Newbie quesiton

[teknari]

I am new to SEO and absolutely fascinated by the whole process.... this is fun!

I am a newish photographer, and I am bringing together my blog with my static page to one URL, and am going to be using wordpress.

My goals are a little different than typical.  What I am looking for in my web site is not sales, but viewership.  I want people to find my site, then keep coming back to my blog to follow what I do. Hopefully I get lots of people put my feed in their reader, or sign on to my email list.

In looking at keywords, I found the below info from google as far as global monthy searches:

photography blog 110,000
photo blog 823,000

black and white photographers 135,000
black and white photography 110,000

fine art photographers 60,500
fine art photography 49,500

abstract photographer 14,800
abstract photography 14,800

erotic photographer 60,500
erotic photography  3,600

editorial photographer 12,100
editorial photography 6,600

Questions:

1. Photo blog is where the big numbers are, and this is eventually what I would like to be known for ... but the competition here is much stiffer than that for lets say 'fine art photographer'.  The top listing in photo blog has a domain authority of 78 as opposed to 47 for fine art photographer.  Given the importance of being high in the rankings, would it be better to try to dominate some of the long tail first?  But if I do, is it then hard to switch to photo blog and come up high because I have all the link and keyword 'baggage' on my domain from the old attempts at optimizing for 'fine art photographer'?

2)  How would people suggest handling photographer and photography, in terms of keywords, and using the terms in directories, etc?  Pick one or use both?

3)  Is this too many keywords to focus on at first?  General thoughts to approach?

Thanks!

Brent

[SEO2270]

I like your response because you took the time to explain in a simple way that another newbie can start to understand SEO better....I'm on chapter 4 of the Introduction to SEO and it got so 'technical' I had to take a break to see if other newbies might be having a time getting started.

Do you think it might be a good idea to 'experiment' optimizing a landing page first before moving on to a site with a more complex site structure?

[Getz.pro]

Please feel free to ask to clarify any points.

[teknari]

OK, so I think I got it.

Thanks for the help!

Brent

[Getz.pro]

Fine Art Photography is a highly competitive keyword where Fine Art Portrait Photography is not as much.

You 12 month goal is to rank for Fine Art Photography, but you know you can't now.

Inbound links that can't change I would set to Fine Art Photography and point to the page that has all other metrics set to Fine Art Portrait Photography. Google will pick this up fine as they are relevant to each other. Unlike Red Tulip Photography is not relevant to Fine Art Photography (keyword wise).

I would set most image alt tags for Fine Art Photography while page Title and page copy all point to the more broad term Fine Art Portrait Photography.

The idea is to rank for the broader term while setting up rankings for future narrower terms. You will get traffic due to targeting the broad term and build inbound organic links. As you do, the site will strengthen, and you can try and compete for the narrow term, which the page/site is already prepped.

Now let me address this Red Tulip Photography. This phrase is not the same as Fine Art Photography and as such, what I suggest will not apply. I would in this instance set a page to talk about Red Tulip Photography on its own, perhaps a blog post that would include all page metrics pointing to this keyword phrase.

Did I clarify this?

[teknari]

I just had to read this over 6X to try to understand, as this is all new to me, and I am not familiar with the terminology.

So I am going to try rephrasing what you said, please tell me if I have this correct.  I put question marks where I am not sure.

For example sake, lets say "Fine art photographer" is a broad competitive keyword that I eventually want to dominate, and "red tulip photography" is a narrow keyword.

With my root domain page, use fine art photography in the title, for keywords, meta tags, etc.  Don't use "red tulip photography on root domain page????

Create sub pages and blog posts on "red tulip photography".  In the alt tags in the pictures of red tulips, use "fine art photography"

When I am building links (for example on DMOZ.org or some other directory) link to my main page, but in the description use "red tulip photography"??????

Am I ever looking at going back and changing inbound links that I am able to?  For example, if I started out on DMOZ .org with "red tulip photography", once I start getting more authority, do I go back and change it to "tulip art photography", then eventually "art photography"?  Change the URL as well up toward my main page?

Thanks Richard, this is all fascinating!

Brent

[Getz.pro]

fine art photographers is Highly competitive so you probably won't rank for that any time soon. If you go with weaker keywords in the Title and page copy, then you will rank for those and get some backlinks. Backlinks will strengthen your page/site and then you can start to rank for more competitive keywords.

Using the alt tag for generic competitive keywords will help build that ranking for those keywords as supportive keyword phrases.

Try fine art portrait photographers for a title and work your way back once your page has authority.

It is like when you search for something. You use the direct search query then modify it to narrow the search.

With webpages that do not have any authority, broaden the keyword to start, then narrow as you grow strength. I suggested to use an underlining metric such as the alt tag to start the keyword ranking for more narrow phrases.

When you build links manually, build them for the narrow keywords. Organic links will naturally use the current Title or the sites URL, or category. Hopefully.

Subfolders (categories) rank well as long as a) you have inbound links with good anchor text b) that landing page is keyword optimized.

This way your home page, which gets most of the links, will have fewer links to in-site pages and thus they will pass greater link juice. Then those category pages will have links to deeper pages and pass juice to them.

