As my email box fills up daily with interesting questions from blog readers, customers, and photographers, I am only one person and cannot always get to them all.  And many times, the questions are beyond my scope of knowledge as it comes to questions like “where can I buy that cool new wood flooring” or “how do I get great off camera flash pictures?” You get the idea.

To me, the best resource for asking photography and photoshop related questions, are photography forums.  Why? Because you have hundreds or even thousands of members in a forum, and those who are available, spend time reading and answer the questions in which they are most knowledgeable. Basically instead of just one person’s wisdom, you get many.

So now, if you too agree this is great, “how do you decide which photography forum is for you?” Well, join one or two, spend time getting to know the forum and its members, and see if it is the right fit.  There are some forums that I cannot stand.  Others I love.  And some in between, where I only go for specific things, like buying or selling gear, or getting answers to specific questions.

Currently, there is one forum I visit daily – the Click In Moms Photo Forum, and a few others I make it to weekly, listed in the “Equipment FAQs“.  ClickInMoms is an amazing group of helpful woman, and a few men mixed in.  And has the feel of a true community. I really love it there.  I interviewed Kendra Okolita, the owner of the forum, in summer of 2009, and she is an amazing mom, photographer, and marketing genius.

Her forum is built on referrals from members, and since it is a paid forum, though a great value, she shares the profits with the members through an affiliate program. I am a part of this, and if you join me there through one of these links, I get a few dollars back.

The other cool part is that you can WIN stuff too.  Once or twice a year she has an amazing contest. A new referral contest started yesterday.  So if you join, even for just a month, you can try and win FREE stuff like a $25 Starbucks Gift Card, $50 ITunes  Gift Card, $75 Gap/Banana/Old Navy Gift Card, $100 Amazon Gift Card, a Wacom Intuos4, an Apple Iphone or Ipad or even a Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital Camera. So if you are thinking of joining, check it out for a month, and use the code FRIEND for 10% off. And you and I both can start earning prizes too, as they are earned individually, not a competition against other members.

Blog SEO: Capture Search by the Long Tail

By entering into this blog post you hopefully know that by SEO we’re talking search engine optimization. If you’ve had a website for a while and are new to SEO then consider yourself the Lakers fan just arriving to the game during 3rd quarter. You are late to the game. Fortunately the Lakers have an expert coach that always leads them to victory.

I’m Zach Prez, your armchair coach and resident SEO specialist. I’ve been optimizing websites for search for 6 years. I got my start in web marketing at Intel but have since moved on to focus on helping photographers with my Photographers SEO Book and Blog. I’ve optimized in just about every blog platform a photographer could use including WordPress, Blogger, Typepad, and Moveable Type. In my experience, blogs are the secret ingredient to a treasure trove of highly qualified traffic. This post teaches you about using your blog to capture the long tail of search.

Long Tail = Lots of Small Niche Searches That Add Up Fast

Wikipedia definition:

Long tail is a retailing concept describing the niche strategy of selling a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities � usually in addition to selling fewer popular items in large quantities.

In search engines the long tail applies to the large number of unique key phrases that send you traffic in little quantities. The beauty about these phrases

• Highly qualified
• Little competition (easier to rank)
• Can add up to the same volume as your main keyword phrase
• Cheap to purchase in Google adwords

Google keyword tool allows you to lookup the average number of monthly searches for any term you type into it. Here is an example for some phrases related to Sacramento wedding photographer.

Sacramento wedding photographer has a monthly search volume of 1600. While most photographers will see this high number and focus only on SEO for that phrase, 50 other sacramento businesses will do the same thing and therefore it may be extremely difficult to rank in the top few results, especially for a beginning SEO person. The green bar under advertiser competition also shows that this will be a relatively expensive term should you want to pay for a sponsored result in Google adsense. However, the phrases Sacramento wedding photojournalist and Arden Hills wedding (a venue location) are long tail phrases that are much easier to rank for. Why is it easier to rank? We will get to that. Trust me that when you rank in the top 3 for about 20 of these smaller demand phrases (I’m sure you can think up plenty in your location or niche) you will earn more traffic than ranking #10 for that one major term, and with far less effort.

Let’s look at a Google Analytics example from Sacramento child photographer Jill Carmel. The top 10 keywords to her blog include some words you would expect (her name). These account for only 17 of the 139 visits she received from search engines during the short time period shown. Over 80% of her traffic comes from long tail phrases like valentine’s day mini sessions.

Do this: go to your analytics report and look at keywords from search. I think you will be surprised at the volume of different keyword combinations sending you traffic. You may have over 100 different key phrases appearing, in fact, I would expect it. Anything beyond your top 2 or 3 are long tail. And you got those without even trying! I look at my keyword report more than I watch Seinfeld episodes (daily) because I can uncover what users are really looking for to try and find me. I can create more of that content on my blog so they can find me more easily through search.

Now that you know about long tail as an approach to search engine optimization, you will start to think differently with your key phrases and begin to be strategic about targeting ones that will be the most searched or earn the most profit. Take the above valentine’s day example. Once Jill sees this in her Analytics account she knows that her blog post was successful in getting into search engines and converting users through to her website. She might do another blog post on the same topic, one for the next holiday, or one again next year to capitalize on those few people searching for valentine’s day mini sessions. She may not have known that people search for mini sessions and add this as a regular service on her main website. You can learn a lot about the specific wants of your user base by the niche searches that drive them to your website.

