Whether it be “The Knot”, “Here Comes the Guide”, Pictage, or wherever else, what portion of your clients come to you from online photographer directories?

AskDane.com with Julia Woods from Dane Sanders on Vimeo.

AskDane.com with Dane Sanders is bought to you each week ad free thanks to http://ShootQ.com.

Time: Tuesday 4pm PST

Special Guest: Julia Woods

Listen to Dane and Julia Woods talk about pricing yourself for maximized profit.  This will be a interesting and valuable discussion that you won’t want to miss!

If you are interested in PPA’s SMS workshop mentioned on the show, check this out…

To get the answers to any of your questions, simply send a Twitter with @danesanders in the text. If you didn’t catch the Coaching Event *LIVE*, you can always catch the Replay later here.  As always, Ask Dane is made possible by the generous support of ShootQ.

See you soon!
- Dane

Helpful links

• Fast Track Store – for more Fast Track Resources
• Dane’s Facebook Speaking and Social Calendar – to meet Dane in person!
• DaneSanders.tv – to view this and previous episodes on a larger screen.
• Dane’s Killer Apps Page – because so many requested it, my absolute favorite apps, products and services (along with a little bonus at the bottom). I hope they help!

Be the First to Know

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• Connect on Facebook
• Be in the Know with The Newsletter

As a preview for our upcoming Word of Mouth Supergenius event in New York on July 20th, we’re featuring a bunch of the videos from our last “How to be Great at Word of Mouth Marketing” event in Chicago.

It’s going to be an amazing day filled with 12 how-to classes, 12 real-world case studies, and 6 brilliant authors. You’ll walk away with a notebook full of practical ideas to start earning more referrals and recommendations the very next day.

You’re going to love it. Here’s a preview of the experience:

Spike Jones’ big idea: The Fiskars fan community is so strong because they’re not talking about scissors, they’re talking about what you do with scissors.

Wade Holloway is an (online marketer) SEO for Photographers. You can find out more at FolioMojo.com.

The idea here is to explain a couple of the basic, though often overlooked, components of SEO, specifically keyword research and creating title tags, while also giving you specific tips on how to get started optimizing your own site.

Keyword Research - 

Any good SEO strategy begins with keyword research. Keyword research allows you to find keywords and combinations that people are searching on.

Although there are a plethora of keyword research tools out there, Google has made it easy for us by offering a great free tool you can access here: http://bit.ly/9u0oNP.

We will be referencing this tool in the rest of this post so please take a moment to familiarize yourself with it.

To begin, insert a few words that relate to what you do. In this case, “Wedding Photographer”, “Wedding Photography”, etc, then press ‘Search’.

The first thing you should notice is that there are approximately 1,220,000 Global Monthly Searches. Since we’ve chosen ‘United States’, and ‘English’ as our parameters in our search, these numbers should reflect this.

“Wow”, you say, “If I could only get 1/10th of those people visiting my site and I will be set.” Well, yes, that would be great, but not very realistic. What I like to do, and what I suggest to others is something more ‘localized’, which is to say, add your ‘locale’ to the terms you are trying to rank for.

For example, you might try to rank for “Orange County Wedding Photographer”, “San Diego Wedding Photographer”, or try reversing the order of the words using “Wedding Photographer Orange County”.

Broad Phrases (Hard to rank for): Photographer, Wedding Photographer, Portrait Photographer

Local Phrases (May be difficult to rank for): San Francisco Wedding Photographers, Palo Alto Portrait Photographer

Long-Tail (Easy): San Francisco Wedding Photographer Price List

Not only is this much more realistic to rank for those terms, though still possibly difficult, it also targets the area in which you work.

Armed with this data, we can now move on to the site optimization process.

Called different things by different web site template companies and content management software products, the title tag we are referring to is typically also called the ‘page title’.

The blue text in the image below is how your sites’ title tag is displayed in Google.

The image shows how your browser (in this case Safari) shows the title tag.

Finally, the image below is how the title tag is displayed in your code, within the <head> tag.

You will need to change your title tags, in all likelihood, to reflect the keywords we’ve just discovered. It is recommended that you optimize a page for fewer than 5 specific keywords or keyword phrase variations. That means you’ll want to make the most of this by using different title tags on each different page of your website and/or blog.

Here are examples of how, and how not to write title tags.

Incorrect:

“Shannon Priestly Modern, Lifestyle Photography, San Francisco Wedding Photographer, Portrait Photography, Boudoir Photography, Baby Photographer, Maternity Photos, etc, etc, etc…”

Correct:

“LDV Photography : San Francisco Wedding Photographers” (52 chars)

or

“San Francisco Wedding Photographer | LDV Studio”

There is debate on the topic of putting your studio/business name at the beginning of your title tag, the end, or leave it out entirely.

The reasoning goes something like this…. Because more weight is given by Google to the words in the beginning of the title tag, you should make sure your keyword is the first thing you use in constructing your title tag. While I’ve witnessed this being the case, I also have many examples where a site with it’s brand name is before the keyword and still ‘out ranks’ the site with keywords at the beginning.

In my opinion, it helps your listing to standout as well as to give you one more ‘touch’ in the brand recognition battle.

This is something that I suggest you test on your own. You could start out by adding the keyword in the first position, then later once you are ranking on the first page for that term, you could try changing the word order.

In conclusion, it is important to begin with the end in mind and give more than a moment’s thought to the keywords you are targeting, and make sure that you are constructing title tags which are inline with your keyword phrase ranking goals.

