What does it take to be a professional wedding photographer in the current economic climate, with equipment changing faster than the weather, and enthusiastic amateurs popping up like weeds?

The Rise of The Machines:

The digital age of photography has truly been a revolution – not only in the technology of photography, but also in the business of photography. Film cameras have largely given way to their digital successors over the last decade, in a rise that can only be described as meteoric. First came the point-and-shoot digital cameras, followed by the dawn of the digital SLR. Now, the equivalent of medium-format digital cameras are becoming more affordable and accessible, at least to the professional photographer.

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Photography Business Ideas professional photographer, wedding

We already talked briefly about the “keywords” meta-tag and how it isn’t really that useful these days when it comes to the process of search engine optimization. Now, we can take a look at one of the meta-tags that actually is useful – the “description” tag.

Perhaps you haven’t even heard of the description meta-tag before or, if you have, you may not think you’ve seen it, but I’m willing to bet that you have – you just might not realize it!

Every time you perform a search in Google, for example, you should see a page of results, each one with a heading you can click on to visit the site in question.

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Photography Website SEO search engine optimization

One of the questions I see often is “What keywords should I use in the meta-tags on my web page?”

The answer to the question, oddly enough, is actually “None.” Keywords, it seems, really might be extinct. But why?

In the early days of the world wide web, when web search engines were in their infancy, before the phrase “Search Engine Optimization” had even been thought of, the folks who set the standards for HTML coding decided that it might be a good idea for each web page to contain some useful information about itself.

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Photography Website SEO search engine optimization

One of the first steps to optimizing your site for the search engines is simply to have correct page titles. The title of a web page is the text that appears at the very top of the browser window when you view a web page, and its importance can be greatly underestimated.

When you perform a search in Google, Yahoo or the other search engines, you will see a page with a list of the results (unless you entered something strange and very obscure). The bold heading for each returned listing usually has one or more of the keywords you were searching for. I say “usually”, because that’s not always the case, as we’ll see in a later article. But, for now, let’s say that the search term you are looking for will generally appear in the heading of each returned listing.

The heading displayed for each result is, in fact, the title of the page you will be sent to if you were to click on the link.

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Photography Website SEO search engine optimization

One of the biggest challenges facing web site developers is how to drive more traffic to the web site. To the surprise of the beginner or inexperienced web-designer, the adage, “Build it and they will come”, doesn’t work in cyberspace. We can build it, make it look as flashy and as creative as we like, but no one will visit the site if they don’t know it’s out there.

There are several ways for your target audience to find out about your site, including:

• Search engines
• Links from other sites
• Your own print or web marketing
• Pay per click (PPC) advertising
• Word of mouth marketing
• Social networks
• Other paid advertising

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Photography Website SEO search engine optimization

Photovision is an educational resource for the professional photographer, and is the brainchild of photographer Ed Pierce.

I had the privilege of attending one of Ed’s seminars in Memphis earlier this year – “Captivated By The Light“. Pun completely intended, it was one of the most illuminating seminars I’ve attended to date. Ed spoke at great length about the importance of correct colour in our work, how to achieve accurate colour, and about the quality of great lighting.

At the seminar, I also signed up for Photovision – an annual membership program for professional photographers. Every two months a new 2 hour DVD arrives in my mailbox, which I have to confess I usually watch the same day if I can. The videos on the DVD include studio tours of successful photographers, interviews with photographers about techniques, sales & marketing, and news of new technologies and important software updates, such as the latest edition of Photoshop, Lightroom etc.

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General education, Photovision