa “used 150 different starting lineups in 162 games.” He tweaked his lineup almost every.single.game. He’s been doing this for years and has been wildly successful using a trial & error test method. Basketball coaches try to find the 5 guys who work best together, soccer coaches want their best lineup at all times and in war we have learned what combinations work (air strikes then ground & pound) so fewer casualties happen. To be successful means to better yourself and testing is a great way to see what specifically makes you better.
So, enjoy the World Series. Go watch Game 3 and think of some really great SEO strategies you can test starting … now!
(PS. The Rangers won Game 2 of the World Series even though the Cardinals had more hits. The Rangers won 2-1 on a sacrifice… #justsayin.)
Read MoreUpdates! Success Stories, Part 3
You all know by now that I love my updates. I absolutely LOVE helping people and when I post a success update it means I’ve helped someone or a group of people.
My last few weeks have been consumed by helping a group of photographers who were all referred to me. I always take my work very seriously but when I get a referral I feel extra pressure to really “prove” that the referral was deserved and that whoever referred me feels like it was a good decision.
So yeah – THREE updates tonight!
First, my new friend Dee. She specializes in Miami newborn photography. Dee and I have had a great relationship from the very beginning when I asked her if her keywords would include “taking my talents to South Beach.” (There is a small part of me that wants to rank her site for that keyphrase.) As always “entered” means the last update showed the site below rank 100 (off page 10) and the “Google rank” are current ranks. For instance “miami newborn photographers” had Dee at 24 (page 3) and she’s now 13 (top of page 2).
Second, I’ll show you an update for Rachel. She’s a Green Bay portrait photographer. My favorite results here are all the double digit gains Rachel’s site has made! +43, +41, +37 … these are HUGE moves for a short period of time.
Finally, a woman who has promised me “a big ole bear hug,” Bree. Bree is a Denver family photographer and the world is about to know it. Bree’s site took off like a missile for me. Push a little button here, tweak this, fix that, give it a boost and WHEE! OFF she went! These are *by far* my best, fastest results ever. I feel SO happy for Bree. The first screenshots shows her amazing jumps (+58, +53, two entering in the top 30 so more than 70 point jumps.) In all, 20 keywords moved up double digit jumps. The second screenshot amazes me. Bree now has 33 of her 38 keywords in the top 10. She has 33 PAGE ONE results. That’s 87% of her many keywords on page one. That’s some serious SEO!
In honor of the World Series going on right now, my next SEO post will be directly related to this one and to teaching you a bit of SEO through baseball. I know my updates have been infrequent – with so many great clients and a backlog of work to get done, I’ve not wanted to take time away from clients to post as much. As I get through my wait list and my backlog, I will try to update as frequently as possible.
Read MoreSite note
I’m changing this site’s theme asap. There are WAY too many problems with it that I can’t fix. 
Thanks to those of you who told me about my contact form missing and the blank page. I need way more than this is providing.
The Erin Scott Project, Part 1
Yesterday I had an idea for a test. I am going to run one photographer’s site through my process without regard to ON-site optimization. I’m going to try something simple and see how well it works and show you how it goes. This project is ALL about link creation.
The first step in any SEO project, as I’ve said, is determining WHAT you are optimizing for and WHERE you are.
24 keywords chosen, ranks checked!
Thanks for the site to play with Erin!
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Finding SEO success
I know I haven’t posted SEO tips in awhile. I’ve been busy doing some big SEO projects and getting ready for my own big move to Australia in October or November. I’m here! I’ll try to get a few tips up this week! Click on each image to enlarge it.
Today’s post is a short update. In SEO Success 2 I showed how we had been growing Paul’s SEO. He mentioned to me that he wanted to THEN rank up for Cardiff wedding searches. This is the result of that push:
So this is Paul’s new overall chart (18 of 19 keywords top 20):
Luke & Alisha contacted me for a BIG SEO project that consumed a lot of my last 10 weeks. I was glad to help as I LOVE those guys and want to help their business succeed very much. I was nervous because even though I feel like I’m very good at this job AND my results show it, I can’t help but want to impress my good friends when they trust me with so much.
23 keywords and 22 landed top 20. 7 top 10s! EVERYTHING is moving up and the w hole chart is green. I couldn’t be happier for them (and I feel relieved!)
And I want to show you an “in progress” chart. Chelo wanted me to do some work for her baby photography business and give a bit of a push to some wedding terms as well. That progress has definitely begun! So far we have 4 of 13 keywords in the TOP THREE (woohoo!) and 7 of 13 in the top 20. Time for me to get working on Summit it looks like!
Conclusion? We do what we say we’re going to do. We get businesses to the top of Google through SEO for photographers. It’s a lofty claim to say you can move someone’s business up the ranks but the results don’t lie.
Old success posts
SEO for photographers, Success Part 2
Update on San Diego photographer
Read MoreTrack your social media presence
While not specifically related to SEO, social media optimization is a growing need among businesses. Today I’ll show you a few of my favorite tools to track your social media and online presence. You already know what I think about the need to track your seo. This is tracking your smo.
Find out when ANYTHING is written about any topic you choose. Be careful with this one – if you do an update “as it happens” with “all results” for a broad term, you’re going to have crazy amounts of email. I choose to monitor my brands, my name and other related stuff to me specifically. This is a great way to keep up on things you want to know about, though. If you do a broad or popular term, choose “best results” and “once a day.” You’ll get a digest with all the links that are fit for your topic.