This is good structurally from a navigational perspective and from a linking perspective.

I hope that helps

[teknari]

Richard,

• "Start long tail on Title and page copy, but direct on image alt tags."  This is interesting, and entirely backward from what I figured I would do.  I figured that my main home page would be geared toward the general, like "fine art photographer", but then in the individual blog posts, I would get long tail in the page titles and alt tags.  Have you had experience with this, or can you explain the thinking behind it?

• I do like the idea of segregating the site by keywords, but are there good examples out there of sites where the sub pages rank top in their keywords?  I guess there are on the real long tail of things, but is it conceivable that I could have one subpage rank on the first page in Google for "erotic photography", and another subpage on the same domain rank on the first page of google for "fine art photography"?  i would think that Google would be unlikely to do that .... but that is a guess on my part.

Thanks

[teknari]

Yeah, great and compelling content is a given, but I have also learned from experience that it has to get out there so people can see it .... that is why we are all here right

I love the idea of 'nicheing' myself, but concerned about the consequences later on if I want to continue from there.

[teknari]

Alan,

That is my big concern, for example that I would do all this work to get on the first page of art photographers, but then if I want to tackle photoblog, all the links pointing to my site reference art photographer, and I am kind of stuck in that hole.

This is why I am asking now before I start.  You have had experience with something like that?

[teknari]

1.  I like your thoughts on photography vs photographer.  It is fascinating though how unintuitive some of the keyword results are.

for example why do so many more people search for erotic photographers, than erotic photograhy????  This seems so backward to me.

3.  I expect that my blog posts would get very deep, for example individual people, or subjects.

Your first sentence is working toward answering one question I had ... is this an ambitious project, or is it eminantly doable ????

[Getz.pro]

Hi Brent, as one photographer to another, I would like to comment : )

• Start long tail on Title and page copy, but direct on image alt tags.
• Segregate your site according to topic then using those keywords.
• Make certain you tweet and Facebook your photos.
• Do not use Flash unless WP will build out an HTML equivalent.
• Be sure to put Facebook Likes and ShareThis on each photo page. That is, each image should have its own page with page copy and Likes and ShareThis buttons.

You can use photographer and photography interchangeably within the page copy and switch this out amongst the page titles.

Title: Surfer in Maui | Photo Blog | Your Name

With photos there are so many pages, so many alt tags, and so many opportunities to share.

<script src="[http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1](view-source:http://connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1)">script><fb:like show_faces="true" width="450">fb:like>

http://sharethis.com/

I hope that helps.

[goodnewscowboy]

Hi Brent.

My answer is geared more to "General thoughts to approach"

If you are building a site from scratch, then you need to be clear on your goals for the site, and build out  the site from there ( (SEO, content, design, etc.)

You had mentioned the following as your goal  [being] "a little different than typical.  What I am looking for in my web site is not sales, but viewership.  I want people to find my site, then keep coming back to my blog to follow what I do. So your goal is to build viewership.

From this point on you need to be in the mind of potential viewers. What kind of photos will they want to see? What will they be interested in reading about? The reason this is important is that you need to be able to get a handle on their intent. This will drive your keyword research, your content choices, etc.

As an important aside, you need to do more than just put keywords in your copy to accomplish your goals. You need some stunning photography and compelling copy. In other words, you need to create a site that is world class. So it deserves return visits from those that stumble across it.

Finally, if I were in your shoes, I would look for a niche within the world of photo blogs and start out trying to dominate that niche. This is just my personal preference. If you want to take on the whole photo blog universe right out of the chute,  then go for it.

Good luck and drop back in when you have your site and give us the URL. Good luck!

[AlanMosley]

photography, photographer? the seqarch engine will make the link between the 2, but you will rankj higher for one than the other. you are correct about changing later, it causes some problems.
its also a lot of keywords for one page, you should try to optimize for one or two keywords per page.
deciding what difficulty level of keyword is really up to you. but me i would go for the top keyword, you will rank well for long tail as a consequence anyhow.

[DanDeceuster]

Brent, this seems to be a very ambitious undertaking. Those look like some big keywords that sound somewhat competitive. Here is what I would recommend for your questions:

1. Based on your goals, I would target the photography words as opposed to the photographer words. You'll probably just as easily rank for both if you have one, but still, someone looking for a photographer wants to see a small sample, then some contact information and pricing packages. Sounds like you just want the casual passerby to stop and stay a while. So I would focus on photography.

Your question about which terms to target is all of them! Make your home page photo blog or photography blog. Then make a category for each keyword you want to target, black and white, abstract, etc. Get each category page to rank for its keyword. Then you don't just pick one, you can do it all.

2. Photography over photographer(s)

3. Not enough keywords to focus on. A quick search for photography and you'll see a lot of different types of searches, from religious to nature to animals to objects. People look for all kinds. I would find all the different types people search for (That you actually do) and then create a category for each one so that you can upload your photos into each category and get that category page ranking for that particular term.

These are bigger keywords, but one key to SEO is deep links. Don't just link to your home page for one keyword. Get links to all your pages for all your keywords. This is why you should have a robust keyword list to start as you have already. You're on the right path.