Anything marked up with the less/greater than symbols <> is HTML, code for instance, <section>, or <img>.
I cannot assume you even know what the acronym SEO stands for its “Search Engine Optimisation”. Google does not like the term SEO as it implies you are writing for the search engine, not the user.
Jargon
- Backlink – Incoming link from another website outside of your domain.
- <body> The human-readable content of your page. The most important part of SEO.
- CSS – Cascading Style Sheets. HTML marks up. CSS Styles.
- <head> The first part of a webpage not seen by the end-user. It’s a container for scripts and CSS links etc. It is also where the <title> and the <meta description> resides.
- HTML – Hypertext Mark-up Language.
- Index – Is what Google’s search bot does with website data. It puts it into an Index.
- IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council). This is image metadata like Copyright stored in an image file.
- Image Optimisation – The process of making an image as small as possible in file size in bytes with a minimum loss of quality.
- Lossy Image Compression – Is destructive and involves some loss of image quality but delivers a greater file size reduction than Lossless Compression.
- Lossless Image Compression – Does not degrade image quality but is less aggressive in shrinking the file size in bytes.
- Meta Description which is in the HTML <head> of the document and not normally seen by the end-user. A meta description is there to summarise the page. Its use as the description snippet in a SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) is common.
- Retina – High Pixel Density Screen. “Retina” is Apple’s proprietary name, but the name Retina has become synonymous with High Pixel Density Screens.
- Search Bot – The search robot that crawls the web following links. Googlebot for instance.
- SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).
- <title> – Which is in the HTML <head> of a webpage and not seen on the page by the end-user. The <title> appears as the tab name in a browser, and when you bookmark a page the <title> becomes the name of the bookmark. The <title> is often used as the title in a search engine result listing.
- User Intent – Is what a searcher is looking for, and that might not be clear as many users just use keywords and not complete sentences.
Photo Heavy Sites are bad for SEO
Images slow down web page loading time
Images have large file sizes in bytes. A photo gallery webpage is going to take longer to load than a webpage without images.
A slow-loading webpage is a negative ranking signal for usability, which, in turn, is a negative ranking signal for search.
Google Does Not Care About the Quality of your Photos
You might have stunning photos. Google’s search bot does not care about the quality of your photos. Google needs to know what your webpage or photo is all about.
Photos need context to be fully understood by Google. There are many ways of letting Googlebot know what the subject of an image or a Gallery page is about. I will cover this subject later.
Google Search Guidelines
Google does have search guidelines: Webmaster, Quality & General. They are worth a quick look. The Quality Guidelines warn against spammy SEO techniques. The Webmaster Guidelines are more about the technical side of SEO.
Can Google crawl your site, is an obvious example of a Google General Search guideline?
Summary of Google’s Search Guidelines
These guidelines are edited versions of Google’s Search Guidelines. They are common sense in many ways. I will get into the detail further down the page in the “Essential SEO Steps In Detail” section.
Can Search Engine Robots find you?
Having the, “Build it and they will come” attitude and hoping that Google will find your site that has no incoming links is a best a delaying or even a risky tactic.
You will get found eventually by Google because Google does search the WHOIS Database which is a database of all domains in the world. Why not help Google find you by following either No. 1. or 2. below.
- Backlinks – A search engine bot will find your site if another site has a link (Backlink) to your site.
- Google Search Console – You can register your site with Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools. Then your website will be immediately visible to the two main search bots.
- Sitemap – A Sitemap gives search bots a list of the crawlable pages on your site. The SEO Plugin Yoast will do this for you automatically.
- Crawlability – Ensure your navigation menu works across your site. If you have a web page without incoming links and no navigation menu, it is unlikely that a Search Bot will find the webpage.
Help Search Engines Understand Your Site
- Have excellent quality content that adds value.
- Use keywords in a natural way. Do not overuse them.
- Make your <title> descriptive. Avoid a generic <title>. The <title> should be unique and specific.
- Avoid having a webpage that requires user interaction to show content. Google sees this as a negative signal for accessibility which is a negative search ranking signal.
