Nontraditional, Offbeat and Alternative Wedding Photographers » Lara Swanson Photographer in VA, MD, and Washington DC

SEO for Photographers Part I covered a lot of the basics, and how to work with what you’ve got. In terms of SEO, I am focused not on how to cram keywords into your page so that you rank high for them, but to help you understand what users are looking for and to figure out how to hit your end goal: getting users to your site.

Content first, SEO second

Always, ALWAYS think about the end user and how he or she wants to look at your site. The search engine should never be your number one audience. Sure, the search engine can help you get to that end user, but what happens when that user gets to your page? Will he or she be driven away by the unreadable content? By the obvious keyword stuffing? By the lack of good navigation?

Search engines are getting smarter, and this means that they’re being taught to think like a user. Websites that are usable and accessible are being rewarded with higher ranking on SERPs (search engine result pages). If you use header and subheader (H1, H2, H3) tags on your website and blog, you’re showing the search engine that you are trying to organize your content in a way that’s helpful to the user. That’s why these sorts of things are factored into SE’s algorithms – good titles, alternative text on images for screen readers, and other techniques that improve usability and accessibility will also be the places that you’ve heard you should place key words and phrases.

So what does that mean? Don’t focus on key words? Not at all – just think about how they’ll be helpful to your audience. The structure of your pages, the navigation through your site, the amount of content on your pages and their freshness are all things that will help someone consume your site – AND will help search engines understand what your pages are about. Thinking this way (and not about how you can rank high for keywords) is what will get you to the top.

Here are some things to think about:

• Sitemaps. Have you ever made one? This is a great way to figure out what buckets of pages you have and whether or not you have a cohesive site. Creating it and submitting it to search engines is great for SEO.
• The title of each page in the browser. Is it different for every page, which would help the user understand what that individual page is about? Same goes for the description of each page.
• The organization of each page. Is there a clear, unique title on your page in an H1 tag? Does it succicntly describe what’s on that page? Do you have the content on your page broken into subsections, and do those subsections have H2 subtitles?
• Navigation to other pages. Is your navigation easy to use? Does it accurately (and succinctly) describe what’s on the other pages? Do you list related pages that the user might want to check out?

This is just the tip of the iceberg – there are many ways of making your website usable and accessible. Read up on usability testing – maybe ask some friends to try out your site to see if they run into any roadblocks or are left with unanswered questions. Ask your clients if they thought any information on the website was missing or confusing. Check your web analytics to see what pages have the shortest “time on page” or bounce rate and see how they can be better improved to provide useful information. All of these things will improve your site, and search engines will take notice.

Search volume

Yes, we’re all going to end up picking keywords and phrases after all of that is done. So where do we start? Here’s an example: in terms of search volume, “wedding photographers” is searched for more than “wedding photographer”. Examining search trends is important in determining what keywords you optimize your site for, as it will help you get more traffic to your page. Researching now will save you a lot of time later.

Put yourself in their shoes

Think about the newly engaged couple – are they searching for a “unique wedding photographer” or a “list of Virginia wedding photographers”? Are they searching for “amazing details and real moments” (sorry, [b]ecker) or “destination photographer”? Optimizing your site for “emotional”, “candid” and other adjectives for you and your work may not be the best place to put your resources. It’s more likely that a couple is searching by location (city, state, and venue names) with some form of the word “photography”. Keep this in mind when blogging – it’s always good to repeat your locations and venues in your posts and images’ alt tags.

Clean code

Is your code clean? Have you ever run it through the W3C Markup Validation service? How about your CSS and Javascript? What would people see on your site if they had images or Java disabled? Have you ever checked out what your site looks like on other browsers?

These are a lot of questions, huh? Accessibility and continuity across platforms is a major struggle for many visual artists, since we don’t have the simplicity of just displaying text. Check your web analytics to see what types of browsers and operating systems people are using to visit your site, as well as their screen size and other factors. If your site is unusable for a certain demographic (damn you, IE6 users! Upgrade already!) then you have an opportunity to improve it. Working out these issues will certainly help users stick around on your site, if not increase your ranking on SERPs.

In Sum

This may be sort of hard to hear. You’ve spent lots of time optimizing your site for keywords and now you’re realizing that search engines don’t just look at them anymore. There are so many factors and the algorithms keep changing – that’s why following the guidelines above will help you no matter what. In the long run, you will be rewarded for having a usable and accessible site, whether it’s by search engines or your end users.

One of my bride’s magazine’s newest issue came out and I thought that a ton of my readers would benefit from checking it out! As M.J. says, “it’s partly serious (conflict diamonds, eco-friendly wedding dress designers) and partly irreverent (why are bridesmaid dresses always so ugly?)”. Click here to check it out!

A few photos from the concert on Sunday.

Broadcast Fail:

Little kid win:

SHOUT:

I thought of my second shooter Jen, who asks every DJ to play SHOUT at every reception.

Lara Swanson Photography is holding a boudoir marathon on January 3rd in Old Town Alexandria. A 90-minute session costs $300 and includes up to 5 outfit changes, a disk of negatives, online proofing, photos retouched and included on the disk, and a classy album of your favorite photos from the session. A $100 non-refundable deposit is required to reserve your time slot. Disks and albums will be sent to you in time for Valentine’s Day! For more information and to reserve a time, email lara@laraswansonphoto.com.

