“I just checked out my website grade on grader.com and I’m down to a 51/100! What can I do? I’m nowhere to be found on Google. I’m beyond page 10, which means nobody is finding me.”

Maintaining a photography blog is tricky because you have to balance showing off your work with driving traffic to your site. Here are some tips i gave him to help him do both:

1) Your post titles & URL’s are date heavy.  Stop putting the date manually in your post titles because it is redundant, you want the url to be mostly useful relevant content – numbers are wasteful.  In this example, you want to get people searching for “cookie thief” vs “july 27th 2010″.  Notice the difference below:

Permalink: http://www.ninelivephotography.ca/2010/07/27/july-27th-2010-my-365-cookie-thief/ 
Post title: July 27th 2010 – my 365 – Cookie Thief

vs

Permalink: http://www.ninelivephotography.ca/2010/07/27/my-365-cookie-thief/ 
Post title: The Cookie Thief (i added the word ‘the’ in)

2) Amount of content.  Your posts tend to be very short, like a few sentences long.  There is nothing wrong with that but it doesn’t lend itself well to SEO because when the search engine looks at the page, they don’t see much content relevant to that keyword so it gets less weighting.  I’d also suggest linking out from your site more to other blogs, messageboards etc etc…

3) WordPress tweaks.  Some of this you’ve probably already done.  Do you have google webmaster tools setup?  Do you have the SEO all in one plugin installed?  Google sitemaps plugin?  These help make sure you are indexed faster.

4) Type of content.  Seems almost all of your posts are promoting your pictures.  Seeing your work once someone gets to the site is important in establishing trust/compentency and having them contact you for a quote etc – but it doesn’t do much to get them there.  There is a good marketing quote that goes something like “Nobody cares about your products / services.  What they care about is solving their problems.”  If i were you I would focus on photography tips, tricks, how to’s & tutorials because that is what people are searching for.  Doing that will drive much more traffic (potentially virally if it’s a good post), and establish you as a thought leader etc etc…all that will eventually lead to more photography work for you.

The other thing about those type of posts, is you can share them on facebook pages / message boards / digg etc and it drives traffic to your site without seeming like you are spamming your services.  ”hey just thought you guys would find this interesting since it’s relevant to the discussion going on here:….” – something like that.

Matt Cutts from Google also has some good tips for photographers looking to optimize their sites for search engines:

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My post on Tap Defense strategies generated 40k+ uniques in a year and continues to drive traffic

(I’m going to do a few of these over the next little while, with each one focused on a different part of the online marketing mix)

1. Create Something
Write a blog post. Start a podcast. Develop an eBook. Make something original people can’t get anywhere else. Make sure it’s search engine friendly.

2. Plant the seed
*Carefully* share the link to your content on relevant sites (digg, facebook groups/fan page, other blog comments – do some research to determine what’s appropriate). Do not spam, and never use it as a selling opportunity.

3. Don’t be a quitter
This is a key step. At first almost everything you post will seem to fall flat. Don’t be like every corporate marketing department and give up after 1 week of trying it out.

Rinse & repeat steps 1-3.

If you build it, they will come…eventually
It may take 6 months to a year of regular content marketing before you see results. The bottom line is if you create lots of content, you may not see much traffic from any particular piece of content but collectively the effect is like rain in a bucket (it all adds up), and with some persistence you will see that bucket overflow. The best part? This can all be done for free using free open source tools like WordPress.

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Seth Godin live @ Art of Marketing

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Yesterday i got a random question from someone on Facebook who discovered my earlier post about social media for bands. I thought she had some interesting questions so here’s the transcript of our Q&A:

Ok! well the first question that i have is what do you do for a living? Is your blog something you do for fun?

A: I do online marketing/web application development & iphone app development on the side. My blog is for fun and to occasionally piss off hypocrite conservatives & Apple haters.

How do you think the internet has changed the music industry?

A: Its been bad for big pop artists, especially those who may have a lot of label money but make terrible music. On the other hand it has been great for indie musicians because no longer do you need millions of dollars to spread the word about your music. It also has changed the artist / fan relationship in some ways. In many cases fans have a direct line of communication to the artist via Twitter / Facebook etc…

Do you think there are any negative aspect to this method of promotion?

A: It takes a huge amount of persistence. There is no “silver bullet” to success. So i think for bands just starting out it can be hard to know where to start etc…I think it’s also really easy to give up early on when you don’t see results. You also have to be careful to maintain ‘an arms length’ relationship with the fans while still being accessible. Getting too close to your “coo coo for cocoa puffs” fans can end badly.

Do you have any tips for local bands who are looking to use social media to promote themselves?