- Surround your photos with as much contextual information as possible. We will cover this subject later.
- If you have 3rd party advertising or Affiliate links add rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” in the <a> link. These ‘rel’ attributes instruct Google not to follow these links or use these links as a ranking signal for your site.
- Your site should have a robust navigation menu with a proper hierarchal structure. Any page on your site should be reachable from another page in just a couple of mouse clicks.
Help your users (Usability)
- Do not use images for important information like names, or links. If you do use an image use the HTML <alt> attribute to describe the name or link.
- Test your site in is many browsers and devices as you can.
- Optimise your site for speed. A good caching plugin will do a lot of this for you.
- Optimise your images to the lowest possible size in bytes.
- Test the performance of your webpages using a service like GTmetrix.
Quality (Don’t be Spammy)
- Write, naturally, and don’t copy or scrape from other sites.
- Don’t use deception to get users to carry out an action like enticing someone to click on an advert.
- Don’t use techniques for artificially boosting your webpage’s search engine ranking, like buying backlinks.
- Offer something different which engages an end-user. Be original, don’t copy from other websites.
Essential SEO Steps in Detail
Do you want to be found on the web? These following steps are essential for WordPress Photography sites.
SEO For Your Photos
Get the Pixel Dimensions right
Heads-up about WordPress and Pixel Dimensions
WordPress creates four other images for every single image it imports.
- Full Size – which is your original upload
- Thumbnail
- Medium
- Large
- Medium-Large – which is not seen in the Media Settings
Go to Settings>Media to see your WordPress image dimensions
WordPress will not create pixel dimensions larger than the Full Size (original) image. For example, if you upload an image at 500 x 500 pixels, and the large size is set at 1024 x 1024 pixels — WordPress will not create a large size image.
WordPress does not upscale images.
Themes and Plugins also create further sizes (pixel dimensions)
Further to the pixel dimensions that WordPress creates, your theme or your plugins will create further images with different pixel dimensions.
Your theme or plugin should tell you the sizes it requires for the galleries. This is usually in the Theme>Setting — hopefully.
If you know what pixel dimensions your gallery needs — try to stick to those dimensions — especially the width.
What Pixel Dimensions should you use then?
I’m specifically talking about your photographs here.
More specifically I mean Galleries with Lightboxes or sliders. Places where you show-off your photos.
I’ve personally settled on 1600 pixels longest edge. Exceeding 2000 pixels longest edge is counterproductive.
You might argue that WordPress will serve the right pixel dimensions for a device. So why not upload an image of 4000 pixels longest edge? What I am saying is don’t worry about filling the screen of a 4K television just yet.
I have covered the subject of Pixel Dimensions in another blog post:
I have a YouTube video on Pixel Dimensions and PPI
Export at a 50% JPEG quality or Lower
In Lightroom and Photoshop, 50% JPG quality is a good starting point. Go higher or lower for the best quality versus file size. Err on the side of low file size in bytes.
Compress Your Photo’s File Size Even More
It’s a bizarre concept that you can further compress (reduce the size in bytes) a JPEG even after exporting at a low JPEG quality from Lightroom or Photoshop.
This is because there are many different compression methods and Adobe’s JPG compression methods are not as aggressive as some other compression methods.
There are two methods you can use for this post Image Editing software JPEG compression:
- Lossless – No loss of quality – but a relatively small reduction in file size in bytes
- Lossy – A potential loss of quality but a much higher reduction in file size compared to Lossless compression.
How should you do this second-stage JPEG compression?
You have 4 choices:
- Use a Standalone App or Plugin like ImageOPtim for Mac, or FileOptimizer for Windows. Or, use the JPEGmini plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom and Capture One.
- Use an online image optimizer like Google’s Squoosh App.
- Use a paid-for WordPress Image Optimising Plugin like EWWW IO
- Use a Free Image optimising plugin like reSmush.it
With No. 3 and 4, you are letting WordPress do the image compression.
