SEO seems to be one of those tricky things in business that seems important, but way too hard to get a handle on. Let me just say that SEO is not a secret, and neither are the tricks, tips and ways to get it to work for your website. But it takes time and effort and most of all consistency to make it work.

Most DIY website platforms (Squarespace, WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Rocketspark etc) are pretty easy to update and maintain.

I’d love to tell you a story about one of my lovely clients and her recent SEO success. With a lot of background work and continuing content writing we have brought her ranking up from page 9 on Google right up to page 1 or 2 (dependent on the number of Google Ads making an appearance).

1. What was the SEO situation?

   Zanda is a fabulously unique wedding photographer with a load of knowledge and passion and a personal style. Her business, Zanda Photography, has done pretty well, with bookings and shooting truly incredible weddings. Her website is a self built Squarespace site with loads of photos showcasing her work.
   Zanda, rightly, identified that she was lagging behind in search rankings, appearing often on page nine (9) of Google search for her top identified keyword… this was not going to provide the clicks she needed to find and ultimately convert couples to book her for their wedding!

2. What did we do first?

   Initially Zanda asked me to write content for her website. However, she recognised that there was work to be done on her website beyond this. We worked together and uncovered the following, ‘quick fixes’ and some longer term ongoing work:

• Lots of active and inactive pages that were ‘clogging’ up the website and needed sorting through including deleting and/or deactivating.

• Long URL’s that were meaningless (auto-generated when created) or just too long for Google to read.

• Missing metadata across the board, for the main site and sitting behind all of the pages and blogs.

• Little to no descriptions to accompany the wedding galleries.

• Images to be checked for alt-text and updated where necessary (and checked for size).

With all of this in mind we started to tidy up, sort through and update:

Streamlining Web Content:

Counter to what Zanda first asked me to do, we looked at streamlining her website and what we could remove. We identified which of the many pages, blog pages etc were still relevant.

• We then set about deleting or deactivating anything that was no longer needed.

• By streamlining the site and removing anything dead, outdated or no longer relevant it is easier to navigate, manage longer term and overall better for user experience. (And for you to use!).

• We also made a plan to what should be on the website. And the homepage particularly. This meant we knew where we were heading.

Metadata Update:

Here we get into that crazy word… Metadata… sounds like a coding or highly technical word. But put simply is the background information for your website that Google (and other search engines) can ‘crawl’. Always remember that Google can’t ‘crawl’ images or if there is no text on your site.
So, you need to give Google as much information (and good keywords) as possible to make it easy to be found by your customers.
This was a big job and the first sort through of the website needed to happen to avoid spending hours updating pages that were then going to be deleted!
The way that Squarespace is set up is quite user friendly and means you can update all of this behind your site and each page or blog in one tabbed page. What I updated was:

• Excerpts - where there was a gallery or blog I wrote a wee intro that entices and informs the viewer what they can see in the gallery. No need to be long. I stuck to a couple lines so as not to clutter the look of the page.

• URLs - this is where the URL for each page (or blog) can be updated. We shortened these to something that made sense (removing any connecting words like ‘in’ or ‘and’). And possibly included a nice relevant keyword. Shortening the URLs makes it easier for Google to read and understand what is on the page or blog.

• SEO Title & Description - This is pretty important. This is auto-filled (on most platforms) by the site title and description. But this does mean you don’t have all the little juicy bits covered. Only the over-arching site description. Here you can add a short title about your blog, and a few words to entice people to have a look. This is what pops up on the Google search and is what people see.

• Location - Interesting one here. Slightly over-looked. The location for your site should be set across the board. But in this case, each of the blogs and pages also needed the site to be updated. The auto location was New York city??! And with a location based business like Zanda Photography it was awesome to update each of her wedding galleries with the location of the venue, adding great fodder for searching.

Images and alt-text:

Also important is to check those images. ‘Alt-text’ literally means Alternative Text. And in most cases is the file name of your image, though you can change this when you are loading the image to the site. These need to be relevant to the picture and can contain some of those wonderful keywords.

What next?

Now that we have tidied up Zanda Photography website we are looking forward to updating her homepage. A few more tasks in the background. And then moving on to the content.

We’ve spent a lot of time doing research (read: looking at our competitors), this means checking out those ahead of you on the search rankings. And also looking at what you love (and don’t love) at all of your competitors.

The wedding photographers market is a very busy place. There are dozens (if not hundreds) of wonderful photographers out there all competing for your clients. And it is worth taking note of what they are doing.

We’ll be looking to write great content for

• Key pages

• Intros to the wedding galleries

• Blogs for our clients that are informative and interesting. That make them stay on the website and spend time. And see that Zanda is the fantastic photographer for their wedding!

Outcome

After all of the up front work to ‘tidy’ up the website and update the background work. The Zanda Photography website is now sitting on page one (1) or page two (2) of the Google Search Rankings for her keyword ‘Auckland Wedding Photographer’!! The position depends on how many paid Google Ads there are on the page (and if you are on mobile or laptop).

Zanda is wrapped!! I am wrapped! But we aren’t there yet. There is much more we can do to help the website not only be SEO healthy, but to also be engaging and interesting to prospective clients and ensure that when they come to visit, they want to stay and they want to book a photography session with Zanda!

Afterall, ultimately that is the goal… increased footfall, converted to increased bookings!

This is a fabulous story of SEO health success. And Zanda understands it’s an ongoing job that needs consistency and maintenance.

But now that the hard background work is done, Zanda can focus on taking amazing photos for her client and I can focus on the creative aspect of blog writing and creating compelling content.

If you need your own SEO health check and SEO success, get in touch!

Photo credit: of course all of the gorgeous wedding photography is Zanda’s - if you love it as much as I do, get in touch with Zanda Photography.