For a long time, Google has been the synonym of web search. Now with Plus, the giant wants to become social. But they don’t want to go social just for the sake of it. What Google really wants to do is to make an even better search engine while at the same time getting another medium to show ads.

With this mind I can already tell you the real reason why you should start using it today. The reason is…

Overnight!? How? Let me explain…

The Google Plus +1 Button (and Share) Effect

The +1 can be applied to:

• Posts and people profiles created inside Google Plus
• Webpages via Google Search
• Webpages that have a Google Plus Widget

Now what happens when a person gives a +1? Watch this video!

[stream provider=youtube flv=http%3A//www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DOAyUNI3_V2c img=x:/img.youtube.com/vi/OAyUNI3_V2c/0.jpg embed=false share=false width=550 height=331 dock=true controlbar=over bandwidth=high autostart=false /]

Now, wait… You saw it right…

The best part of this is that this will last forever as long as these people are friends (inside a circle) on Google Plus. This is not just for 1 day or so like Facebook and then goes away. It’s forever!

Let me give you an example if it’s not yet clear how it works:

1. You shoot a wedding and make a blog post about it (with cool images and such) with the title “Paul & Alison – Denver Wedding Photography” .
2. The bride (Alison) gives a +1 or shares that post with her friends on Google Plus.
3. Your website will appear on her friends’ stream (just like in the Facebook wall) for a given period. Which is good for you already but not the best part…
4. The best part is when her friends’ decide to get married and search for a Denver Wedding Photographer, your blog post will appear right on the first page. Even if Alison gave that +1 a year ago!!
5. You’ll get targeted clients to your website, people that are exactly from the same town as you are. Oh, and probably her friends will ask her (Alison) if you’ve done a good job and if you did, then…bang!! You’ll get instant word-of-mouth publicity of the best kind, absolutely free!

This is the real power of Google Plus and why it is especially good for Photographers (and especially good for Wedding ones).

PS: It’s been a long time since I wrote a post because we’ve been incredible busy getting all the stuff ready for the launch of our Marketing Photography Websites service.

By the way, our websites are fully integrated with Google Plus, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. This is done in a way that will get even more +1, Likes, Tweets to your pages. Stay tuned for more news about our service!

Photo by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamesjustin/"}James Justin{/a}

Do you live in a place where there are a ton of photographers?

If yes, then you’ll need to specialize if you want to stay in business. All of course while doing something you enjoy doing.

This list features niches that work with photography as a service, although some of them could also be used as stock photography, naturally.

The best niche for you is:

• Something you have a passion doing – Don’t do something you don’t like to do!
• Something you have the ability to do – Face it, we’re never the best at what we want.
• Something that has demand where you live – Don’t specialize in nature photography if you live in New York!

Photo by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/brainteaser/"}Brain Teaser{/a}

Architecture Photography

How to make money with it?

Shooting custom houses, indoors and outdoors. Charge for the creation of photos and for the licenses and sell them as stock, as well. If you live in area with a lot of competition there are plenty of profitable sub-niches like real-estate photography, restaurant photography and others.

Who’s the audience?

Design and Architecture firms, real estate agents and architecture magazines.

Corporate Photography

How to make money with it?

Shooting executive portraits, corporate events and other corporate needs. High opportunity for recurrent work because once you prove yourself to a company, they will keep coming to you. There’s an infinite amount of sub-niches worth exploring!

Who’s the audience?

Companies CEO’s and owners.

Photo by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/21561428@N03/"}Las Initially{/a}

Product Photography

How to make money with it?

Shooting products like cell-phones, cars or other products to be used on advertising or other end. This is a massive category, I advise you to break it into smaller niches like car photography or jewelery photography. Sometimes corporate photography can give you the opportunity to do this.

Who’s the audience?

Companies that create products.

Image by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/robwallace/"}Robert Wallace{/a}

Wedding Photography

How to make money with it?

Shooting weddings, engagements and all things related. This is a pretty big market with a lot of money to be made but also with a lot of competition.

Who’s the audience?

Engaged couples and their parents.

Family Photography

Image by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bass_nroll/"}Bass_Nroll{/a}

How to make money with it?

Shooting family portraits and also pregnant moms, babies or high-school seniors and selling prints and the rights to the photos. This is usually the first market and the easiest to explore.

Who’s the audience?

Parents.

Food Photography

How to make money with it?

Shooting all kinds of food for magazines or restaurant advertisements. Editorial is still pretty healthy in this niche.

Who’s the audience?

Food magazines, chefs, restaurants.

Fashion Photography

Photo by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/newyork/"}Cyril Attias{/a}

How to make money with it?

Shooting clothing and other fashion items to advertisements or fashion magazines (much harder to get into). There’s a lot of money to be made on this niche because there are constantly new products to be advertised.

