Photography SEO – Google’s Search Plus And The Professional Photographer

SEO for the professional photographer can be a challenge at the best of times, but (just to make life even more fun and exciting) we also have to contend with the constant flow of changes to “the rules“, or even upheavals to the basic landscape of the search environment. This is one reason why my Photography SEO Academy course includes time with a personal 1-on-1 photography coach – to make sure that the course doesn’t get out of date!

Could this be the new Twitter bird? Photography SEO could become more difficult with Google's latest changes

The other day, I posted an article on “Photographer SEO Challenges – Google Hiding Search Data“, which talked about the fact that Google is no longer communicating to us the keywords people use to search for our photography websites if they are signed in to their Google account via a secure connection.

Well, today, Google is in the news again after announcing some sweeping changes to the actual search interface itself, something they usually leave well alone (with the exception of their entertaining Google Doodles)…

… some, as you can see from the graphic above, are not too happy…

Google Search Goes Social – Sort Of

The first article I read this morning while enjoying my coffee was “Google Merges Search and Google+ Into Social Media Juggernaut“. The short version of this is that Google has created an update to its search interface called “Search Plus Your World” that will be available to anyone signed in to their Google+ account. The aim is to provide users with the ability to search within their own social network, which might be useful if Google were actually playing nicely with Facebook, Twitter and the other social networks!

Ironically, for a social network, Google+ seems to be acting in a rather antisocial manner.

By not including Facebook or Twitter links in their search results, Google is essentially thumbing their noses at everyone else, and abusing their position as the world’s number one search engine in an attempt to further their own goals.

For a company whose motto is “do no evil” this seems rather out of character!

Twitter Becomes An Angry Bird

While Facebook and Google have been locked in some weird kind of silent cold war, the folks at Twitter are not being so quiet about it. That pretty little blue Twitter bird is in serious danger of joining its “angry” brethren if things don’t improve!

I dread to think how ticked off the “fail whale” is going to be!

The BBC news also posted an article today that details the response by Twitter to Google’s changes – “Twitter unhappy about Google’s social search changes“.

While Twitter are all in a flutter over it, Google are just stonewalling with the comment that “they are just doing what Twitter asked them to by honoring their rel=nofollow links” – basically as a result of failing to come to a prior arrangement between Google and Twitter.

[For those who don't know, "rel=nofollow" on a web link tells the search engines to ignore the link.]

The upshot of all this is that tweets, and the information shared by many of those tweets, will not be indexed by Google or returned in the “search plus your world” results – not something that Twitter is particularly fond of.

What Does This Mean For The Professional Photographer?

So what does all this nonsense mean for us photography business owners? The answer is, probably not too much right at this moment, but the effects will undoubtedly become more noticeable over time, and much of that depends on how popular the Google+ social network becomes.

In a worst-case scenario, extrapolating to the point of pure speculation, where everyone is on Google+, I can imagine that traditional SEO through keywords etc. would become extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Because Google would be returning results based on how people are connected, and the information they’ve shared with each other, it might make it very difficult for a photographer to attract new clients who are completely outside their social circles.

Think of an Internet where the only search tool available is the Facebook news-feed, and you start to get the idea.

One possible solution in that instance, of course, would be to be connected to as many people as possible, and to make the loudest “noise” in the room – not exactly what we have in mind for a social network. In fact, it sounds awfully like becoming a nuisance or, worse still, a spammer.

Imagine that.

Google, the crusader against spam, actually causing people to become spammers in order to be heard above the background noise…

What Do You Think?

Of course, this is all random speculation, and there’s a 90%+ probability that I’m completely wrong, so I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts on this subject.

For now, I’m off to tend my Google+ profile and watch those angry Twitter birds…

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