How I Doubled Traffic to my Photography Blog with Backlinks

If you haven’t already figured it out I love photography, but with years of design and SEO experience under my belt I feel like it is time to share some wealth with the community. Photography is a tough business to get into simply because any little town or suburb is saturated with “Photographers”. This is a follow up post in our Photography Business Series. If you haven’t read the first post on why you need a photography blog for your business, check it out here.

What I want to do today is give you a couple quick actionable tips to help get your website noticed. After all one of the biggest misconceptions out there is that if you build this super duper awesome website that people are automatically going to see it. Last thing you want to do is spend thousands of dollars creating this amazing website and have get ZERO traffic to it.

What are Backlinks?

Backlinks are the sometimes referred to incoming links. Links pointing to your website. Backlinks are essential for your photography website. Backlinks are permanent links to your site that is on another website. Like for example when you wrote that post about your friends business and put a link to their website in the post. That is a permanent link back to their website; a backlink. When someone clicks on that link they are directed back to the linked website. If you want to learn more on backlinks check this out. Beginners Guide to Backlinks

Relationship between Google and Backlinks

Don’t believe what you read out there that states you can rank your photography website with zero backlinks, they are essential to creating a solid foundation for your business in google. Google has researched millions of websites and millions of keywords to come up with a special way to compare them all and rank accordingly.

Google has their own secret algorithm that they use to rank websites or rather keywords. That’s right, keywords. Keywords are the terms that people search for in Google. For example, wedding photographer near me or best wedding photographer in destin, fl. Your website can rank for several keywords at once, we will get into how to do that in another post. I just want to introduce you to the basics of backlinks and how to get a few of them for next to nothing.

Are Backlinks Necessary?

 

As mentioned before google has an algorithm that they use to rank keywords and they look heavily at backlinks. Google treats backlinks like references you have on your resume. The stronger the reference the more likely you are to get a job. The stronger the backlink the more likely you are to get ranked higher. So if you have a friend with a great blog with lots of traffic and you are able to get a backlink from their site that is like getting a golden ticket. One of the easiest way to do that is with guest posting. Which we will get into a little later on, point being backlinks are essential for your SEO success for your photography blog.

How do you get Backlinks

There are several ways to get backlinks for your photography blog. My intent here is to just touch the surface on the ways you can do so, a view from above not a step by step guide. I will include some links to resources I have personally used before that are very successful. Some of these links maybe affiliate links that pay us a commission if you click them.

Guest Posting

Guest Posting is where you write a blog post for someone else’s website or blog with the intent to get a backlink back to your blog. Pretty simple right; wrong! Guest Posting is one of the hardest techniques to master among the listed link types. Because of that I have linked to an awesome guide on how to make sure your guest post gets seen an approved! The following is an excerpt from the resource:

The benefits of guest blogging are clear:
1. You land backlinks from authority sites.
2. People look up to you as an expert.
3. Targeted referral traffic floods to your site.
Amazing, right?
The only question is:
How can you get BETTER results from guest posting?

The rest of the article can be found Here:  Guide to Guest Posts

Citations

Just as backlinks are super important to your photography business and blog so are citations. Citations are mentions of your business name and address on other websites even if there is no link back to your website. The most important thing about citations is to make sure they are all accurate and that they all match. Moz.com has a great definition on citations.

Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms in Google and Bing. Other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will probably rank higher than businesses with fewer citations.

Citations from well-established and well-indexed portals (i.e., Superpages.com) help increase the degree of certainty the search engines have about your business’s contact information and categorization.

Head over Here for more on citations.
If you would like to have a company build some backlinks/citations for you I can personally recommend Citations Ninja. Great service at a great price.

Broken Link Building

Broken Link Building is just what it sounds like. You search for broken links, or links that linked out to a previous website that is no longer in existence. For example if you wrote an awesome guide on how to photography seniors and I linked out to it on my blog, but then you went out of business or took your blog down I would have a broken link. If someone else found that broken link and contacted me with another resource just as good or better I would more than likely replace that broken link with their link because they were kind enough to point that out for me.

Below is an excerpt from The Broken Link Building Bible
As a link building tactic, broken link building is an effective, white-hat, scalable, content-focused link building strategy that builds links through finding broken links, recreating that broken content, and helping webmasters replace broken links with your corrected link.