Who’s the audience?

Clothing companies and fashion magazines.

Pet Photography

How to make money with it?

Shooting dogs,  cats and other pet portraits. It’s a profitable market because it’s not easy to do and there’s not too many people doing it.

Who’s the audience?

Pet owners and magazines.

Photo by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/davnull/"}David Murobi{/a}

Band Photography

How to make money with it?

Shooting band promos, album covers, live concerts and selling prints and license to the photos.

Who’s the audience?

Bands, musicians and record labels.

Nature Photography

How to make money with it?

Selling prints, stock and teaching other photographers the art of nature photography with workshops and classes.

Photo by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiltti/"}Tiltti{/a}

Who’s the audience?

Photographers and nature lovers.

When it doesn’t pay off to specialize in a niche?

If you live in a small area where there aren’t many competitors. If that’s the case then it’s better to be a jack of all trades.

Do you know some more niches? Let me know in the comments!

Image by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/churl/250235218/"}Churl{/a}

You most likely specialize in a photography field, such as real estate photography or wedding photography but is your blog targeted for that audience?

Post Something Your Audience Cares About

Before publishing a post you have to make sure that it’s going to be 100% useful or interesting to your audience. Ask yourself, what does my audience wants? That’s what you need to blog about.

For example, let’s say you’re a real estate photographer in Chicago:

If you’re a real estate photographer in Chicago, then your audience is real estate agents that sell houses in Chicago. What do these realtors want? They want to sell more houses in Chicago. Blog about what they need to do to sell more houses, blog about Chicago, blog about houses and furniture, blog about photography and how it can help them.

Image by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/clarkmaxwell/"}Clark Maxwell{/a}

What if your audience doesn’t have anything in common and you don’t what to write about?

If this is your case then it’s possible that your audience might be too big and you should narrow your niche and re-target your audience.

Don’t Post Advanced Photography Tips If Your Audience Isn’t Photographers

This is the most common mistake photographers make when posting on their blogs. If you’re posting photography tips for advanced photographers and your audience is not photographers you’re wasting your time.

Blogging Works For Everyone Because Everyone Has Something To Say

Blogging is extremely useful in most cases, especially if you’re not a super well known for photographer and are fighting for business, and even then it might be useful to reinforce your branding but sometimes it’s not worth it.

Blogging Software For Photographers

PS: As some of you know we are planning to launch a website service for photographers, very very soon. This is a service that will make blogging very easy and very effective for photographers.

The benefits of blogging are immense and my personal objective is to get every photographer blogging the right way and making real business from it.

Stay tuned!

And I’m not kidding when I say a lot because Google is getting more local, everyday. Lately it has merged the regular search results with the Google Maps results (a.k.a Google Places). Google Places is way for businesses to get their own addresses listed in Google.

This means that the results for a search query like “photographers in Riverside, CA” now returns the photographers websites and their locations pinpointed to a map.

If you’re not in this map, your clients will not see you. That’s why it is now more important than ever to associate your photography business with a location and show it to G00gle.

Here are a few things that you can do to optimize your site for Google Places:

• Create only one Google Place listing. If you have two or more photography studios, use the one closer to the biggest population center.
• Do not hide your address! Give the exact details of your address, including for example a suite number, if it’s the case.
• Google doesn’t allow a P.O box as your address.
• Write your location on your website title tags! Make sure that you include your city and the state. For example, title your homepage as “John Doe Photographer | Riverside, CA“.
• Include your full address on your homepage and in all important pages (on a widget, for example). Make sure that the address on your site matches the one you have on your Places Page, the best is to copy the exact address from the Google Places listing.
• Make sure that your phone number matches your area code. Do not use an 800 phone number! Google Places pays attention to this to make sure that your business is exactly where it is.
• When building links to your photography website, make sure that you put your location keywords on the link’s anchor text. For example, “photographer in London” or “photographer in Riverside CA”.
• Submit your photography website to local directories.  Google Places calls this citations and they help reassure that your photography business is where it says it is.
• Incentive your clients to review your services in your Google Place listing. Although reviews don’t help with rankings, they help distinguish your website from the competitors on the results page!

Now tell me, do you have a Google Places listing?

Image by: {a href="http://www.wordle.net/"}Wordle.net{/a}

Do you know that the domain name (eg. example.com) you choose can affect your photography website rankings directly and indirectly?

There are people whose job is to buy and sell domains. It’s a serious business and a good domain can definitely influence your business.

Keyword Rich Domains for Photography Websites

Image by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/doug88888/"}Doug88888{/a}

A keyword rich domain is a domain name that contains the main keywords of what you specialize in.

So for example, let’s say if the search query made of the keywords “Dallas photographer” generates a lot of searches then a keyword rich domain for that would be “dallasphotographer.com”.

