My website, once popular, has lost ranking!

Greetings! I am a new member and this is my first post!

About 12 years ago I created a website for my photography.

My previous career as a graphic artist gave me the impetus to build the website myself. A few years later I learned the value of SEO. I began to study it and then applied what I learned by updating my website with relevant keywords and phrases that I researched and tested. My study was primarily based on SEO as presented by Robert Woodhead and selfpromotion.com. All my work paid off and I began to get many inquires about my photography.

Well, times change, but my website did not. I was busy doing what I do best - photography! In the last 5 years I have not made any changes to my website and this may be one reason why I fell off the Google radar. About a year ago I just stopped getting inquires at all (or very few).

I have not been following recent trends in SEO or social media. The complexity of online marketing is now a specialty for SEO pros, not photographers. Right now I was hoping someone could suggest a few basic things I could do to my current website to improve it's rankings in the short term.

Here is my website - Looking forward to your helpful advice!

http://www.photohouston.com

Thanks, Scott

 

Install WordPress!

Use it to gain those SERPS using the targeted keywords you want to get found for wherever appropriate

 

Eww your site looks like a post-90's site. Please install WordPress and start blogging from that. The reason your traffic dipped is as you said, you've not updated it once!

SEO doesn't have to be for professionals! SEO is for every webmaster no matter how big or small.

Google just wants you to update your site from time to time.

So install WordPress, then add a new blog post every now and then with your new ventures whatever. Add some new pics to it too so Google bots can crawl and index them.

Don't put off for tomorrow what you can do today!

Good luck!

 

PS install on the search term you want finding for most, so perhaps >

domain.com/photographer-placename/ or domain.com/local-photographer or along those lines

 

Better to install WordPress to the homepage isn't it?

 

Use Wordpress on your root domain. Download one of the many SEO plugins for Wordpress. Set your homepage title to something with your targeted keywords. Use a static page or even a sidebar widget to write a summary of your website, making sure to include a few instances of your targeted keywords. When you make posts, make sure your targeted keywords are in the title, the H1 heading, and in a few places within the article.

Do this while still sounding natural. Don't make your website for search engines, make it for your potential customers. If it sounds awkward to put keywords in a post or title, don't do it. SEO is less and less about keyword stuffing and more about a quality, user-focused website with high quality backlinks.

 

can work well I suppose but makes a site more easily beatable, but I could give you a list of other reasons not to and to use a folder. Not that I will write the list as it would take way too long and I have pages to write.

 

Whether or not you have WordPress isn't a determining factor as to whether or not you can rank for your keywords. It's totally not necessary, but since WP is search engine-friendly right out of the box (and even more-so with the right plugins) and it makes it much easier to update your site on a regular basis (something that Google likes to see).

As far as I can tell, it looks as if you have optimized your website for "Texas stock photography" and "Stock photography Texas", and you seem to be ranking well for those terms. I think more than anything this is a case of bad keyword selection, because those keywords get zero searches.

You have a page on your website that is optimized and currently ranking #11 for the term "Houston Skyline Photos", but that keyword only gets about 36 searches, whereas "Houston skyline" gets 3,200 exact match searches per month according to Google (with the same competition and virtually the same searcher intent) so it would probably be worth targeting that term. I also see that you have a page that is optimized for the term "Texas Bluebonnets Pictures" which gets less than 10 exact match searches, whereas the term "Texas Bluebonnets" gets about 880. In fact, I did a little keyword research and here are some other search terms that might be worth looking into:

• pictures of dallas texas
• photos of texas
• texas landscape
• texas animals
• pictures of houston texas
• texas bluebonnets
• pictures of austin texas
• blue bonnets
• texas wildlife
• skyline houston
• symbols of texas
• bluebonnets
• houston skyline
• texas state symbols

More than anything, the important thing is to consistently build relevant links back to your website. This will allow you to rank for the keywords you want. I also recommend that you start building a social media presence, because that is a huge ranking factor these days and will continue to be even more important going into the future. You have some decent links, but then again you have some pretty questionable ones as well. Focus on getting more quality links and you should do fine.

Oh, and if possible, update your website design - whether you use WordPress or not. It's time to get away from that table layout and inline styles and streamline your design using CSS styles. It makes your design more consistent throughout your site and much easier to update later on if you decide to change your design up.

I hope that helps.

 

These are great ideas !!

Installing a WordPress blog should be fairly easy to do particularly with the SEO plugins that were mentioned. Certainly less complicated than using the archaic webpage program I used to create my original Photo Houston website.

At the time I redeveloped my website (7 yrs ago) I did a lot of research on relevant keywords and phrases utilizing tools on wordtracker.com. Many of the terms you might expect are active on one or more of my website pages. I was careful to include these targeted keywords in the title, the H1 heading and the page text.

Should I include these same terms on my new WordPress blog?

Is WordPress better than Google's blogspot?

By the way, I realize that the design of my website is not very intersting. Going forward I need a total site makeover and I do have rough plans for a brand new website with more photos and services I offer.
Scott

 

I am not sure what this means?

Scott

 

He means not in a folder but in your root folder

 

Does this mean that I should include these same relevant keywords on my new WordPress blog that I have on my website?

 

Absolutely. Just make sure that your blog posts aren't competing with your main pages for the same keywords. The point of blogging is really about ranking for those long-tail keywords that you wouldn't normally see with your average, structured website content, as well as providing fresh content that will keep Google coming back to your website on a regular basis. This is where some good keyword research can really help to bring in a ton of traffic from targeting easy to medium competition keywords with your blog posts.

If you're not familiar with keyword research, here's a great guide to get you started:
http://www.viperchill.com/keyword-research/

Hope that helps. Best of luck with your new blog!

 

You should use Word Press

 

Your site needs a major overhaul , so to speak, as far as design and layout are concerned. I suggest you look at using Wordpress as the other members suggested then get a magazine style theme or a photography theme that will showcase the images on your site.

Hope that helps. Have a good day!

 

I looked at your websites and you have backlinks from directories and other non related websites, that's why you ranked well in the past but now you rank not so well, because google added in the last years the penguin update which hates bad links, non related links and spammy links..

 

Thanks ultimat1, I will study the guide!

 

As you mentioned blogspot.com so I would like to tell that you should understand the difference between self-hosted Wordpress blog and Wordpress blog..

With self-hosted Wordpress blog, you would use your own domain name which you are using now with your hosting account.

In your hosting cpanel you would easily find the option for installing Wordpress.

 

Thanks. I recall seeing Wordpress as a tool my web host offers among other products like Gallery which I use occasionally.

 

Let an expert SEO analyst carry out a robust analysis of your site and get it recovered. SEO is a continous process and as a photographer, you may not have enough time for it.