Broken link building may perhaps be the most effective, white-hat link building strategy in years. In particular, broken link building is appealing because the success of the campaign is directly proportional to how much good you do for the web.
The full Broken Link Building Bible can be found Here.

Web 2.0s

What is a web 2.0? Lets turn to our friends at Wikipedia for that.
A Web 2.0 site may allow users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to the first generation of Web 1.0-era websites where people were limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites and social media sites (e.g., Facebook), blogs, wikis, folksonomies (“tagging” of websites and links), video sharing sites (e.g., YouTube), hosted services, Web applications (“apps”), collaborative consumption platforms, and mashups.

Some popular web 2.0s we use all the time are wordpress.com, weebly.com, tumblr.com, twitter.com, facebook.com, medium.com, reddit.com etc. The great thing about web 2.0’s is that they are free. You don’t have to pay to get them, just simply register to the respected website with your email address and you are good to go.

An extra bonus if you would like to have them built for you. Head over to this Huge time saver 

Syndication with IFTTT

IFTTT is If this then that or IFTTT. You can create several recipes from several different resources. Her is what Wikipedia describes it as

IFTTT is a free web-based service that allows users to create chains of simple conditional statements, called “recipes”, which are triggered based on changes to other web services such as Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.[4] IFTTT is an abbreviation of “If This Then That”.

An example “recipe” might consist of sending an e-mail message if the IFTTT user tweets using a certain hashtag. Or, if the user is tagged by someone on Facebook, then that photo will be added to the user’s cloud-based photo archive.

One of the many ways you can utilize IFTTT for backlinks is to connect your web 2.0 accounts to IFTTT and then link them to your blogs RSS feed. So every time you post a new article on your photography blog it is then syndicated to your web 2.0s automatically creating a backlink to your blog or website.

Forum Profiles

Do you belong to any photography forums? I’m sure you do and if you do you will want to make sure that you have your website url posted in your profile page. Why? Because this is an easy way to get a relevant backlink to y9our photography website. If you don’t belong to any photography forums just head over to google and search for a few, register for them, and then put your website url in your profile page. Simple easy way to get some highly relevant backlinks to your website.

We hope you have found this article helpful if you have we would appreciate it if you would share it on social media or with your fellow photographers. Feel free to leave us a comment below with your favorite backlink tactic.

Here are some more helpful link building strategies
http://backlinko.com/seo-techniques

17 Untapped Backlink Sources (Updated)

source http://photographicblog.com/how-i-doubled-traffic-to-my-photography-blog-with-backlinks/

Tips for taking Photos in the Autumn/Fall

Autumn’s Here

The days are getting shorter; the leaves are changing colour and will soon fall, ‘daddy long-legs’ bumping against the windows and spiders in the bath. This can only mean one thing: Autumn’s here.

So just think of all those lovely photographs you’ll be able to take: trees with russet, red and yellow leaves; the early morning sun shining through the mist and fog, and winter migrants about to arrive on our lakes and shores.There is a wealth of things to photograph at this time of the year.

© A Webber

Autumn colours

I think that nothing beats a beach tree for Autumn colour, and if you can find many together in a beach woods you can get some fantastic Autumn pictures.

Last October I went to Wandlebury park near Cambridge to get some Autumn pictures of a beach wood; I had this vision of the sun streaming through and russet leaves onto a dappled leaf strewn floor, but instead, the weather was dull and drizzly with an overcast sky, but I still managed to get one or two decent pictures.

That’s the problem with photographing outside; you can’t always rely on the weather, well, not here in the UK, but even when the weather isn’t good, there’s always something worth photographing; you just have to look a bit harder.

Image by Erika Sievert

What to photograph?

Try looking for reflections in water such as lakes, ponds or rivers, or long shadows cast by the lower Autumn sun; but don’t just look at the bigger picture; theres a wealth of other things to photograph, such as a spiders web covered in dew; or a close up of a leaf; things that epitomizes Autumn.

Early riser

When taking pictures in the Autumn, it’s worth getting up early; yes,it might be a bit chilly at that time of the morning, but, it’s worth it just to capture images when the sun is about to rise; a time that a lot of us don’t normally see. One good thing about the days shortening is that the dawn gets a little later each day, so, we don’t have to get up quite so early to capture a nice dawn shot.