Until March 2011, Google was indeed giving higher rankings to websites with keyword rich domains but since then they have reduced the importance given to keyword rich domains.

Still, there’s something to be gained with them.

Examples of keyword rich domains:

http://www.italianweddingphotographer.com/
http://www.fordfamilyphotography.com/
http://ishootshows.com/

Advantages

• People usually tend to link with the keywords of that website’s domain and that’s great for a keyword rich domain because it gets more links with the right keywords
• Google does give a little ranking boost (although not as much as before)

Disadvantages

• Nobody remembers keyword rich domains
• Spammy look (eg. buyviagraonline.com)
• Domains are expensive to buy
• Worthless for branding

Image by: {a href="http://www.kaysha.com/kaysha"}Kaysha{/a}

Branded Domains for Photography Websites

A branded domain is a domain that contains made up words like “Twitter” or your own name.

Branded domain names names don’t have any keywords related to the photography business.

Recently, the web has been going in the branded domain direction with more and more websites coming up with interesting names like Zoomr or Flickr.

Advantages

• Easier to remember
• Look more professional
• Less expensive

Disadvantages

• It’s a little bit harder to rank for your keywords

Examples of branded domains:

http://www.chasejarvis.com/
http://shuttersisters.com/

Mixed Domains

In my opinion the best time of domain is a mixed domain with the right keywords and a brandable name. Something like JohnPhotography.com or JackieWeddings.com.

1 Branding word + 1 Keyword = Great domains

I like two word domains because they are easy to remember and are visually appealing. You should definitely avoid long domains.

Bear all of this in mind when you choose the domain name for your photography website!

It’s something related to the way that photographers use their portfolio and their blog. It’s a confusion that usually translates into what is for me the most annoying question one could ask right in the front page of a photography website.

Do you want to go to the blog or the website?

When I see this I almost always answer with a click on the back button of my browser.

What should be what?

• The portfolio – The part of your website where you showcase your best images.
• The blog – The part of your website where you regularly post content useful to your audience. The content is shown chronologically.
• The website - It’s all the pages and the design that glues them all.
• The URL – It’s the name of a given page on the internet. This post’s URL is http://blog.buzzrain.com/the-most-annoying-question-on-a-photography-website.
• The domain – It’s the main URL of your website (eg. http://buzzrain.com), that identifies your website.

Photo by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/atibens/"}Atibens{/a}

Merge Your Blog And Portfolio

This means that your portfolio should have an URL like http://johndoe.com/portfolio and your blog http://johndoe.com/blog. Not http://johndoe.com and http://johndoeblog.com, respectively! Avoid sub-domains as well.

Your website should have a design common to all pages, including the blog, guaranteeing a seamless experience.

Joining The Blog And Portfolio Gets You More Clients

Here’s the reasons why:

• It’s great for SEO because it improves domain authority
• Your blog leverages your portfolio in terms of search engine rankings
• More awareness to your portfolio can increase the conversion rates of visitors to clients
• It’s easier to navigate and it’s more pleasant and branded experience

Examples of websites that do it right:

http://violabrun.com/
http://keatingphotography.com/
http://svenseebeck.com/

Now, I know that most photography website providers don’t allow you to do this but stay tuned and I’ll show how you can easily merge your blog and portfolio!

These factors are:

• Relevancy – which is how well your pages use technology to describe what you want to show.
• Authority – which is how popular your pages and your domain are on web.

Search Engines Give Higher Rankings To Authority Photography Websites

Ordering websites by popularity or authority is something that was invented by Google. So how can they measure the popularity of a website?

Links, Links, Links

The quality and the amount of inbound links to your website from other external websites is what makes a website or page popular.

• Links from higher ranking websites are of higher quality
• The more quality links, the better
• Links coming from websites related to your topic are better (like other photography blogs)
• Low quality links like those coming from spam websites are worthless

Facebook, Twitter and Google+ Count As Well

Search engines use signals like the amount of people following you on Facebook or Twitter, or the amount of retweets, likes and +1′s your webpages have. The more social your pages are, the better!

Also, with Google+ the web search is becoming even more social. For example, did you know that if you’re searching for wedding photographer in London and a friend of yours on a Facebook likes and shares a link from a wedding photographer in London, that exact page will appear on the first page of your search results?

Domain and Page Popularity

Domain popularity (or authority) takes into account the total amount and quality of links to your website.

Page popularity takes into account the total amount and quality of links for a specific page, only.

Each link you get to any page of your photography website improves the domain authority, which in turn helps all the pages of your website ranking higher.

[jbox color="blue"]A specific page of your website will rank on first place for a specific keyword when its domain and page authority sum outranks all the other pages on the internet.[/jbox]

Search Engines Give Higher Rankings To Relevant Photography Websites

In order to rank for a specific set of keywords you have to make sure that your website is relevant to those keywords. Search engines can only read the text on your web pages so you’ll have to use text (and the HTML tags) in the best way possible in order to correctly describe your content.

