Improving Seo, Off Site, Best Tool?

Rich, you've seen one of my sites - that does exactly what you describe. It is a website powered by WordPress software, a content management system. Some people call it a "blog" because it is made up of articles that I write and illustrate (with my photographs). There are links in the menus that go to my online store(s) and there are links in the individual articles that go to a landing page for each photograph or (sometimes) to the appropriate collection.

I just started that particular site in December of last year and it is growing. Every day it gets dozens of inbound clicks from the search engines because of the SEO created by writing meaningful articles and using appropriate titles and tagging the images with "alt" tags. Last month (June) that site had 23,291 pages viewed - by real people, not bots. With the site statistics software I have the bots are counted separately (about 60% of the "visits" are bots).

There are many people who use the blog capabilities here at FAA. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend that because those blog articles get no search engine love - the page coding prohibits search engines from indexing them. I have heard rumor that "no-index directive" may change in the near future. But...

Bill,

I was hoping you'd respond, for me AND for others here that haven't been part of our other discussion....As I mentioned on the other discussion, not impressed with WP's customer support so far with an issue I have.....and again, needs to be so easy/simple, even a caveman can do it......like me!

Rich

Rich, when you say WP - you are talking about the WordPress.com site. I DO NOT use that. I use an hosting provider company and "rent" server space upon which I have the underlying (wordpress) software installed. That is a totally different animal. A couple people mentioned BlueHost - I understand they have good support. I have been using a company called HostGator for many years but have very little interaction with customer service (because I have been doing this "stuff" for 20+ years.

Stay away from Wordpress.com.

Bill,

Remember....caveman...."It is a website powered by WordPress software" that's what confused me. HAven't heard much good about WP itself.

Rich

Many of us use Wordpress. It is remarkably easy to use. It is already set up with search engines in mind but you may als add plugins that help teach you how to use seo even better... such as Yoast etc

But use on your own domain, not on their hosted site

Abbie,

Thanks for jumping in. Not sure what this means? "But use on your own domain, not on their hosted site". Are you saying to create a website, but somehow use "some" of WP?

Rich

Rich, my offer still holds if you want to take a peek under the hood, so to speak. What I'm offering is set up as Abbie describes - my own domain on a hosting space that I pay for from a known web host - that has nothing to do with WordPress.com.

You could log in and try to create a new article (post) and upload an image to the "media" container and then put that into the article.

Site: https://www.takeoffsareoptional.com/ - there is nothing there yet - so you can kick the tires and not break anything.

Rich, you can talk blogging to death, but you need to jump in and do it on a real blogging platform. I recommend taking Bill up on his offer.

Bill,

Thanks, just looked and there IS stuff there, totally screw-up-able....! LOL!

Susan, the issue ISN'T getting to write a blog, MORE the decision to invest the time in a blog OR start a new website, maybe with a blog page. I started my old blogs back in 2009, mostly most around 2014....MOSTLY political ones.

http://lifeaccordingtobigrich.blogspot.com/

Rich

Ha, Rich. Nothing there now. Take a look: https://www.takeoffsareoptional.com/

If anyone else would like to "kick the tires" and take a look around - let me know. I can give you "editor" access, not full admin. Then you can poke around and NOT break anything.

Basic specs are: Shared hosting space with Hostgator. WordPress software installed with only two basic plugins. The theme is a WP (included free theme) with no mods. This is what powers my active https://www.uspictures.com/ site. (Or if ya wanna call it a blog you can call it a blog. It is a website with blog capabilities.)

Note: Right now both Blue Host and HostGator (and some others) are offering basic plans at about $3 per month.

Bill,

OKAY!!! Let's do this! thanks....

Rich

Rich, you "should" have two emails - one from the site and one from me. Lift the hood, kick the tires - try whatever - make a new post (article) - upload an image to the media section - yadda - yadda.

Bill,

Got both of yours, but nothing yet from the site itself. I think just having the "dashboard" available still limits what I can do. Don't worry about it....

Rich

Search engines already love a wordpress blog, but I also use a plugin called Yoast SEO. It helps you make sure you have the best possible SEO on each post you write.

Andrew,

Thanks, here's what I'm learning....

https://yoast.com/what-is-seo/

https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/

Rich

Hey, Rich. If you would like to see (some of**) what the Yoast Admin Interface looks like - I just added it to "Takeoffs" so you can look under the hood on that, too. I didn't do anything other than install it and activate it - I did zero setup. Some of the controls appear on that one sample post I had made (where I just added your yellow Merc).

** some of. BUT if you would like to see more I can give you Admin privileges - if ya promise not to touch a lot of the toys. :)

I do have Yoast on some of my sites. On USPictures, however, I am using a competitor called All in One SEO.

