Looking for fast ways to improve your website search rankings? Sure, we all are. SEO feels like one of those things that people say they need but not everyone knows what it is. You can spend a lot of time learning about effective ways to make it useful for your business, but there are some super simple things you can do today to optimize your website. 

In this blog post, we’ll cover 10 ways you can quickly improve your SEO. From how to use video to header tags, we’ll explore the best ways to get human and robot eyes on your business.

Creating video content is a fast and effective way to get your content seen online. Whether you add it directly to social media channels or on something like YouTube, video content is a great way to get your business visible online. When people search for your business on Google and other platforms, video has become one of the options that might appear first in a search. For instance, when you search for PhotoBiz, videos are indexed from Facebook and YouTube.

This video content allows both potential and current customers to see product details, services, and more. When you apply this to your own business, you can give people the ability to see your business instead of just reading about it. A lot of people are visually stimulated, which is why YouTube has over 720,000 hours of video uploaded per day.

When you are placing your video online, think about your descriptions and titles for your video. Remember, people will be searching specifically so having that data in your videos is important just like the metadata you add to your site.

Video allows people to digest your content in a different way while also engaging them. You can use videos to promote or educate people about products, services, or events. And for photographers, behind-the-scenes videos go a long way to show what the experience of working with you is like. So the next time you share a post on social media, maybe try to make it a video.

When you are mapping out your website’s SEO data and content, you should look at how your audience is searching for businesses like yours. Sure if a customer knows you by the name they will search for you by name, but that’s only if they know about you. What about everyone else who doesn't know you? They search differently. 

Beyond asking friends near and far for referrals, people also search online for businesses. They might type in phrases like “best wedding photographer in Wilmington, NC.” That will show them individual business websites as well as aggregated content from places like The Knot, Wedding Wire, or even blogs written by photographers.

It is important to research search terms and phrases that customers may use. It is usually effective to think of search queries as questions and answers. When someone searches for anything online they are looking for a solution. So if they ask a question, the content on your website should answer it.

You should also keep this in mind when creating metadata, meta descriptions, and blog content. 

A simple and easy-to-remember domain name is important for your business. If you can keep it to less than 15 characters, it makes it the easiest to remember. It is also beneficial to use a .com domain name since it is the most widely used domain extension (for example, people often assume business names domains end in .com, and rarely think to try .net).

If you haven’t yet, it’s time to secure your site with an SSL certificate. Switching your site from HTTP to HTTPS not only secures your site but makes your site more visible on search engines. Google prioritizes secure sites with HTTPS to help keep people safe.

Your website speed is a huge factor when it comes to SEO. A site that takes more than 3 seconds to load is penalized by Google’s algorithm. It showcases fast-performing websites to give users better experiences overall. The speed of your site could be the difference between a client finding you versus a competitor. 

Make sure your site is optimized for speed. It should have fast-loading content and minimal animations (these are known for slowing down sites).

If you have a PhotoBiz site and are using our PhotoBiz 8 builder you are in safe and fast hands. Our developers have worked hard to ensure our websites are optimized for speed (and security). In fact, they are the world’s fastest websites compared to other website builders.

Did you know website speed can be different on desktop vs mobile? It is important to check both and mobile is becoming more and more important each day. You can see how your website speed measures up by going to Pagespeed Insights and entering your URL.

One of the easiest things you can do to ensure your website is optimized is to publish your sitemap. I’ve noticed this is one of the most overlooked activities.

So what is a site map? To put it simply, it's a map of all your page links on your site. It’s like an org chart for your site. It outlines how you have placed links on your site and tells Google and other search engines the importance of the pages and how they are related.

So when should you publish your site map? After you make large changes to your site. Like new content or structure to your site or pages. 

By submitting your sitemap, you are telling Google and other search engines you made updates to your site and you’d like them to take a look. Instead of waiting for Google to notice the changes, you are helping it index the changes faster.