Searches social media sites for your terms. This search is usually very fast although it’s being pokey currently. They may be getting popular and slowing down. Hopefully they upgrade soon as this is a fantastic site!
Klout assigns you a social media “score” based on your interactions with others, friends on social media sites, etc. The more you influence, the higher your score.
Both great tools measuring your social media influence. Similar to PeerIndex and Klout. These sites tend to measure your audience (reach), frequency of posts and how many people are responding to you… total that up and you get an influence score. PeerIndex also measures you in specific topics so if you need to rank for the arts, you can see how you do.
Massive site that tracks your visibility and influence on 20 sites including Digg, Stumble, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Google, Meetup, LinkedIn, etc. Sometimes adds things that aren’t really “your brand” to your score but overall a great site. You can sign up to get updates on up to 3 brands free here as well.
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Changing from PhotoSEO.info to High On SEO
Why change your business name now?
I admit it. I never in a hundred years imagined SEO would take off for me the way it has. I expected that I would do a few bits of SEO for a few friends who’ve asked me over the years and quickly get back to doing what I do: weddings and portrait photography.
In the few months I’ve now had the doors open to PhotoSEO.info, the response has been (quite literally) overwhelming. I’ve gone from 2 or 3 friends who were interested in SEO services to a constant waiting list of between 5 and 8 photographers. PhotoSEO.info grew from an idea with merit into a fledgling little business.
When I started PhotoSEO.info and thought it wouldn’t go anywhere, I used the domain because it made sense. That’s what I do … seo for photographers. So it completely made sense to me to use that name. I couldn’t get the .com but I didn’t care because it wasn’t going to be a “real” business for me anyways. I didn’t much mind that everyone in this industry seems to be Photo SEO, Photographers SEO, SEO for Photographers … until now.
I’ve made the choice that I’m going to run with this SEO business as far as it will take me. I’ve had *fantastic* success so far at getting SEO results and I expect that to continue. I had no idea I would want to continue doing SEO but truthfully, I enjoy making people happy. I enjoy watching their site fly up the rankings. I remember the email from Paul when I landed him from nowhere straight on to Page 3 of “South Wales wedding photographer.” “I really couldnt ask for more. Its really appreciated .” Now he’s 6th on Page 1.
Since I’ve decided to make the leap into full business-dom, there are certain things I wanted. A dot-com. The business’s logical twitter name, a real Facebook Page, etc. Someone already makes a living @photoseo and I’m happy for them but I couldn’t have it. Someone (probably the same guy) also has the Youtube name Photoseo. I wanted a break and a fresh start.
Why High On SEO?
Because it’s punny. If you don’t get the name, you probably won’t like my style anyways. People say they’re high on life, high on drugs, have runner’s high… well after I slip your site some of my good stuff, you are High on SEO. (I know you’re technically high on SERPs… but that isn’t the point!) Not much will change. I’ll still be offering SEO tips here on the blog and offering SEO services to photographers who want to take it up to another level.
So welcome to the new business for PhotoSEO.info I hope you enjoy reading High On SEO, subscribe to my feed, like me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter and do all those things you do.
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SEO Q&A with Allison
Yesterday I received a few great SEO questions from my photographer friend Allison. I thought I’d address them in a new post so everyone can benefit from it.
What if Webmaster Tools finds broken links and the Broken Links Checker Plug in doesn’t? How would we fix the ones that Google sees?
Broken Links Checker should find the broken links on your blog. Your site may have broken links that only Google finds. The best thing to do is check why they’re broken and see if it’s an easy fix. Sometimes it is (something is legitimately broken on your site) and sometimes it’s not (you removed an old client slideshow).
The best post I know of on the subject of fixing links on your main site (not blog) is here. If you don’t know how to fix your own .htaccess, this may be something you have your webmaster or best computer expert friend do for you. Redirecting old posts, removing all those old links, etc. is the best way. Second best is to “cheat” a little and if you have links that constantly get broken (such as old client slideshows) when you delete them, keep the folder and keep an index.html file in them. Design this file up how you want and everytime you remove their slideshow, upload that index.html file to their folder. This way YOU control what Google sees when it visits that page.
Why don’t I want home keywords on AIOSEO? It seems like they would be helpful, but you’re the expert!
According to Google, Google does not use the meta keywords tag. At all.
This is very good SEO information – you should definitely leave comments on related blogs as often as possible. I think by starting the commentstorm on “blogs you read everyday” you are probably reading the same type of blogs as you produce. Having a few non-related links isn’t going to hurt you. The related ones help you *more* but that was never our point in this.
As far as “do follow” – I said in the original post on commentstorming, “Comments on blogs are not always directly good for your SEO as off-site links.” Our point isn’t *entirely* to gain do follow backlinks. Sure, they help a lot. What you’re doing with no-follow blogs is everything else that I wrote in that post. Getting more traffic, more comments, more time-on-site for you, etc. Those things help your SEO, too, and so you do gain a boost, even from no-follow blogs.
Is this only beneficial if we either pay or give them 10 of our clients email addresses to make it live? I don’t really want to do either even though I filled out and created a whole profile.
This was not a requirement when I signed up but I just checked it out and you can have paid or free listings. I would say if you can get 10 people who would give you a review, ask them if you can include them on this. I would rather have this link than not. When I move and start doing my own wedding photography SEO for another country, yes, I’ll see if I can get 10 email addresses to put in here. If not, not… but the link is VERY valuable to your business.
Thanks to Allison, my Scottsdale wedding photographer friend, for the great questions!
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