But, don’t forget whatever method you use you still have to keep the JPG quality as low as you can in your image editing software.
If you’ve no budget for a paid-for plugin use reSmush.it. It does a fantastic job for free.
Paid for plugins come with other add-ons like a CDN (Content Delivery Network). Some image optimising plugins will even convert your JPEG’s into the more efficient WebP format on the fly. And to top it off, they can do the resizing on-the-fly as well. The image optimising plugin that covers all bases is EWWW IO
I have covered Image Optimising Plugins before:
Enable Lazy Loading
Lazy Loading ensures that the images on a webpage do not load all at once, but load as they come into view as a user scrolls down the page.
The Lazy Loading of images will allow a user to interact with a webpage quicker without having to wait for all the images to download first. If you use Lazy Loading it will improve your ‘Time to Interactive’ metric on webpage performance testing websites.
For a photography site, Lazy Loading will be a significant factor in reducing page loading speed.
There are many ways of implementing Lazy Loading; for example, via a gallery plugin, an image optimising plugin, or a web caching plugin.
Be careful you don’t implement Lazy Loading in more than one place as it might break your site.
Make Your Photos Look Crisp On High Pixel Density Screens
Making sure your photos look crisp on high pixel density screens is important. As photographers, we want our images to look their best. Serving the right image to high pixel density screens ensures your image will not look blurry by stopping excessive browser resizing.
There is one WordPress plugin that does the work of ensuring your photos look their best on high pixel density screens. Its name is WP Retina x2
If you understand nothing about high pixel density screens, just use the free version of the plugin.
You can pay for an upgrade to gain more control.
You will require a bulk conversion if you have existing images.
Make The File Name Describe The Subject Of The Photo.
“img0001.jpg” does not give much information to a search engine. But “a-kitten-playing-with-a-ball-of-wool.jpg” is descriptive.
Google is clever enough to recognise the picture contains a kitten and a ball of wool. To help Google fully understand the photo you need supporting contextual information. So naming the file to describe the subject is helpful to Google.
There is a WordPress plugin called Media File Renamer which can do automatic image file naming using the “Title” of the image using the IPTC Title from Lightroom or Photoshop. Media File Renamer has both free and paid-for versions.
Use The Alt Attribute To Describe The Image
The “alt” attribute will have different names depending on the way you view your media files in the Media Library. It’s either called “Alt” or “Alternative Text”
The “alt” attribute goes with the HTML <img> selector and is spoken by Screen Readers for the visually impaired. It also read by search engines. Make it work for you.
Enter A Caption For Your Photo
The caption will appear below the image on a webpage. It all helps describe your photo. Add the Caption to the image in the Media Library, or even after an upload in a page or post you can add the caption on the page rather than using the Media Library.
The search engine bot reads the Caption, so it is useful.
Add An IPTC Title & Copyright In Your Image Editing Software
IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council)
For Lightroom and Photoshop users, both the “Title” and the “Copyright” is IPTC image metadata.
Search Engines will read The IPTC title. Also, Galleries can utilise the IPTC data to help populate the gallery descriptions.
Adding IPTC data in Photoshop or Lightroom all help Google understand your image and saves you having to populate the image Title box in the gallery.
Heads Up about Copyright
If your image contains a Copyright. If your image then appears in a Google image search the copyright will stay with the image and be shown by Google. This many help stop image theft.
SEO Plugins and Webpage Metadata
Install The SEO WordPress Plugin called Yoast
There are other SEO plugins, but none are as good as Yoast and the free version is fine for most of us.
After installing Yoast use the wizard to setup Yoast.
Once set up it will do a lot without any intervention from you.
To make Yoast more effective you should change the Meta Description for every page and act on its recommendations. I credit Yoast for any success I’ve had with SEO.
Yoast will do many other things which will make your page more visible to Search Engines, like creating a Sitemap for search bots.
Heads-up, Yoast will automatically make your <title> become your <h1> and page URL, which is good SEO practice but slightly disconcerting at first.
