In that post, I mentioned my “trusty spreadsheet” and wanted to talk a little bit more about it.  I’m making it available for download (Excel 2007) so grab a copy of your own and read on to see how I use it.

Column B (Keyphrases) – This is the column where I put in the keywords that I am targetting on my site.  One thing to keep in mind while building this list is that most people search for phrases not individual words so try to target keyphrases of 2-3 words in length

Column C (Estimaed Traffic) – In this column enter in the number of searches that you get from the Google Keyword tool.  I use the value form the “Approx Avg Search Volume” column, which represents the average monthly search traffic over the last 12 months.

Column D (Number of Searches) – In this column I enter the number of visitors my website received that the keyphrase we’re looking at.  If you’re just starting out then this should be zero.  If you don’t have an analytics package I would recommend getting Google Analytics up and running.  It’s free and super easy to use.

Column E (Percentage of Search) – This is a caculated column so there’s nothing to enter here.  This columns calculates the percentage of search that your site is receiving from a particular keyphrase.

Column F (Popularity) – Goto Google and do a search for the keyphrase that you entered in Column B.  Enter the total number of pages that Google returned here.

Column G (Competition) – Back to Google again, and this time all the search modifier allinachor: before your search term.  Enter the total number of pages returned in this column.

NOTE: Column F & G were taken from a great book about search engine optimization called “Get to the top of Google” by David Viney.  So if you want to know more about these columns, and what they mean I would suggest picking up a copy of David’s book.

Column H (KEI) – This is a calculated column so there’s nothing to enter here.  See the NOTE about David Viney’s book.

Column I (KOI) – This is a calculated column so there’s nothing to enter here.  See the NOTE about David Viney’s book.

Column J,K,L – In these columns I enter where my website is currently ranking for each of the keyphrases I have entered into column B.  This task is made much easier by using a great Firefox extension called Rank Checker.

Once I have entered all that information I sort by column I (KOI) and look at the pages that show on the first page from Google.  From here, I start building my landing pages.

Couple of things to keep in mind,

1. There is space for 30 keyphrases, but I would suggest that you do some brainstorming and come up with many, many more.  You’re going to pick some real duds I promise you that.
2. I am going to concentrate on my top 10 keyphrases as ranked by the calculated KOI value, otherwise I think that my pages will start to look like they were created for the search engines rather than my visitors – not good!

Keep in mind, that this is all still a work in progress so I have no hard numbers on how this is helping (or hurting) my photoblog, but I will keep you all informed.

I think that I am making a fair statement when I say that the majority of traffic that arrives at most photoblogs is from comments made on other photoblogs. While this is a proven method of generating traffic, wouldn’t your time be better spent processing new images or actually behind the camera?

It’s time to focus your photoblog
The days of the general photoblog are gone. The combination of shorter attentions spans and the number of destinations available means that if your photoblog isn’t focused on a niche then you are less likely to attract true fans to your photoblog. I would argue that the creation of a solid base of true fans is when your photoblog becomes more than a vehicle for personal expression and moves in the direction of a business venture. Moving forward your goal should be to attract visitors who are interesting in your particular photography niche.

Start with Keywords
So you may be wondering how you can attract more targeted visitors. The key is in keyword phrases. Keyword phrases are combinations of 2 (or more) keywords. So for example, let’s say you want to attract visitors to your photoblog who are interested in landscape photography. “Landscape photography” would be the keyword phrase that you would target in your pages. Spend some time brainstorming keyword phrases that relate to the type of photography you are presenting on your photoblog and write them down.

Rank your Keywords
All keyword phrases are not created equal. You’ll quickly realize that not everyone thinks like you, and that some phrases you would use to find your site people just don’t use. Here’s a quick overview on how to gauge the quality of your keyword phrases.

There is a ton of information based around grading keywords (and keyword phrases), but since photographers typically are on tight budgets I like to rely on the information provided by the search engines themselves. Since Google currently controls most of the search traffic on the Internet I tend to gravitate towards their tools. My favourite is something called Google Insights for Search.

