Some photographers love blogging.  Others hate it.  Personally, I enjoy crafting blog posts, but there is definitely an element of “we are photographers, not writers” at play and so I’ve drafted my favourite Blogging tips for Photographers for you here today.

These tips are relevant now, and form part of my blogging strategy as we start to think about 2014.  These Blogging Tips for Photographers are written with Panda and Penguin in mind.

#1 Content is “always” king

A dilemma we all face as photographers is whether we build our websites to gloriously display our images, or build them to be useful for search engines. Sadly, Google don’t make a very good job of indexing images and this is one of the primary reasons that Flash based websites are on the decline. Google, really, wants to gobble up your textual content. Yes, there are mitigating circumstances, and your off-site SEO will always play a major part in how you rank, but ultimately you need to put text into your website. And a reasonable amount too.

#2 Keep it fresh

Having a blog that is rarely updated is almost as bad as having no blog at all. If you go to the effort of having a designer build an SEO friendly blog for you, then you really need to put the effort into feeding the blog.

Just like I’m a firm believer in these blogging tips for photographers, I’m also a firm believer that 95% of the photography business, is business and only 5% is taking photographs. Blogging, and in fact all your marketing, is part of that 95% which should be so important.

The more you blog, and keep the content fresh on your website, the more Google will be interested in it. Keep feeding the Google monster.

An analogy I heard once was that Google is like the postman. In the UK we learn not to check for the post on Sunday’s. Google learns to check your website in the same manner. Keep the content coming and Google will keep its interest in your photography blog.

#3 Keep it original

Assuming you are blogging often, then the content must be original. This is absolutely essential. If you are wedding or social photographers then the images, presumably, your images will be at least. Make sure you are keeping Google happy by giving it fresh, original content (see how points 1,2 and 3 all come together there).

#4  Keep it substantial

Simply blogging a single picture, or a set of pictures isn’t going to be enough from an SEO point of view. Yes, with a decent off-site SEO strategy that single image blog post may blow the rankings apart, but by and large, it won’t and you will need to give Google enough substantial fresh, original content (see the pattern here?). [Read more…]