Bill,

Don't go to far from your phone....once I decide on my choice....

Rich

Rich, take a close look at the one Susan uses. I think they offer a two week free trial. The learning curve may not be quite as steep. if I were just doing one of two sites I would likely go that route. But I've got so many things online that I could not afford it. I spend almost $80/month for two large units that are subdivided into 60+ websites. They all also have their own domain names. Here's a fun one that actually sells products - www.DogAndCatChecks.com LOL

Bill,

"Your connection is not private
Attackers might be trying to steal your information from www.dogandcatchecks.com. (for example, passwords, messages, or credit cards)."

Rich

Ouch! Not good. I wonder it that might be because you may have copy/pasted the URL with the period at the end of the sentence (I have just edited my post to remove that period). That's the only way I could replicate the non-secure warning.

I have the site coded to automatically put in the https - if someone just uses http - but have nothing to remove extraneous stuff after the 'com' at the end of the URL.

It must be working normally for most folks because that site sells a few orders of (mostly) dog breed checks every week. https://www.DogAndCatChecks.com

Yes, surprisingly, people do still use checks - although not nearly as much as they did 10 years ago. My biggest seller has always been dog breed checks and then business checks (other sites).

BTW, that site does NOT use WordPress software as the underlying driver. I still have that coded in old fashioned HTML and PHP/MySQL.

BTW #2 - If you are curious, here is another site I am one day going to build - the skeleton is in place the same as Takeoffs and USPictures - but with a little different style: https://www.swartwoutville.com - the home of my 8th Great Grandfather.

Bill,

Worked this time! IS this YOUR SITE? Or do you just have images there?

Rich

My site. I have affiliate agreements with a couple of the major financial printing companies - so the images are from them. Launched my first checks site back in 2007.

Good luck, Rich. Sounds like you're off to a great start, thinking about SEO right from the beginning.

Bill, it's awesome of you to give Rich access to a site to play with. Very cool, man.

I'm using Squarespace for my blog and off-FAA content. It's pretty powerful. Comes with a lot of ecommerce and marketing tools if you want to use them. I'm still learning the ins-and-outs of it though. Honestly can't say if it's helped SEO yet. I've only had it up and running since March.

https://www.jasonfinkphotography.com

Jason,

Perfect! I'm leaning to Squarespace and setting up a website with a blog, not the other way around. I think the way you set this up is right for my stuff, maybe s section for the cars and then the other artwork, landscapes, waterfalls,etc.

How easy was this setting up, getting the Squarespace site with the images from your FAA, then when you click on an image, brings you to FAA/Pixels for pricing and product?

Do you remember the name of the template you used? Is this about $200/year?

Rich

Sounds like a plan, Rich. From what I’ve read they have great customer support to help a newbie get up and rolling.

Bill,

Did you like Jason's site?

Rich

It was $160, which will be billed annually. I think it's a personal account that came with a domain name free for the first year. They'll bill an additional $20 every year for the domain name going forward.

I mean, I thought it was easy, but I overlooked some dumb stuff too, because there's not much of a tutorial introduction regarding adding/subtracting content to pages. Once you find the little + button above/below the sections, you'll find you can add almost anything. You're basically just adding sections within the pages. I chose a pretty generic template and gutted it, then added a blog template from the Pages menu. Inside the actual blog pages I added my own sections, text, images, etc.

You can choose a site style, which will set the color theme throughout the entire site as well. You pick from various color palettes and then it gives you light/medium/dark theme options based on the palette.

Regarding adding images, it's pretty basic. You can upload your own. Once you have it uploaded you can search and reuse those images anywhere else on the site. Linking is done by clicking on images and going into the their edit menu (shows a little pencil), where you can add links. Same with text. Once you highlight it, you're given a popup to format the text.

I think they let you build a site before you even sign up, so you can have some fun experimenting to see if it's right for you, but you obviously can't publish it until you pay.

There's also a lot of helpful content on the web and in their help section. I found some Youtube videos that had step by step tutorials.

Wouldn't it be nice if there was a single tool to build SEO? Building backlinks is the only way that I am aware of to do that. I have hired people in the past, but that can be sketchy. You need to have backlinks that are relevant to what it is your are linking to. That's why in my opinion having a blog or place you can talk about your photography/artwork and link back to FAA or your website/s is the best thing to do.

When you write a post it needs to contain your images that are backlinked to the site you want to boost on Google. You also need to make your blog something Google wants to index. Good content, good keywords, linking within your own blog, like to another relevant blog post. Also it is important to create a link, at least one to another website, not yours, but that has similar content say about a particular car, location, bird, etc. That adds Google juice to your blog. That is the reason we have the Bloggers Supporting Bloggers group, Google juice,

Wordpress isn't really that difficult. Plugins make it really easy. Not that hard to set up and WP.org itself is free. It's been along time, and maybe I am wrong, but can you go in a play around before your sign up for a webhost? Or do you need to have your URL ready to go right away?