Yoast is a must-have plugin.
Write A Descriptive Page Title <title>
Yoast SEO plugin can help with the populating of the <title>.
The HTML <title> is in the head of a Webpage and is invisible to a web user on the webpage itself. The title will show as the name of a browser tab or when you bookmark a page.
The use of the <title> as the Title SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) is frequent.
Keep the title under 60 words or truncation might occur in the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).
Google might even re-write the title using parts of your copy instead.
If your page answers the user’s intent but Google does not believe your <title> reflects that intent. Google will create a title using the text of your webpage.
Spend as much time as you can constructing a <title> it’s the biggest driver of click-throughs to your site in the search engine result pages.
The URL of a page does not matter to Google
There’s a myth that the URL of a page is a ranking signal. So, you should use keywords, or even a phrase to construct a URL.
A URL, according to Google is not a search ranking factor.
So, changing your title or URL six months down the line will effectively create a new page to be indexed by Google.
The original page will become a “404 Page Not Found” till Google works out via your sitemap that the page no longer exists.
Unless you have good reason to, never change your URL after the page has been published.
The exception is an image file name. This should be descriptive of the subject of the image.
But, when it comes to text on a page Google does not need a keyworded URL to understand your text. Why would it?
Populate The Meta Description Tag
The Yoast SEO plugin will allow you to change the meta description on a page by page basis.
In the HTML, the meta description will look something like this:
<meta name="description" content="This a gallery of my latest wedding shoot">
Like the <title>, the Meta Description is in the <head> section of a webpage. and it is not normally seen by and end-user. The title is read by Search Engines.
Keep the <meta description> under 160 characters to avoid truncation of the search snippet (description) in the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).
Create your Meta Description on a page-by-page basis using Yoast. Don’t repeat the meta description tag across pages — make it unique.
The Meta Description can end up as the description in a search result. Not always though as Google might choose a part of your copy, to make the description match the search user’s intent.
Here’s a typical Google search listing:
- The Title —may or may not be the page’s HTML <title>.
- URL (Uniform Resource Locator). Notice that Category (Web Design) which is a navigation breadcrumb created by Yoast.
- Snippet — may or may not be your Meta Description.
If a page fulfils the user intent but Google does think the Meta Description matches the user’s intent; then Google will rewrite the Meta Description using the page’s copy.
The Meta Description is not a search ranking signal.
On-Page SEO
Write For The Reader Not The Search Engine
Good Copy without the unnatural use of keywords is good for SEO.
Using Keywords alone, instead of phrases, or sentences is a common way of querying a search engine.
Your copy needs to use keywords for search engine visibility.
Do not flood your copy with keywords unnaturally as this will be seen as a negative ranking signal to Google.
Unsurprisingly Google is clever in this respect; do not treat Google like a deaf elderly relative.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of SEO experts that might disagree with my stance on keywords – they are wrong. Google is explicit in its material related to search about the negative impact for SEO, of the overuse of keywords.
“Keyword Density” is an anachronistic phrase in the SEO world as of 2019.
Very importantly for photographers: On your Gallery pages use some text describing what the Gallery is about — Context is important.
Have a correct document outline
Document Outline is not a search ranking signal, but using headers in the right order makes your article more readable to humans.
Google is focused on the meaning of your words, the semantics. Personally I try and write following these two rules:
- Use Headers in the right order.
- Have only one <h1> on the page (ignore this rule if it use in inside of a <section> tag.
Google does not care about multiple uses of <h1> tags on a page. But it does care about the meaning of headers. So even if your HTML is non-W3C compliant it won’t affect your ranking in the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).
Structure your content
Use lists <li> where possible. Even the HTML <table> can be used, but try and keep to three columns to render better on mobile devices.
The more structured your page is, the easier it is for Google to present that data and for your reader to understand the content of the page.
Use internal linking
If you think someone reading a page on your site will get benefit from reading a similar page — link to that page.
If you use tags properly you can customise the site to automatically include related pages. For me, I have to go to Customise>Blog>Single Post and turn on “Show Related Posts“. If you don’t have that facility just use standard links.