Writing blogs is one of the most useful and powerful things you can do for your website to provide fresh content to keep people coming back and help search engines learn about your business. Think of a single page on your site as a fishing rod, and the more pages you have the bigger your “net” gets. It’s called the inter-”net” for a reason! One way to add more content for search without bogging your site down with too many unnecessary pages is to create meaningful blog posts.

What is a meaningful blog post? Every blog post should have a purpose. It’s supposed to tell a story or give detailed information that can be searched for. It is not just a place to dump photos, which is a common thing many photographers do. 

Instead of showing off an entire event in a photo strip style blog, show me 4-7 images, tell me the story of the event or the session (make sure to include the location), and link to a gallery (possibly hidden) in case people want to see more pictures. The story can be just as helpful to a viewer as the pictures, because they may say “oh wow I want my photos taken there” and that's what you are looking for. Or someone may be looking for a specific type of photographer in your location and if you happen to have a blog written with those keywords or phrases in the title and within the content of the blog, search engines may pick it up. This is particularly true if it is written in a way that people search (cough, cough). 

Meaningful content can be hard for people, and not everyone is a writer. But 2 or 3 paragraphs (about 300 words total) about an event and a few pictures are more valuable to you and your potential readers than just another gallery. They can always go looking for more pictures on your site. 

Meaningful content will also encourage them to stay and read longer, which is better for engagement on your site. Just make sure you tell them where to go or what to do next when they are done reading. You can send them to another blog, a gallery, or to book with you — the key is to keep them on your site.

This seems like a given but it’s also one of the hardest things for people to do when it comes to SEO. Listen I get it, the SEO guru who taught you to fill your site with keywords 20+ years ago told you it was a surefire way to get found online. But not anymore. Constantly stating where you are from, and who you serve and even hiding those words in the footer (I’m talking to you if you have words hidden in the footer in the same color of your website background) is NOT a fast and effective way to be found. Instead, it’s a fast and easy way to get penalized by search engines.

That type of SEO keyword stuffing and directory style speech is more harmful to you than writing as a human would talk. Google and other search engines like organic speech because it helps them understand human language better than directory keyword dumping text. A robot wants to be more human, so seeing beautifully written content on a site is what it wants to read in the end. If it values your words, it’ll think potential customers will value it too, meaning better rankings.

Even robots can tell the difference between keyword stuffing and how a person talks. So do the work, make the content on your website meaningful.

When designing your site you might want to highlight important sections with large titles we call Heading 1 tag (H1 tags), but if you do this too much on a single page it can be harmful to your search results. 

H1 tags act as a “look at me, I’m important” call out to search engines, but if there are too many H1’s on a page then the website crawlers don’t know what’s important. It can't all be important, can it? 

That's why there are other tags such as H2’s and H3’s. They can act as follow-up points to your larger title headers and let the most important points stand out on a page instead of getting lost.

You should really only use one H1 tag on each page if possible (I’m talking about your page title here). 

An FAQ page has a lot of value. Not only for the reader but for you as well. If written well, an FAQ page can have a lot of details and content, which is great for engagement.

It’s also a great way to add more search terms and keywords to a page without it feeling forced. 

You can use an FAQ page to link to other pages and include call-to-actions to go deeper within your site. And this ultimately means they’ll be on your site longer!

Your FAQ page can include tons of valuable information — pricing ranges, cancellation policies, shooting locations, event details, and options, as well as make-up and wardrobe options. You can even talk about your equipment if you like, which can engage techy customers. You have tons of options to make your FAQ page robust and engaging.

These are just 10 ways you can improve the SEO on your site. SEO isn’t magic, it takes time and works to see improvements.

If you need or want help, we offer an  SEO Go service as well as educational workshops, and our support team is available to chat as well. Give us a call at 1.866.463.7620 or visit photobiz.com to chat with us. We’ll be happy to talk about how we can get you set up with an SEO plan.