The topics of losing weight before your wedding, wanting to look slimmer in photos, and the general self-consciousness that some people feel when a photography session looms are all normal things to think about and discuss. Since I photograph a lot of online dating portraits, I hear these topics come up quite a bit. I emailed one of my previous brides, Sarah, and asked her permission to post a quote from the shotlist questionnaire she answered for her wedding.

One other really important thing that I want to be honest about it that to me my weight is a very big issue. I try not to let it effect me and I want to try and not let it bother me on my wedding day. However, I’ve been trying to struggle to lose weight for the wedding day and didn’t really succeed. My biggest fear is that I’m going to get all my pictures back and hate the way I look in them because they will catch all my bad features or something. So use whatever camera tricks you can to get my “good side”. We recently had a friend take some informal shots of us and the one that looked the best of us what when she was sort of standing above us because it really hid my chin which I’m mainly self conscious about. I’m also pretty self conscious about profile shots because I think I look thinner from the front. I know this may sound ridiculous as I type it and I know you can’t work miracles, but I just wanted you to know about it and wanted to be honest with you. Thanks for understanding in advance.

When I received this email, I was both impressed by her courage in expressing her self-consciousness, and in awe of how proactive she was being. I believe many women and men get ready for this one big day of photographs with a great deal of worry, and I want to do all that I can to ease this. As I said to Sarah in a recent email, “photographers work with so many different people, and how it’s our job to make you look goooood.”

Many photographers (myself included) have either gone to school for photography or taken classes and workshops on posing people. Beyond this, we have tools at our disposal (cough cough Photoshop) to work with images after we take them. But the thing I want to emphasize the most is that photographers have experience. I have no idea how many people I’ve photographed, but I can easily tell you that the non-models vastly outnumber the models. I regularly work with individuals who have never had a professional photo taken, who hate the photos that others take of them, and who are generally unimpressed by what photographers do. And guess what? They love the photos I take of them.

When I asked Sarah if I could post her quote, she replied, “OF COURSE you can share that with people… My pictures turned out so amazing and you did such a good job of making me feel nothing but 100% beautiful on my big day!” So if you’re starting to get nervous about how you’ll look on your wedding day, then you can read tips on what you can do, and study America’s Next Top Model, but most importantly – talk to me. I can answer your questions and help calm your nerves. And you know what? You’re going to look great in your pictures. Promise.

To all my Virginia brides and grooms – want a friend or non-clergy member to officiate your wedding? Check out Virginia’s one-time civil celebrant rule!

This is a clip from Fairfax County’s website:

For a one-time civil marriage celebrant (non clergy), the person wishing to perform the ceremony must be a resident of Fairfax County and never have committed a felony. This documentation is submitted either by mail or in person to the Civil Intake Section of the Circuit Court. An order is prepared by the Court and presented to the judge… One-time civil celebrants may perform the ceremony only on the date submitted on the petition but can perform the ceremony any place within the Commonwealth.

Here’s more information for Fairfax County, but I’m sure you can find relevant information for your own city or county online: http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/courts/circuit/marriage_info.htm

Inspired by this photographer and her interviews of couples a year after their wedding, I’ve set up a week of interviews of my 2007 clients to see what they’re up to, what they remember most, and what they want to share with you! I photographed Jamie and Chris last year in Occoquan, and below are some of my favorites from their wedding, including Jamie’s two top favorites she writes about below!

What moment stands out to you most from your wedding planning process?

We really enjoyed the food tasting for our cake and reception catering! But I think the biggest relief was when we finally booked our photographer. After that, it felt like a weight had been lifted off our shoulders and everything else would fall into place.

What moment stands out to you most from your entire wedding day?

Our favorite moment was during the reception after all the “events” were finished and we could dance and spend time with all of our guests and really just enjoy our day.

What advice would you give to couples currently planning their weddings?

Don’t get caught up with all the small details. Hire professionals who you can trust to take care of everything on your wedding day so you can enjoy yourself. If you don’t hire a wedding planner, have a friend or family member be the point of contact for all vendors on the day of in case any questions or issues come up so you don’t have to worry about it.

What was your favorite wedding photo and why?

Our favorite photo was the “dip” picture in front of the church right after the ceremony. When the picture was being taken we had no idea how beautiful and dramatic it would turn out. We love how romantic it looks. Even though it ended up rainy and cloudy on our wedding day, it made the lighting in this photo look even better.

What have you done with the photos since the wedding?

We had Lara create a beautiful album right after the wedding that is currently sitting on our coffee table. We’ve framed a lot of our favorite photos from our wedding day and hung them throughout our house. We framed one of our favorites- a picture of our first dance with our guests blurry in the background- with the mat that all our guests signed at the reception, and hung it in our living room.

What are you looking forward to for your next year of wedded bliss?

We are looking forward to enjoying more time spent together and with family and friends and hopefully taking a fun trip for our 2nd anniversary next year!