EPISODE 60 | Targeting Your Message to Reach the Clients You Want

Time: Tuesday 3:00pm PST (Note the Special Time)

Special Guest: Mike Colon

Hear Mike Colon talk about messaging yourself right in order to reach your ideal client.  Mike is a expert at doing this, come and listen to him share his insights.

To get the answers to any of your questions, simply send a Twitter with @danesanders in the text. If you didn’t catch the Coaching Event *LIVE*, you can always catch the Replay later here.

See you soon!
- Dane

Helpful links

• Fast Track Store – for more Fast Track Resources
• Dane’s Facebook Speaking and Social Calendar – to meet Dane in person!
• DaneSanders.tv – to view this and previous episodes on a larger screen.
• Dane’s Killer Apps Page – because so many requested it, my absolute favorite apps, products and services (along with a little bonus at the bottom). I hope they help!

Be the First to Know

• Follow on Twitter
• Connect on Facebook
• Be in the Know with The Newsletter

Written by Nashville Wedding Photographer Sean McLellan

It all starts with the foundation. Let’s back up and start at the beginning. Possibly, let’s back up to before you even get started—or maybe you’ve already started, but you’re not full time and are considering taking your business to the next level.

It seems simple, right? I have a digital camera and a computer, so I can be a wedding photographer. Think again. I can’t tell you how many photographers have started out this way, only to be in tears a year or two later because they are being crushed by the mountain of work that’s on top of them.

If you love wedding photography, be sure to take steps to prevent yourself from ever getting into this situation. If you’re already in this situation, make a serious effort to get out of it and go back to the foundation. If you’re serious about it, it is possible! However, if you don’t love it and just thought you could make extra money on weekends, chances are you won’t have the motivation to work through it. Without a passion for what you’re doing, it will eventually collapse, and you’ll be left with a trail of people that are all very unhappy with you which will lead to being unhappy with yourself.

Also, be aware that it’s not just running around with a camera and taking photographs. You are running a business. You set the hours and you are responsible for keeping track of everything. Mel and I love photography, but we also love business. If you hate business, I would suggest looking into having someone help with that aspect. Getting into wedding photography while loving photography but hating business is a recipe for disaster. Seek help immediately!

That wraps up Tip #1. Thanks for reading! If you found this helpful or if you have any questions, I’d love to hear from you so please leave a comment or two!

Week 1- FIRST PLACE winner was Jeremie Rentas Barlow with this image.

Week 2- The FIRST PLACE winner was Sara Wall of Sara Wall Photography with this image.

Week 3- FIRST PLACE winner was Curtis Copeland with this image.

Week 4- FIRST PLACE winner was Christina Littleton with this image.

Week 5- FIRST PLACE went to Chelsea Nicole with this image.

FastTrack Coaching is brought to you by: ShootQ

EPISODE 52 | Go All-In with My Personal Business Coach

Time: 4:00pm PST Tuesday, December 29th, 2009

Special Guest: Kirk Kirlin

As we close out 2009, I thought it might be fun to bring on my personal business coach, Kirk Kirlin. Although Kirk specializes a lot with pastors, I hired him because of his ability to draw the best out of me to go ALL-IN with whatever I’m up to. If you’re feeling stuck or just know that 2010 has to be big for you, be sure to join us!

To get the answers to any of your questions, simply send a Twitter with @danesanders in the text. If you didn’t catch the Coaching Event *LIVE*, you can always catch the Replay later here.

RSVP here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=204279720757&index=1

See you soon!
- Dane

Helpful links

• Fast Track Store – for more Fast Track Resources
• DaneSanders.tv – to view this and previous episodes on a larger screen.
• Dane’s Killer Apps Page – because so many requested it, my absolute favorite apps, products and services (along with a little bonus at the bottom). I hope they help!

Be the First to Know

• Follow on Twitter
• Connect on Facebook. Also includes Dane’s Speaking and Social Calendar.
• Be in the Know with The Newsletter

Normally around this time we would be gearing up for our “Big Kahuna Christmas Party” on the blog…. but sitting back and thinking on how this year has went I really want to establish some form of recognition to a photographer who gave it their all this year.

Paying it forward is to -to repay the good deeds one has received by doing good things for other unrelated people.

From now till December 31st midnight CST USA, we will be accepting nominations via comments on this post for a photographer who has really lead their life to help others in a selfless way.

If you know of a photographer who with only the motivation in their life was to help other fellow photographers please nominate them in comments below.

Nomination rules:

1. Must post and nominate in comments

2. One nomination per comment

3. State their name for nomination along with why you are nominating them.

4. Any person nominated must be a photographer

5. They must be outstanding selfless people (state the reason why you feel this way)

6. List things the photographer has done this year to contribute to the photography community

7. Winner will be announced New Years Day

8. Nominations end Thursday December 31st midnight CST USA

Vendors are welcomed to contribute to the award process that day of announcement.  If you are moved to contribute please email lindsay@pifphoto.com or you may contact me via phone, please email to request phone number.

-Lindsay

I’ve created two different sets – the Creative Pack and the Practical Pack.  The Creative Pack contains 25 presets in a variety of black and whites, vintage tones and color tweaks. The Practical Pack contains 26 presets to help you adjust things such as white balance, curves or edge burn (on or off) or to give your images some snap. Below you can see the complete lists of presets for each pack.

You can purchase each pack for $65 or buy them together for $99.