Do you have questions about running a business, starting a business, running a website, or anything associated with your site/business that you want answered? Post your questions or suggestions for articles below or email them to us (staci@quirky-bird.com) and we may use your idea for an article on our blog. Free advice never looked so good.
Every retail owner knows that Christmas has the biggest potential for sales for the entire year. But what about those of you who are starting a new business and planning a launch for the fall?
Building a website isn’t a magical event in which, when it’s live, everyone will be able to find you simply by googling or tripping over your website. It takes months and years of hard work to build up a customer base, and the work is two pronged: SEO and Marketing. Remember that in Field of Dreams, Kevin Costner built it and no one came, he almost put his family and farm under. It just takes time, sweat, and maybe a few tears to get you there.
Let’s pretend that we built your website. If this is or could be the case – or if you use a database driven system with an admin - it should be plumbed for SEO. I’ll be writing up an big, fat, crazy thread about SEO another time, so stay tuned for that. So, since your site has the tools to help you be successful on Google, YOU need the tools (knowledge) to be able to write and enter in content in the most efficient way into these tools in your website. Once you have everything set up and your site launches, it will most likely be a few weeks before it even starts showing up on google searches for your own business name, nevermind for keyword phrases that you’re going after (if you’re launching a brand new store). So keep in mind, launching in November, people will barely be able to find you for the holiday season.
The most instantaneous thing you can do to get traffic is to market your website. Start building a client base by getting ads on other websites/blogs. Take out ads in magazines. Run a solid social networking campaign. The thing is – if you’re really trying to get Christmas sales after launching your site for the first time in the fall – it’s going to cost so much money to market yourself to get sales that you’ll most likely barely break even.
Another common thought is – why not start marketing before the website is live?! The answer – there are a gazillion things that could happen to stop your project from launching when you think it will. The web design process is truly a gigantic flow chart – there isn’t a clear start to finish when there are so many subjective decisions that need to be made.
Chances are, everyone will be insane trying to get your store up and running. It’ll launch, you’ll breathe a huge sigh of relief. Then you’ll see very little, if any, traffic. Chances are, your first Christmas season will have your family and friends buying from you…which is great – but most likely not what you were looking for.
Be realistic about your first Christmas. Keep in mind all of the work it takes to build a business, to build a customer base, to learn the ropes yourself. It’s a lot to absorb, and if you’re only giving yourself a few weeks – it’s most likely not enough time to really be over the moon so quickly.
I can’t tell you how many people I have come to me in September with the expectation of having a full on, gorgeous, thoughtful website before Christmas. There are web designers out there that can promise you a website in 2-3 months, but they’re handing it over to you empty – you then need to load all of your content in. We know how long it takes for you to not only learn how to use the system, but to enter in all of your content. We’ve seen over 200 clients go through it, not to mention I’ve personally done it myself a dozen times when my baby store was still open. It’s not hard, but it’s time consuming. There is so much for you to do, from sizing your photos, to building a successful site map, to entering in every single product, page, and setting in your shopping cart system. Part of why our services are so unique is that we step by step, hand in hand walk you through every single step of the process, so by the time your website is designed and installed, you’re finished loading your content and ready to go live.
I tell everyone to give yourself at least 6 months to build a beautiful, well branded website. It can happen faster, and it can take longer. It’s really all up to you. Just be realistic about the amount of time it will take.
Start on your website in January or February. That means that you have plenty of time once your site is live to go crazy on marketing and build up a huge client base. If you’re already in progress on a website, be realistic with your expectations of the holiday season. Be smart, use your common sense, and take a deep breath – starting a new business is fun and exciting but it’s also stressful and a lot of work, so make sure that you’re as zen about it as possible.
The lovely ladies over at NMB are expanding their families, which means less time for running their fabulous Eco-driven baby store. Check out their store here http://www.newbornmom.com/ and email them at info@newbornmom.com if you’re interested. They’ve got a great rep, fantastic products, amazing press – they’ve done all of the legwork for you…now it’s up to you to keep it going!
Make this simple! If not, you’re missing an opportunity to get your potential client to absorb every corner of your web existence. Also, you may lose people if they get to one site or the other and can’t get back where they were.
Enable your sidebars for the following reasons:
*add your contact information
*your blog roll
*your blog categories
I know you don’t do this because you want to have gimongous pictures on your page, we’ll get to that in a minute.
You want this sidebar because it helps people find what they’re looking for, and it can help your SEO. Make categories for your posts that are search engine friendly. Say you like to shoot at a certain park, you could create a category for that park. Say I live in that area and love that park, if I google it you’re likely to show up as you have a category with this name in your blog. You can use tags the same way, just make sure that they’re accessible on every page via the sidebar.
Your blogroll we already discussed, but again I’ll say that it’s a great way for you to network and gives you an opportunity to swap a link with another blog.
Sticking this all at the bottom of the page isn’t going to be as effective as using a sidebar – no one is going to be looking at the bottom of the page, so no one is going to be using the functionality. Also, the further down the page the information is, the less relevant for google.
