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 2013.  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 et al. 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 Sundays.  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 essential.  If you are wedding or social photographers, then the images, presumably, will be your images 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?). You can get an idea of my blogging pattern in the metrics data shown.

5. Who are you writing for?

A cardinal sin in the post-Panda and Penguin world of photographers blogging is the seemingly irresistible urge to write content for Google, rather than your clients.  Don’t. We’ve all seen sites where it says things like I am a wedding photographer in Wiltshire, I am also classed as a Wiltshire Wedding Photographer, and I can photograph weddings in the county of Wiltshire”.  This is playing with fire these days.  Google has wised up.

My rule of thumb is this:

Write substantial, fresh, original content that my clients will find engaging, and Google will do the same. In fact, I often encourage people to think twice about everything they are blogging.  If the thought process is:  This will be good for SEO, then it probably won’t be.  If the thought process is:  This will be great for my clients, then it probably will be good for your SEO.

 6. Encourage engagement & sharing

In this fickle world we live in, people often consume information without doing much more with it.  When we write a substantial, fresh, original blog piece that is great for our clients (see what I did there?), we want our clients to read it, but we also want them to share and evangelise on our behalf.  Embrace Social Media: Twitter and Facebook (you do have a Facebook Business Page for your photography business.

We need to encourage people to share; don’t be afraid to ask people to do so or leave comments.  This is a basic rule of marketing: calls to action.  All successful advertising will have a call to action.

If you are a wedding photographer, you want to be encouraging your brides and grooms to shout from the rooftops how awesome you are (you are awesome, right? That’s what everyone says on Twitter anyway…).  Get them to spread the news and use other visitors to your website as different marketing tribes.  If you can get people to engage and share, you are empowering people to partly facilitate your off-site SEO.