Use Structured Data if Possible
Structured Data is just a method of marking up data to make it easier to for search engines to understand, which in turn leads to structured results in the SERP.
The recommended method of marking up the data is with JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data).
The data scheme is schema.org which is a collaboration between the major search engines. Schema.org is their name as well as their web address.
The list of the types of data you can mark-up is growing all the time. Think recipes, events, film reviews, people, products, you get the idea.
Yoast does a lot in the background which you don’t see. For Instance, Yoast creates a schema property for a blog post which uses the schema.org “article” property.
If you choose “Organisation” in the setup wizard of Yoast, there will be an “Organisation” structured data property created for you.
Now with the Gutenberg WordPress release, we can also add two structured data blocks when creating content if you use Yoast and they are:
- How To
- FAQ
Heads-Up about Structured Data
There’s no guarantee Google will use structured data in a search result.
Also, Google doesn’t want you to leave their site – Google’s profits come from people seeing and clicking on Google’s Adverts.
Google might present structured data in the search results answering the user’s intent without that user leaving the Google search page. This scenario is becoming more common.
This could lead to fewer people visiting your site not more.
Check Your Spelling & Grammar
I use the free version of Grammarly as a Google Chrome extension, it’s good. There is a Safari Version of Grammarly.
Do Not use too many WordPress tags and categories
It is not good to have hundreds of WordPress tags and categories as it makes your site difficult to understand to both end-users and search engines.
Ensure Your Website is Usable On Any Device
A site that adapts to the different devices is called a responsive site.
Googlebot now crawls most sites as a Smartphone. If your site has any problems around usability on mobile devices you might not show in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) for someone searching using a Smartphone.
It is imperative your site works on mobile devices. If your site does not work on mobile devices you will not show in the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages) for someone searching on a Desktop Computer — that’s scary.
Most if not all WordPress themes and plugins are responsive to different devices from the largest TV to the smallest phone. Don’t assume this though do some testing.
If you have Google Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools, they will tell how your site is performing on mobile devices.
Take note of what Google Search Console warns you about, and action any problems it highlights.
Here’s a quote from Google about usability.
When ranking results, Google Search also evaluates whether webpages are easy to use. When we identify persistent user pain points, we develop algorithms to promote more usable pages over less usable ones, all other things being equal.
How Google Search Works
Ensure your site works on any Web Browser
Much of this is in the hands of our Theme or Plugin creators.
Do test your site on different browsers and on different devices. And inform whoever wrote the theme or plugin there is a problem on a certain browser or device. Especially if you are still in the first six months of free support with a paid theme or plugin.
Make Your Webpages Load Fast
We’ve dealt with over-sized, in bytes photos. But there could be a multitude of other factors slowing down the page loading speed. One is having too many plugins.
It could be that your website hosting provider is causing the slow loading page problem. If true, you need to upgrade your hosting plan or change your hosting provider.
It is possible to hunt down problems using GT Metrix or similar online tools.
Here’s a quote from Google’s search documentation about Page loading speed:
Since website owners can improve the usability of their site, we work hard to inform site owners in advance of significant, actionable changes to our Search algorithms. For example, in January 2018 we announced that our algorithms would begin to consider the ‘page speed’ of sites, six months before the changes went live.
How Google Search Works
Implement Web Caching
Caching is the temporary storage of web data for reuse. It helps stop every request for data coming from the Origin Server (the hosting provider’s server).
Caching will make your webpages load faster
Caches usually store data that doesn’t change often like your CSS, or images.
Caches can appear in various places for example:
- A web browser has a cache which is called a private cache.
- Website hosting providers usually have a dedicated caching server which sits in front of your server.
- Your ISP (Internet Service Provider) might have a proxy cache for webpages that are accessed frequently.
- CDN (Content Delivery Networks) use caching.
- Organisations often have proxy caches between the local network and the Internet.
Find out what caching you have now. Your hosting provider might have a robust caching capability already.