© A Webber

Aperture

I normally use aperture priority mode when I’m photographing; if I want everything near and far in sharp focus then I just set a my camera to a high f/stop (small aperture) and the camera will choose the correct speed, if I want to isolate my subject by having the foreground and background out of focus, such as a single hanging leaf or a dew covered cobweb, then I use a low f/stop number.

Equipment

So what equipment do you need? well, a tripod is a must if you want to get a blur free image; professionals and serious amateurs always use one, even in bright sunlight.

Use a cable release if your camera supports one; even better if you have a remote cable release, then you won’t need to touch the camera when taking the picture. It’s a good idea to make sure your camera battery is fully charged, and also, you have a spare one; the colder days can reduce the battery’s life.

Some use (and swear by) a polarizing filter; particularly good for making the sky a deeper blue, cutting through the haze and mist, and accentuating the clouds, although, if you want to get a shot of mist over water, such as a lake or pond or the atmosphere of the morning sun shining through the fog then best leave the polarizing filter off.

Some More Autumn / Fall scenes

Image by gt8073a

Image by Thomas@BOD

Image by Michael Whyte

‘Acorns’ by Kaloer

‘Pumpkins’ by gt8073a

‘Urban Autumn’ by dicktay2000

‘Mushroom’ by Jos Dielis

‘Fall of Forest’ by penttja

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Canon EOS 6D 20.2 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3.0-Inch LCD and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM Lens Kit - Wi-Fi Enabled

BM Premium 2-Pack of 2 LP-E6, LP-E6N Batteries and Charger for Canon XC10, EOS 60D, EOS 60Da, EOS 70D, EOS 80D, EOS 5D II, EOS 5D III, EOS 5Ds, EOS 6D, EOS 7D, EOS 7D Mark II Digital SLR Camera

Fujifilm FinePix S8200 16.2MP Digital Camera with 3-Inch LCD (Black) (OLD MODEL)

 

source http://photographicblog.com/how-to-photograph-the-colourful-autumn-season/

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Canon 5D Mark iv Rumors and Release Date

Well its official the Canon 5D Mark iv announcement has been set for August 25th, 2016.  Granted there is no where near as much hype for this release as the next iphone or Apples’ bi-annual WWDC.  But for us photographers  anytime one of the Big Guns releases a new version of their sacred cow it is exciting!!  You know that feeling you use to get on christmas eve as a kid, yea you know what I mean, thats the feeling.

But like any good product some specs and photos of the Canon 5S Mark 4 have been leaked to anonymous source, just kidding.  Digicame-info claims to have what looks like official product images and specs of the new Canon 5D Mark IV.

The new 5D Mark IV comes with a new 30.4MP sensor, but the big item everyone is talking about is the 4:2:2 8-bit 500Mbps MJPEG video recording, surpassing the previous spec of 4:2:2 8-bit 50Mbps.  On the outside it is going to look and feel very similar to the Canon 5D Mark iii with an added bonus of a touch screen.

As of now it looks like the Mark 4 is going to come in around $3000-$3500, body only.  The 5D Mark iv will come with GPS, full touchscreen, anti-flicker, cFast Technology, and all of the previous 1DX features for autofocus.  The anti-flicker technology hit the scene with the 7D mark ii, basically it adjusts the shutter to accommodate for poor exposure caused by overhead lights flickering.  If you want 4k video from canon you will have to pickup a Canon 1DC or a Canon 1DX Mark II.

The photos below are from Digicame-info

 

source http://photographicblog.com/canon-5d-mark-iv-rumors-and-release-date/

Steve Jobs Inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame

Exclusive article from Tech Crunch on Steve Jobs’ induction into the International Photography Hall of Fame.

It’s the 50th anniversary of the International Photography Hall of Fame, a museum and foundation in St. Louis, and among the inductees this year are some real whoppers: Annie Leibovitz, Ernst Haas, Ken Burns… and Steve Jobs.

Say what you will about the plague of Instagramming millennials descending on the fair field of photography, the fact is that Apple has led the charge on mobile imaging basically since the original iPhone and its amazing 2-megapixel camera. And for that focus we must give Jobs his due credit.

In the IPHF’s own words:

Steve helped create products that revolutionized the creative world and became essential tools for designers, filmmakers, music producers and photographers. Passionate about photography both in his work and personal life, his most profound contribution to the artistic community and the world is the iPhone which, in less than a decade, has changed both the art of photography and the industry around it.