I know that you really want to show big honkin pictures because, well, you’re a photographer and that’s your work! The bigger, the better – it’s easier to absorb that way. The problem is that it’s just too darn big. Your giant 27” mac monitor is way larger than the average user, so even though it looks awesome on your screen, most average users won’t be able to see an entire picture in one screen. This is a huge disservice to you, because if you think it’s bad to have your photos a little smaller – it’s way worse if they can’t even see the entire picture without scrolling.
20-30% of all users are on 1024×768 screens. That means that your pictures really shouldn’t be any taller than 600. When you factor in the space for the toolbar at the bottom of the screen and the url/toolbar at the top of the window, you don’t have much space left, so make it count.
I’m assuming you’re already using this, but if you’re not – you can install it in your admin of your wordpress. Here are some tips to using it right:
*Each blog post should have a unique meta title, specific to the subject matter of the post.
*Go ahead and give it a unique description. This isn’t going to help you out a ton, but could hurt you if you’re entering in duplicate content every time.
*You don’t have to enter in keywords. Google used keywords many many moons ago, but now they rely on content instead. Keywords don’t count. Just in case you don’t believe me, here’s a link: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
Navigate to Settings > All in one SEO
*Make sure you’ve entered in a home title and description.
*Check canonical URL’s and rewrite titles. (this will make your url’s be search engine friendly)
*Leave the noindex options unchecked.
*Check Autogenerate Descriptions
Make sure that all of your categories have a slug using hyphens to separate words that’s descriptive of what’s inside the category.
What not to do:
Category title: Fun parks
Category slug: fun-parks
What to do:
Category title: Fun Parks
Category slug: park-photography-san-diego
This will make the url for this category yourdomain.com/park-photography-san-diego which reads like keywords to google.
Hopefully you’ve discovered a few tips here that can help you optimize your blog. Make sure you have a stat counter installed on your blog (I love getclicky.com), and watch how making changes on your blog will start to effect your traffic results very quickly. Let us know how it works for you and if you need any help, don’t hesitate to ask.
Because this is really your only way to generate search engine content, it’s imperative to keep the information flowing. Google loves new content and will visit your site more regularly if it sees that you’re updating it regularly. And, don’t just post a photo series. Talk a little about the shoot – the area you were in, the type of people you were photographing (newborn, family, children, etc). Describing these things will inject keywords without force into your blog posts in a way that’s legible…not a keyword sausage fest.
Content is your friend. It’s your buddy that gets you on the VIP list with google. Write good content for your blog posts. I know I just talked about this, but it’s so important that it gets it’s own Mistake too. Writing good content is the easiest thing you can do on your blog to climb the search engine ladder. Make sure any time that you write the following that they have descriptive, search engine friendly content:
Post titles
Post Content
Meta Titles
Slugs
Comments
Networking is such a great way to spread the love and help out your fellow photographers out there. Since most of you are operating in your area, a photographer in a far away city isn’t much competition for you. Create a blog roll and get mini banners from your recommended photo blogs. Do one per city, and make a deal with the photographers that you’re listing to list you as well. So, say you’re my photographer, I’m reading your blog and see a photographer that you love in Houston. I send that to my sister-in-law and she hires them. See how it works? Not to mention that your link on their site helps your search engine rankings and credibility, so to set up a symbiotic link swap via your blog roll will help both of you climb search engine rankings.
why this works
Google has a complex set of criteria for ranking your site against others with the same type of content and keywords. Part of this is what you do on your site to display good relevant content. The rest is what you’re doing off site – including how many links on the web are pointing at your website. These links are “graded” based on relevancy. So if your link were on my site, a web design site, that doesn’t weigh as much as a link on a photography site with similar keywords. The more links you have that are in your same genre, the more valuable that link becomes.
Make the most out of any posts that you make on other’s blog posts. Posting randomly isn’t going to get you many clicks. If you can make what you say valuable and relevant, there’s a higher likelihood that someone will click your link there. Posting on each other’s blogs is a good thing for SEO though, it’s a relevant link to your website. If the blog that you’re posting on doesn’t have a good SEO setup though – this link isn’t going to help you out near as much as it might if they did.
So, if climbing the SEO ranks is easily done by having great content, then passing on an entire page about you and what you do to opt for a mini section about you with just a couple of sentences is a tragedy. Your about page is a fantastic page for you to talk about you, what you do, and show a picture of yourself and your family. This page should be 500+ words. Include your name. The page title shouldn’t be About Me, it should be something like Staci Brillhart, San Diego photographer.
Think of your blog like a second website. It should have everything from an informational standpoint as your portfolio website and then some. Why not make it obvious how to get a hold of you? This way if someone lands on your blog and they have the impulse to call, they’ve got your number right there. While you’re at it, may as well have a contact page with an email form. Make it as easy for them to get in touch with you as possible – it’ll make it so easy that they’ll feel compelled to contact you.
Stay tuned, final installment coming soon!
get going. jump on the train, gang.