So go ahead and type in the keyword phrases that you’ve come up with and see how they compare to all other searches on Google. You won’t get actual search numbers from this tool, but Google provides you with a number (on a scale of 0-100) so you can compare your keyword phrases.

You’re going to get to peer into the minds of other searchers by scrolling down below the search volume graph.  Google provides information about related searches so make sure you look at these and see if you can work some of them into your work as well.

Probably my favourite feature in Google Insight is the “Rising searches” section.  Here’s Google letting you looking into the crystal ball of search at what could possibly be future trends.  Make sure that you consider each of these search terms and use them where appropriate.

Now get writing!
I’ve talked about the importance of writing on your photoblog in an earlier post, and I want to reinforce that again here. If you’re only posting images it’s going to make it harder for people to find you. So work your favourite keywords into the text that goes along with your images and start monitoring the results.

Watch for the next in to photoblog SEO series soon.

Basically, SEO is the practice of ranking well on various search engines in order to get visitors to your site via searches.

Before you start any SEO project, remember one thing – that SEO is a marathon not a race! Plan for the long-term and don’t make massive changes all at once. Measure the increase (or decrease) your changes make and act accordingly!

Pick your keywords
This is probably the most important part of your entire SEO plan. Make sure that you’re picking keyword phrases (i.e. 3-4 words) these convert better than anything else, and will help you rank faster (hopefully). Start brainstorming your keyword phrases and get them down on paper. Then check out Google Adwords Keyword tool and see how often those phrases are searched.

Get an analytics program
Before you do anything, get yourself some software to monitor your websites usage, and how people are finding you. I currently use Mint, but you can also go with Google Analytics. You need to have something, so pick which ever one you feel most comfortable using.

Mint
Google Analytics

Page titles
Make sure that every page on your photoblog has a title! This seems like a no-brainer, but I cannot tell you how many photoblogs I have visited that have ‘Untitled’ as a page title. Also, make sure that the most important keyword phrases are on the left-side of the page title. So if you’re really working on branding your site, you may want your site name to come first.

Image title
Make sure that every image has a title – try to avoid ‘untitled’ as much as you can! Make sure that your image title appears as a H1/H2 header.

Image tags
Make sure that you have ALT and TITLE tags for every image. This will help people find your images.
If you can I would go as far as making sure each image also has HEIGHT and WIDTH tags.

Write!
If you have no text with your images, than people are going to have a difficult time finding you. If you look
at the most popular photoblogs these artists have great descriptive write-ups accompanying their photoblogs – it’s very important. Also, consider publishing your EXIF information – at least your camera make/model and lens specifications people search for this kind of stuff all the time. Make sure that you use the keywords that you would like to rank with in your writing, just make sure that you’re still writing for people and not the search engines!

Sitemap
make sure that you have a sitemap for your photoblog. This just makes your site easier to index when a search engine comes knocking. There are some great plugins out there to help you do this, just make sure that you do it!

Avoid content duplication
Try to avoid duplication as much as possible. Assign posts/images to only one category if you have too much duplicate content then your site may be penalized.

Category Pages (a.k.a Inner Linking)
This allows your visitor to easily locate images with similar attributes and it create internal links on your site. Having internal links helps to raise the “value” of the page being linked.

What about Flickr, coolphotoblogs, photoblogs.org, and vxfy?
*NOTE: These really aren’t consider to be SEO methods.

The value of this depends on what your goal is. If you’re trying to attract other photobloggers to your site then by all means. Get listed on these sites. The problem is that you’re site is going to get lost in the shuffle quickly. So many images and blogs are being listed on these sites that it gets hard to get traffic, and most likely the traffic you’re going to get won’t be the most motivated buyers. In my opinion I would start with Flickr and go from there. The reason being that I have seen quite a few people use Flickr as a method to search for an image that they are after – not that these turn into sales, but I think you’ll have more success.