The iPhone and its reliably solid camera and software are probably the most important contributor to Jobs being entered into the hall of fame, but it’s worth noting that Apples were used by creatives long before that happened, and for good reason. Early choices on displays, inputs and standards made them essential for work in type and design — and, of course, Photoshop was originally a Mac exclusive.

On that note, John and Thomas Knoll, the creators of that famous and enduring piece of software, are also being inducted. It’s hard to overstate the effect Photoshop has had on the world of photography — not to mention other software that came from the house that it built, like Lightroom.

Sebastião Salgado, famed photojournalist, is also being recognized, as well as Graham Nash, whom you might know from Crosby, Stills & Nash (plus or minus Young). (Let’s hear some love for Daylight Again.)

“This year’s inductees represent the perfect combination of innovation and artistry; bridging photography’s pioneering past with its fantastic future,” said IPHF director Patty Wente in the announcement.

There will be an event officially celebrating the new inductees on October 28, so if you were thinking of visiting, keep that in mind.

Article Source: TechCrunch.com

source http://photographicblog.com/steve-jobs-inducted-into-the-international-photography-hall-of-fame/

Nikon D500 Review

Image credit: Cameralabs.com

NIkon’s Newest Semi-pro APS-C Camera, D500

Nikon introduced the D500 win January with its full-framed brother the D5. The D500 features Nikons popular DX crop sensor. Nikon’s last semi-pro APS-C was almost 7 years ago with the introduction of the D300, however it looks like the D500 has been worth the wait in Gold.

Nikon has used the same autofocus sensor in the D5 and D500, thus given the latter an almost 100% phase-detect autofocus coverage in an APS-C body. Not only that the Nikon D500 can shoot up to 200 raw files continuously with a XQD memory card.

Through in all the latest technical add-ons like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, NFC, and Nikons latest Snap Bridge tech, 4k video, tilting and touch screen and you have a nice new contender for APS-C bodies. Albeit the Nikon D500 comes with one of the highest prices tags at nearly $2,000, It is definitely worth a look.

The Full Review

Check out a full in-depth review over Here

The D500’s Competition

The Nikon D500 does have some stiff competition though. Even though we all know I have always been a Nikon shooter, when we get into price ranges this high there are several options we can look at. The closest APS-C body to this one is the Canon 7d Mark ii. The Nikon edges it out on a couple specs but they are very closely related.

Again at this price range you can pick up a full-framed D750 body, granted it doesn’t have 4k video but you get a professional full frame sensor body for the same price.

Lastly with prices this high you can also start looking at some serious Mirror less DSLR cameras too. Either Full frame Mirror less or crop sensor there are several to choose from.

1. The Sony A7 and A7r
2. The Olympus OM-D M5
3. The Panasonic GH4

I guess what I am trying to say is make sure you know what your needs are before you jump into spending over $1500 for a new camera body, because when we get into prices this high there are a lot of options to choose from.

Nikon D500 Sample Photos

Image Credit: CameraLabs.com

Customer Reviews

 

source http://photographicblog.com/nikon-d500-review/

Why Every Photographer Needs a Photography Blog

You heard this before, you need a blog, but chances are you just let those words go in one ear and out the other. I know I have. Or maybe you are the type who has filled your reasoning with excuses why you don’t or why you can’t have a photography blog. Well I’m here to tell you that you need a blog for your photography business.

Word of mouth advertising is great, but lets face it even if I here about you via word of mouth, I’m still going to go check out your website before I reach out to you. You know you would do the same thing too. So lets dive into why you need blog and how to get one.

Why every photographer needs a photography website / blog

Do I really need a blog? It doesn’t really help that much does it? Not another shiny object I have to add to my ever-growing to-do lists. Will a blog really bring me more clients? I’m sure there are just a few questions that you are asking yourself as you are reading this. I was before I got into the whole online thing years ago. But lets face it, if you are going to thrive as a photographer or business in todays’ world you have to have a presence online. No questions about it.

Blogging is by far the easiest way to do this. Even better it is worth its weight in gold if you do it right. Big G, Google, uses and algorithm to rank websites in their search engine and if you can get your website or blog to the front page or the top of the listings more and more potential clients are going to see you.