Ask your site hosting provider what they recommend for boosting your caching performance.
If your hosting provider is non-committal, you won’t go far wrong using the caching plugin WP Rocket.
There are free web caching plugins, but you will find the paid-for plugin called WP Rocket is the best. WP Rocket plugin can also work with your hosting provider’s web caching. And importantly it works with the major slider & gallery plugins.
WP Rocket can do many other things besides caching, like minifying your CSS, HTML and JavaScript. And many other things besides that can make your pages load faster.
Heads-Up about Caching
All this caching can make updating your pages tricky to manage especially when updating your content.
Due to the online editing aspect of WordPress, you might have to do a lot of purging of your caches to ensure you are working with the latest version of your site.
Web Caching is worth the effort.
Use a Content Delivery Network
A CDN is a network of servers in strategic geographical locations serving cached assets of webpages closest to the end-user. A CDN minimises Network Latency which in turn improves webpage loading speed.
In a CDN scenario, a Tokyo web user will access a cached version of the site from a CDN Server in Tokyo, reducing network latency which will speed up webpage loading time significantly.
It’s safe to assume that any good CDN (Content Delivery Network) will have a server in Tokyo.
Judging what CDN (Content Delivery Network) will work for you is not an easy choice.
I urge you to use an Image Optimising plugin that has a CDN (Content Delivery Network) built-in. This option will ensure not only are your images are optimised but they are being from a server closest to the end-user.
I’ve opted for EWWW Image Optimizer with a built-in CDN. No other image optimising plugin offers an optional CDN built-in to the plugin.
As an added bonus EWWW IO has an option to serve other cacheable assets besides just images.
Choose your CDN carefully as some CDN’s are expensive and aimed at large enterprise websites.
Cloudflare offers a free CDN. But you must be capable of updating your DNS (Domain Name Server) records unless your Hosting Provider does this for you.
EWWW IO plugin is serving me well with its built-in CDN.
Test your Site for Speed & SEO
Speed
There are many methods for testing performance, but the most user-friendly method is to use the website called GT Metrix
Some of GT Metrix’s recommendations might require web development skills to action, but some recommendations you can do yourself like optimising images.
SEO Performance
I also recommend Screaming Frog’s, SEO Spider Tool. The tool checks your site for things like Meta Descriptions and much more. In the free version, you can analyse up to 500 URL’s (Uniform Resource Locators)
SEO Spider is must have auditing tool as you can see all the important data in a handy tabular format.
SEO Spider Tool is a great tool for spotting obvious SEO mistakes on your site.
Off-Page SEO
Try and get Backlinks from trusted sources
Don’t buy links, Google might de-index your site if it finds out.
It’s logical that having a site that Google trusts already that’s linking to your website will be a positive ranking signal for your site.
Some SEO experts see backlinking as the the Mount Everest of SEO.
In my opinion, backlinks are far less important than your content.
The Page Rank Algorithm was one of the first algorithms Google deployed. Page Rank was a backlink counter that also took into account the quality of the links. The “Page” in the name Page Rank is actually a reference to Larry Page one of the founders of Google. This algorithm got abused to the extent where you could not trust the SERP (Search Engine Result Pages).
Do not use reciprocal linking of the type: “I will link to you if you link to me”. Especially if the link is not relevant to the subject of both webpages.
All this said backlinks are important. It’s worth trying to ask for backlinks from sites that deal in similar subjects to your site.
Don’t be tempted to add backlinks to another site for a social media mention. The page receiving the link gets the positive search signal and you get a mention on twitter for instance which is practically worthless in SEO terms.
As Google’s machine learning algorithms increasingly understand natural language and semantic meaning; there will be less emphasis on backlinks as search ranking signals in the future — In my humble opinion.
Add your site to Google Search Console & Bing Webmaster Tools
Adding your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools is absolutely vital.
Both, give you various reports about the performance and coverage of websites.
If no one is linking to your site, Google and Bing will eventually find your site.