I’m Sold on Long Tail. How Do I Implement?

My ebook goes in depth about how Google works, but the simplistic version is that it needs to have words that the user is searching for. More importantly your blog, and the individual posts need links pointing to them from elsewhere on the web. If it were just a matter of the right text, then everyone would use the right text and everyone would rank #1. If you want to rank for Sacramento wedding photojournalist, then do these 3 things:

1. Use that phrase in the headline of one blog post
2. Talk about that subject within the blog post (use that phrase or similar phrases a couple times) including the alt tags for photos in the post
3. Add a link from some other website to that post, and use that phrase in the link name

By doing these 3 things Google will see a post that talks about Sacramento wedding photojournalist and another site that references it as such (with a link). It therefore thinks this is a good match for the user who is searching for it. You should rank well because we can assume there are very few other pages on the web that are completely about that one topic. Sure someone may mention it among their list of services, but nobody took the time to create a whole post on the subject, which is where you will succeed in ranking high where others will not. That is why blogs are the best platform for the long tail, because you can easily create a new page about a single niche topic when it would not have fit well into a regular website (especially when you want to do this 20 or 50 times).

How Would I ever Write a Post About That!?

Here is an example post I see often on photography blogs. Headline: Zach & Amber’s Glamour Wedding 2/14/10. Zach certainly visits the blog post, as do his 200 friends and family (it was a big wedding). Traffic looks great at week 1 with a whopping 200 website visits. Yipee. Week 2 comes in with a disappointing 10 visits from Zach’s elderly relatives who are always slow to respond. So the traffic is poor and even worse, none of them are qualified leads because these visitors just wanted to check out the photos of their friend or relative that got married.

With the long tail in mind I might have named this post: Cliffs Resort Wedding Photos – Zach and Amber’s California Coast Beach Destination. I will still please my client’s family and friends, but also have the potential for traffic on a number of niche phrases that would be very qualified for my photography niche:

• Cliffs Resort (classy wedding venue)
• destination wedding photos
• beach wedding
• California coast

I would use these phrases once or twice in the text of my post, in the names of my images, and in link text that points back to this blog post from other sites. You get the idea. Continue the original intent of your blog (post images of your projects to please existing clients) while optimizing for search and future Google searches at the same time.

If you’re a photographer trying to gain more traffic or business from search engines, then the Photographers SEO Book can help optimize your text, links, and tools. Or follow Zach on Twitter @photoseo.

In January, business seems to be on everyone’s mind.  And as a result, I had many business related questions in January. I will address some of the most popular ones.

How can I get more people to visit my website and blog?

The MCP Blog currently gets around 2,500-4,000 unique visitors per weekday and 10,000-15,000 page loads a day. I get asked in emails all the time, how do I drive traffic to my blog?  I have been blogging for many years, and consistency is the biggest key. Of course I could write a book with tips on what I have done through the years but here are some of the many ways that work for me. I hope many of these will help you too:

• Great content that is of interest to your target audience
• Consistent updates to blog and/or site (I post at least 5 days a week)
• Social networking – grow your presence on Facebook and Twitter
• Comment on other people’s blogs
• Link to helpful resources, blogs and articles
• Be genuine – write from the heart to truly help others
• Involve your audience with questions, polls, contests, interactive content
• Get personal, but not too personal – share stories or pictures so that your readers get to know you, but still be professional
• SEO – search engine optimization – if you want to come up higher in search engines, you need to optimize. I am tweaking my SEO with the direct help of Zach Prez and his e-book: Photographer’s SEO. If you need SEO help, you will want to check out his upcoming guest posts on the MCP Blog starting next week.

Who designed your website? Where can I get a website?  How much do sites and blogs cost?

With the launch of my re-designed site in December, many have asked how much a custom website cost and who designed mine. Websites and blogs range drastically in price.  Some HTML and Flash template style may cost few hundred dollars, while custom designed sites will likely cost a few thousand+.  What type you get will depend on your needs, funds, and wants. Ask yourself what you are willing to invest? Do you want to do the work yourself? Do you want to have someone else who knows coding and design do it for you? Who you want to work with?

My web designer, for my e-commerce site, is Stewart Goodwin of Goodwin Media. I loved working with him.  He designs both traditional websites and e-commerce sites.  If you contact him, please let him know you heard of him through MCP.

As for flash sites and reviews of other less expensive template options, I do not have enough experience to recommend one over another. You can always ask other MCP Fans on my Facebook Page for recommendations. More options seem to be available all the time, so do your homework to get the best solution for your business.

Are you attending Imaging USA or WPPI this year? What conferences and trade shows will you be at so I can meet you?

As far as trade shows, MCP Actions does not participate in any at this time.  I have made a business decision to focus my efforts in social networking and online. Unfortunately, due to family obligations and scheduling conflicts, I have not been able to participate in many of these larger conferences.

I am considering attending Photoshop World in March 2010 in Orlando. This conference is sponsored by NAPP (National Association of Photoshop Professionals). If I decide to attend, I will tweet and post to Facebook, letting you know.  If you plan to attend, make sure to comment and let me know as well. I would love to meet you.

Thank you for all of your great questions this month.  I will answer more in February.