But how do you do that? Simple, Search Engine Optimization, SEO. Don’t’ worry stay calm I will show you in other articles exactly how to SEO your blog for specific keywords you want to rank for. Today we are just going to touch the surface on the main reasons to start your blog.

Photography Blog vs. Social Media

The only company that changes their algorithm every day, week, and month is Facebook. So if you are relying on social media only or particularly Facebook to grow your clientele I have bad news for you, it is way tougher than trying to get your blog ranked in Google. Not saying it isn’t important to stay active on Social Media, just stating with the same effort on a blog the results are way better.

What your blog is not

Here is what your photography blog is not used for, displaying pictures of your clients so they can see them online. Your photography website is not intended for your current clients, it is intended for your potential and future clients.

What your blog is

A photography blog is the easiest way to find and communicate with new clients and others. The sole purpose is to bring you more business. How does it do this? We could go on and on for days on this subject but I’ll keep it short.

• Increase foot traffic to your business
• Increase web traffic to your business
• Show Professionalism
• Develop Trust
• Build your Brand
• Provide Examples of your work
• Etc.

Every post, Every article you put on your blog is sent to Google and its million of Google bots. The more your write on your photography blog the more notes Google gets. The more notes Google gets the more opportunities you have to reach more customers. There is a specific science on how to cultivate the perfect blog post and what is needed to wreak all the benefits from Google, but more on that later. Now lets just focus on getting a writing schedule together to quickly cover the major aspects of your business.

Ranking your photo blog in Google

How hard is it to rank in Google? Put lightly, not that hard when you know what you want to rank for. For example, if you try to rank for “wedding photographer” chances are going to be slim to nil that you will get on page one, because that is such a broad term to go after with a lot of competition However if you go after a long tail keyword like “your city wedding photographer” or “your city suburb wedding photography” it will be much easier to rank. The idea is to write content around these keywords on your blog to help you rank for that specific term.

To make this process simpler we have included links to articles on how to find high search volume, low competition keywords for your blog.

Case Study

Here is a short story on the power of SEO Optimizing your blog. Recently we connected with a fellow local photographer over coffee one morning. That conversation quickly turned into a 2hour long discussion over her website and some actionable items she could take to help her get more clients. She went home that day and made some of the changes we recommended and guess what happened? The very next day her photography blog showed up on page one for that specific keyword. She was so happy that she bought us a cup of coffee the next time we ran into her.

Simply put if you can follow some quick actionable tips and navigate around your blog we can optimize site to get you fast results. All you have to do is follow our instructions.

How to get started

Sometimes it can be stressful thinking how to start a blog or website. There are a ton of free companies out there offering you a free website. Don’t sign up for one of those. It is like renting an apartment instead of purchasing your own home. If you already have a domain name, great we can build a blog on that domain or enhance your current website. If not then the first step is to secure your domain name. “Your business photography.com”

Next, most businesses and photographers choose to build their blogs with WordPress. Not wordpress.com, that is a free website apartment, a self-hosted wordpress.org website. You can get hosting cheap at Bluehost for around $6.00 a month or if you catch one of their sales you can get hosting as low as $3.00 month. After you get your hosting, you install the wordpress framework on your domain, its simply and usually takes less than five minutes. Lastly it is time to start building your website and blog.

One thing to note real quickly, the learning curve for wordpress web design is really steep. It looks simple in the beginning but can quickly become overwhelming. We recommend you don’t try to build your site yourself but hire a professional to help you with your wordpress website design.

There are web designers out there who specialize in photography blogs and websites and can get you a really professional looking site in no time. We do recommend going with the Genesis framework and themes or ProPhoto themes. They are super easy to work with and produce great looking blogs and websites. Most designers can also offer you a social media package too when building your site to help keep your brand congruent across all platforms.

Follow your passion

Congrats you have made it almost all the way through this post. After you get your website up and rocking do me a favor don’t just post to post. Don’t be one of those photographers who put up photos and a couple of paragraphs and call it a day. Readers can quickly see though posts that are not genuine and sincere. Write with the same passion that caused you to pursue a photography business in the first place. Do that with a little of SEO help from us and you will have a full schedule in no time. Thanks for reading this article and feel free to leave us a comment below!

source http://photographicblog.com/why-every-photographer-needs-a-photography-blog/