A:
- Start by eating your own dog food. Follow/subscribe to artists on twitter/facebook that are already doing it and get a feel for what is working for them and how they are using the tools.
- Don’t give up, it’s gonna take time to build momentum.
- Use a service like ping.fm to make it easier to update all your social media profiles in one fell swoop.
- Use a service like www.artistdata.com to post your tour schedule once, and syndicate to hundreds of tour schedule websites across the internet.
- Find a good Twitter client. On Mac/iPhone i recommend Tweetie. Also there is a cool iphone app called Boxcar that will send you notifications on your iphone when you get @ replies or DM’s from fans which leads to my next tip:
- Do whatever you can to respond to every fan question/comment.
- Give your music away for free on your website. The bad news is people could be downloading your music for free anyways. The good news is digital content has a distribution cost of $0. Take advantage of this. People will still buy your music but more importantly you will make more money from touring due to a growing fan-base.
- Most of all: make amazing music. It doesn’t have to mainstream pop. In some ways it is easier to build a following if your music is unusual!

In your post about tips on using social media for bands, you said never spend a cent on traditional advertising. What was your reason behind this?

A: You only need to do this if your music sucks or you were signed to a major label and now need to pay back their investment in you asap. TV & print advertising is horrendously expensive. Making a music video with the objective of having it show up on MTV is a waste of time & money. Even MTV seems to have realized this as there is hardly any music on these stations anymore.

The one thing i think that’s worth spending dollars on, is getting mentioned by tastemakers. If you can get a tastemaker to plug you in in an authentic way to their fanbase, it can have huge upside.

And what about bands using YouTube? Do you think that this form of social media is a good way to promote their music and upcoming projects?

A: Absolutely. Get a cheap flip mino camera and take it on the road with you. If you have a mac iMovie is great for putting together quick video blogs. I’m sure there is something equivalent on Windows. Fans love this stuff. Also, if you have the resources you can stream your shows online via ustream for free (assuming you have the hardware required). Indie bands like Enter The Haggis are doing this and it’s a great way to boost the return your band gets from playing a show.

Great questions!

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The best marketing is none at all. The best marketing is when the product is so remarkable that people are compelled to talk about it, they are compelled to share it. Great products build communities, not consumer segments.

Pretty much sums up how i feel about marketing right now as well. The question is, who is responsible to make the product remarkable? What do you do if you are a marketer in a situation where you know your product is not remarkable?

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Sons Of Maxwell, the guys that put this video together are a small Canadian band from Nova Scotia. Was this a display of marketing genius? Definitely. Has it got them tons of press and views on Youtube? Absolutely. Will United make things right? Maybe. But will it help them win new fans & help take the band to the next level? That i’m not so sure about, at least not the way they may have wanted.

This video is catapulting them from playing pubs in Nova Scotia to coverage on CNN overnight. I just don’t think this is necessarily a good thing for a band because it turns you into a meme, which (as we have seen) have a limited shelf life. This video is going to cast a shadow over everything they do, shows, interviews etc – for the rest of their careers. I guess if they are going the Weird Al Yankovic path that’s ok, but didn’t you start a band to be known for the music?

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With all the noise out there these days, it’s unreasonable to expect you can hit a marketing homerun on command. However, with enough “at bats” you are going to knock a few out of the park and prove all your naysayers wrong. The question is, how many at bats are you taking with your marketing?

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Have you heard of Joe Purdy? Me neither. He made a healthy six-figures last year from his music, bought a house & sold more than 650,000 tracks on iTunes. How?

A good friend of mine was over for dinner last night and we had a chat about his band’s marketing efforts for their upcoming album, and here are some of the ideas that came out of our discussion:

- Maintain a blog/podcast, Twitter account, Facebook group, Myspace presence and any other worthwhile social media tools out there (don’t neglect them!)
- Advertise all the above at shows, in interviews, on the band’s website…EVERYWHERE!
- Give away mp3′s of your music for free (from your website), and encourage people to share it with their friends using the above tools. Maybe even seed it on Bittorrent.
- Never spend a cent on traditional advertising. It costs way too much to cut through the noise these days and the ROI is small.
- Use social media to ‘rally the troops’, crowdsource & interact with your fans – keep them engaged!
- Make damn sure all your music is on iTunes & Amazon. Even though they may have a few mp3′s they got for free from you your true fans will buy your music.
- Have a consistent ‘branding’ from the myspace page to the live show

The bottom line is, these days people have too much choice, and to make matters worse there is too much noise in the world. This means people aren’t listening to you. They are however, listening to their friends and people they trust. The key is finding people who have the Otaku for your music and making it as easy as possible for them to do your marketing for you.

I almost forgot – above all else, make amazing music.

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