Search engines need to know exactly what your pages are about

Photographers usually don’t pay too much attention to text and that’s one of the reasons it’s hard to make a photography website relevant to a specific set of keywords.

• Use the ALT tag in your photos and make sure it has the keywords your targeting
  
• Use the HTML Title tag
• Use Header tags
• Use good information hierarchy (having the least amount of links possible between the homepage and the content)
• Don’t duplicate your content (having various pages with almost the same text counts as duplicate)

Link Relevancy for Photography Websites

When you link to a website, you use a string of text made out of words. Search engines follow these links and save these keywords on their extensive databases associating them with your page.

If 10 different bloggers link to your page with the same keywords, a search engine will assume that your page is about those keywords. When you get the possibility of linking to your website, use the right keywords.

The Perfect SEO Page

The perfect SEO page combines the relevancy and importance factors into a super optimized page.

It should make the right use of HTML tags such as the page title, image ALT and the header tags to make sure it’s relevant to its topic. It also has lots of inbound links from quality websites, its fully integrated with social media and has a bunch of likes, tweets and+1′s, and it has great content, obviously!

You’re ready to dominate the world, now!

This list of great blogs will definitely get you inspired! All these blogs were made by photographers just like you and most of them are getting thousands of visitors every day.

If you like this post or your blog has been featured in it, share it with your photographer friends!

Chase Jarvis’s Photography Blog

Joe Mcnally’s Photography Blog

John Batdorff’s Photography Blog

John Keatley’s Photography Blog

Colby Brown’s Photography Blog

Phill Price’s Photography Blog

Scott Wyden’s Photography Blog

Steve Creek’s Photography Blog

Erik Kim’s Photography Blog

Jessica Claire Photography Blog

Jasmine Star Photography Blog

Melissa Jill Photography Blog

Amelia Lyon Photography Blog

Martin Pot Photography Blog

Richard Peters Photography Blog

K. Praslowicz’s Photography Blog

David Sanger’s Photography Blog

Alex Rodriguez’s Photography Blog

Stacy Reeves’ Photography Blog

Carlos Cazurro’s Photography Blog

Juan-Carlos Hernández’s Photography Blog

Eolo Perfido’s Photography Blog

Sarah Beth’s Photography Blog

Joe Elario’s Photography Blog

Sephi Bergerson’s Photography Blog

James Maher’s Photography Blog

Jessica Watson’s Photography Blog

C’mon, share your photography blog in the comments!

This post shows why this happens, how to solve it and increase the clients you get from your website!

The problems:

• You offer everything to everyone
• Your audience and what you offer on your website don’t match each other
• Your website doesn’t have a clear call-to-action

The solutions:

Image by: {a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwichary/"}Marcin Wichary{/a}

1. Clearly Define Your Offer And Who Your Audience is

You probably already specialize in one specific field of photography, a photography niche. If you don’t, this is the first step you have to take in order to get a chance at photography.

It’s better that you define your audience first and your offer second, otherwise you might get stuck doing something nobody is looking for.

2. Find Out Where Your Audience Is, Online

If you’re a wedding photographer then your audience is people that are looking for information about weddings. They might hang out at wedding blogs, wedding forums, wedding directories and other wedding websites.

Find a way to get noticed on these places and make sure that these people see your website!

3. Optimize Your Website Just For Your Audience

You cannot offer everything to everyone. You have to focus on your audience only.

Your website has to be the answer to your audience’s questions and the solution to the doubts that are on their minds.

Great call-to-action from: {a href="http://thingsthatarebrown.com/"}ThingsThatAreBrown.com{/a}

You have to create pages that solve your audience’s problems. You have to write about things they are looking for on Google and other websites.

How to make an effective call-to-action

A call-to-action is what you want your visitors to do.

If you want your visitors to hire you, you have to make that clear for them. How can I do that, you ask.

Create a big text box with big buttons like the one on the left.

This call-to-action is from ThingsThatAreBrown.com (love the name!) and it’s particularly good because it works for people that already know you and want to get in touch and for others that want to learn more about you by seeing your portfolio.

Remember, to have people take action you have to make it easy and irresistible at the same time.

Extra tip: Offering something for free as an incentive always works!

Malcolm Gladwell, the British journalist, is dead right when he says that we learn by examples. You’ve been reading about SEO for Photography Websites but it’s important to see what photographers are really doing.

This post will show some good examples of SEO portfolio photography websites by some good photographers!

David Keating Photography

Catherine Leo

Lisa Ballentine

Todd Owyoung – Ishootshows.com

Do you know any more SEO Photography Websites? Share them in the comments!