But if you register your site with Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console, you will visible straight away to the two search engines that matter the most.
Adding your site (property) to Google Search Console
The various methods are:
- HTML file upload
- HTML tag
- DNS record (recommended)
- Google Analytics tracking code
- Google Tag Manager container snippet
Since 2019 you can add data to your DNS (Domain Name Server) records which eliminates the use of a Canonical URL. These DNS records are usually accessible if you bought your domain name from the same place as you host your site. If you are not confident ask your hosting provider to add the data for you if you’ve bought the domain from your hosting provider.
A Canonical URL in this context means picking one version of your site for Google Search Console to assess your performance on. That could be the non-www version: http://yoursite.com. The www version: http://www.yoursite.com as two examples.
It’s not the end of the world if you don’t go down the DNS route of registering your site.
With access to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools, you can see how you are performing from a search engine perspective.
Many people have Google Search Console but never look at it — they are missing a lot. The performance reports alone give you so much insight into what keywords are bringing people to your site and the keywords which aren’t.
A problem that Google Search Console can highlight is that searchers are seeing your listing many times (seeing = Impressions) but not clicking on your listing. It could be your Meta Description and Title needs to be more descriptive.
Social Media
SEO has nothing to do with Social Media.
Social Media is a valuable tool for marketing your business as it helps to bring people to your site. That makes you as a person, or your organisation more prominent. This could, in turn, lead to more hits on your website; but that is not SEO.
Having links to your social media profiles on your site is taking users away from your site. On the other side having links to your site on your social media posts is a must-do.
Google will know your site is receiving a spike in traffic from Social Media. Google might in the short term rank your webpages higher in the SERP.
I only mention Social Media here as it is necessary for marketing your business. Make sure your blog posts are announced on social media.
Bottom Line About Social Media & SEO
Every post you do on social media put a link to your site.
Add regular posts to your social media accounts
If you have a Facebook business page or a Google Business listing, post occasionally especially to your Facebook business page.
Finally – Have Patience and Stay Fresh
You can’t expect to be at the top of Google Search Engine Result Pages straight away. You have to earn that right by producing unique content that adds value to someone searching Google.
Keep creating content. Stay fresh. And that also means refreshing already published content to make it relevant.
Consider blogging to add regular content to your site.
If you have a website that has galleries and little content in terms of text. And you haven’t added a photo or a new webpage in a long time. You will slowly slide down the SERP.
The freshness of your content is a positive ranking signal for Google. It’s a bit like friends, if you don’t contact each other – you forget about each other. Keep posting, keep refreshing your content.
Don’t become obsessive about your SERP ranking. You are meant to adding value to the world. If you add value search engines will notice you – eventually.
A Heads Up About WordPress And Images
This is an Optional Read
WordPress will normally create three more images for every image you bring in. If you go to “Settings>Media” you will see the three other image sizes: Thumbnail, Medium & Large.
WordPress refers to your original image as Full-Size
If the full-size image you are importing is smaller than WordPress’s “Large Size” – WordPress will not upscale an image to make a Large Size.
WordPress creates these other pixel dimensions of your image to ensure that the right image shown to the right device.
Whether that be a desktop or a small mobile phone. Also, WordPress will also resize these images dynamically to serve the right size image to a device.
On top of this, your Theme will create its own pixel dimensions for galleries etc. You can sometimes see these sizes under Theme>Settings. Sometimes it’s almost impossible to find out what extra sizes your theme creates.
Your original image, the Full-size image will not be compressed.
The other images created by WordPress and your theme will have compression using Image Magick compression at 82 quality.
This 82 quality bears no relation to the 82 JPEG quality in you see on export in Lightroom, or Photoshop
If you’ve published your images already with let’s say at 100% JPG quality at 4000 pixels longest edge. Your images are far too large which will slow your site down which is bad for SEO. You will have to reimport your images.
On the other hand, if you’ve published at less than 20% JPG quality and at 800 pixels longest edge. Your photos will look awful. On the plus side, no one is going to steal your photos.
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