I'm hoping that having a blog helps SEO. I'm kind of at my wits end. I've been advertising my current site on SM, in ads, etc for a couple years now and I still can't find myself on Google under "Lehigh Valley Photography". 14 pages in and not a single result to account for 800+ images on my site. I get buried under 100 portrait photographers from the area.

Jason,

Yes, years ago, I had my own site, another "formatted" website that was pretty simple to set up. Of course, I want both simple and sophisticated.....oh and cheap...LOL!

Is there a limit to the number of images that can be uploaded? Not sure yet, if I want to have both the cars and my other photography on that same site or not.

Rebecca,

Good points. When you do set up backlinks, does it ONLY benefit that particular image or the site?

I'm going to set up a related thread/post here, about websites and see what everyone is using now....

Rich

Rich, to answer your question re: Jason's site - yes.

If you look at all or the members of the Bloggers Supporting Bloggers group you will se a variety of approaches - but they all have a good appearance and seem to work well.

I know I've said this before - but I also really like Susan Tregoning's site. I also like my site(s). LOL

@ Jason. When I do a google search for - lehigh valley landscape photography - you are in fourth place one page one of the Google SERPs.

Rich, backlinks from a well indexed blog will help your website, FAA or other. Creating links to other like blogs and commenting like we do on BSB will increase the ranking of your blog , then it can infuse more juice to other places, like FAA. BSB is a win/win all the way around. You can go out and search for other blogs if you you don't want to be a part of BSB. Only thing is and I have tried many moons ago. it is hard to find other blogs to comment on and leave a backlink that have DO FOLLOW links and that is crucial. If you comment on someone else's blog and they don't have DO FOLLOW backlinks, it's pretty much a waste to comment on them because the spiders can't follow the link back to your blog. No web for Google to crawl.

This is really one of the most complicated parts to blogging. Hope that makes sense.

@ Bill - Yeah, I just have to hope they add 'landscape' in their search I guess. Even something like "Photography of the Lehigh Valley" still lists tons of portrait photographers. Anyway, getting off track.

Jason,

Not sure you saw an old post of mine about keywords, but here it is:

https://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=7073783

In your example, "Photography of Lehigh Valley" sorta makes sense when looking for photographers that work in Lehigh Valley. I would think something like "images of Lehigh Valley" would be better for your purpose....." photos of the Lehigh Valley Areas"....stuff like that....

Rich

I will not pretend to understand a bit of this but I think it is time to try. Bumping this.

Rich,

On Weebly, all my SEO is already built in. I just fill out the SEO spot for my website.

On each blog post, there is an area at the bottom of the tools area, "Post Options", just click on "Advanced" to get to the SEO area and fill it out.

VAl,

Thanks and I agree! ONLY 99% of this is over my head....99.5% maybe....LOL!

Susan,

Thanks for the update. Haven't decided yet, but leaning towards Squarespace and more of a new website, WITH a BLOG, rather than a new blog. As I mentioned, I have 2 blogs, both now resurrected and functioning, one photo stuff and one political.

Once I decide on a new "vehicle" for my car stuff, probably Squarespace, will decide to see if I want to upgrade the 2 blogs....maybe Weebly?

Rich

Weebly is owned by Square, which I believe is a different company from Squarespace, but they offer the same type of merchant tools. So while Weebly was just a blogging platform, it is no longer. It is a merchant website with a blog, NOT just a blog.

If I decide later on that I want a shopping cart and to take credit cards, I can add all that, but I haven't done so since I prefer to let my premium website do all the work.

Susan,

I believe "Square" is the original company that started out selling/renting the tools needed for many that didn't want to buy more commercial grade stuff, to accept credit cards/checks. I rented one years ago, for a big outdoor show....hardly used it!

https://squareup.com/us/en

Rich

Susan, I used Weebly to build a blog to drive traffic to our business. We sold nothing on it. It worked REALLY well, to the point I was able to sell the website for a nice chunk of change. Super easy. Still had to do plenty of SEO, but it worked extremely well.

With much encouragement, and difficultly I started my own blog on my Feral Coots...https://feralcoots.com/ , at the end of last March.

I've been regularly posting images from my book, since.

In fact, I've just posted 4 drawings regarding "Aches and Pains", in the last hour.


I'm not expecting any sales, but I would like some reactions.

All I'm getting is Word Press is wanting to buy "This" and then buy "That".


So, I'm now going back to the basement and work on creating more vulture sculpyures