31 placement factors for photographers

31 placement factors
by Randall Tomaras

This article is FOUR years old and MUCH has changed, but it still gives you some basics. At the time this was written there were less than 2 million pages related to photographer. Now there is over 55 million. This has resulted in some major changes, the most important is "HOW" the consumer now finds what they are looking for on the internet and what are the NEW criteria for search engines in deciding placement.

Actually it would be impossible for me to tell you what I have learned researching “placement” the past two years in a short article. First of all there are hundreds of search engines and they all have different rules for top placement. And they are always changing. Think of placement like a lotto ticket with “31 placement numbers” and each state has their own drawing that changes weekly. Fortunately, if you find the winning numbers, it does not change so much that you can’t be in the top 30 for a keyword or phrase. However, you don’t know what keyword or phrase a consumer is going to type into that search engine and a page can not be tuned for all keywords. So you need to have many pages and each page has to be tuned for different keywords. Best USA Photographers currently has over 800 pages and when we have all the state pages complete we will have over 10,000 pages.

Best USA photographers is concentrating on the top three search engines that are responsible for 74% of all traffic. That would be Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Best USA Photographers is in the top 30 for over 600 keywords or phrases with MSN. Our initial efforts started with MSN for a reason. Microsoft has been working on a “new MSN” for several years now and it is supposed to do what Internet Explorer did to Netscape. We are currently working on pages for Google and then Yahoo

I don’t consider myself an expert and struggle with code. This may be an advantage because I have to simplify everything to understand it. My basic approach is to discover the keywords that consumers are using to find photographers. Then I research which pages are in the top 10 for those words. I take the “31 placement factors” and analyze what each search engine does to them. Then I try to create a page to compete for top placement.

To give you an understanding of why I do to my pages what I do, you are going to have to learn some terms. Currently all search engines are based on HTML, so java script and other languages slow down your chances of top placement. If you know HTML some of these terms are familiar. The following has been modified and edited from 420 pages of Brent Winters’ Web Position.

There are two areas to HTML
Head - This is the area at the top of the page where the Title and META tags reside. Example:
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Outstanding photographers unite</TITLE>
<META name="description" content="Outstanding photographers unite to make it easy for consumers to find photographers in 50 categories.">
<META name="keywords" content="outstanding photographers">
</HEAD>
Body - The BODY area is where the bulk of the text on a page generally resides.
Example:
<BODY>
<P> bla bla bla . . . . Thanks for using Best USA Photographers.</P>
<a href="USAfoundersalph.htm">Check out the Best USA Photographers Charter Member pages</a><BR>
</BODY>
</HTML>

Now the consumer types in a keyword or phrase in a specific search engine or directory. For every keyword or phrase mentioned it has the following 4 characteristics:
Prominence is how close to the start of an area that the keyword appears
Frequency is how often a keyword appears on the page or in a page area.
Count is simply a count of the total words in a given area, excluding HTML tags.
Weight is the percentage or concentration of keywords on your page in relation to all other words on the page or area. Keyword weight refers to the number of keywords appearing in the page area divided by the total number of words appearing in that area.

Now you can multiplied those four characteristics by the following factors:

Title
The <TITLE> tag of your Web page is the most important HTML tag or element. All the search engines consider the keywords in this tag and generally give those keywords a lot of importance in their ranking system. Many search engines use the HTML <TITLE> tag as the title of your page in the search results that appear to the user.

META Keyword
The purpose of this tag is to define what keywords apply to your page. However, only some search engines will read this tag, and those that do often do not place as great importance on it as keywords found in other areas of the page. Still, you should generally include a META keyword tag on your page within the <HEAD> area.
Example of a META keyword tag:
<META name="keywords" content="Best USA Photographers, Portrait, Commercial, Fine Art, Outdoor, photojournalism, photoshop">

You are safe to list keywords in lower case only, since none of the major engines are case sensitive Avoid repeating keywords more than two or three times, and never list the same keyword twice in a row.

META Description
The text found in the META Description tag will be displayed to the user in the search results for many engines. Therefore, it pays to craft a good description so that you not only rank well, but so people will actually click on your link once they see it.
Example of a META Description tag:
<META name="description" content="Place descriptive text here.">

The above tag, like all META tags, would appear within the <HEAD> section of your page.

Heading
Headings are generally the larger print on a page used to emphasize or introduce new topics. A heading often appears at the very top of the page. Headings come in various sizes represented by tags like <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc. Some of the search engines give extra relevance to keywords that appear within a heading tag.
Example of a heading tag:
<H1>Best USA Photographers</H1>

Link Text
A page's relevance to a given search can be improved by taking advantage of another scoring technique highly favored by some engines. The text within a LINK is sometimes weighed more heavily than words found in the regular body text.
Example of a link tag:
<A HREF="bestusahalloffame.htm">Visit the Best USA Charter Member</A>

Hyperlink URL
Keywords within the URL itself (the name of the page) are given extra relevancy by some search engines. Therefore, it pays to name your pages after your important keyword phrase.
Example:
<A HREF="Arizonacommercialphotographers.htm"> Arizona commercial photographers </A> <BR>

ALT
The ALT text of an image tag is used to describe a graphic for those users who surf with the graphics turned off. It is also useful for those who are sight impaired and have software that reads the contents of Web pages to them. To see ALT text on a page, put your cursor over an image. If there's ALT text, it will show up in a box beside the image. Some search engines will index the contents of ALT text and use it when determining relevancy and ranking. However, be sure to describe the image first while also including your keyword phrase. Don't use the ALT text area as a place to stuff your keywords since this is considered spam by the search engines.
Example:
<IMG SRC="clayblackmorewed.gif" ALT="wedding at Washington Monument">

Multiplying the 4 characteristics by the 7 factors you come up with 28 factors plus the 3 factors below equals 31 factors to consider. The key is discovering what is more important to which search engines and directories.

Other factors:
Link Popularity
It is believed that one measure of a site's "value" is the number and importance of other Web sites who felt your site was significant enough to link to. (not really true any more)

Link Reputation
The popularity of the sites that link to you. The number of links from popular and authoritative sites in your topic area can also play a role.

Keyword Placement (Area)
The area in which the keyword is found plays a key role for many searches. Having the keyword in the Title tag on most search engines will give more relevance to the page than the same keyword appearing in the body area. To rank well generally requires you have keywords in many of the areas in which a search engine looks. The areas that are the most important will vary by search engine. Examples of "areas" of a page are Title, Heading, Link Text, and Body.

All that said, choosing keywords is most important
The first step to a successful web site is to conduct proper keyword research. It's the most important thing you can do to ensure the success of your Web site.
Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain. Choose the right keywords, and you'll see your traffic skyrocket. Therefore, think long and hard on what keywords people are likely to use to find you. Make lists of keywords and then combine them into two- or three-word phrases.

You rarely want to target a single keyword for two reasons:
1) The keyword is probably highly competitive and very general, making it difficult, if not impossible, for you to score a top-10 ranking.
2) If you're lucky enough to get a top-10 ranking for a very general keyword, you may have a lot of traffic to your site, but that traffic won't convert to sales. Aren't you ultimately after traffic that converts to sales? For this reason we do not target general words like photographer, pictures, photography etc. Buyers are more specific. We combine words based on our years of proprietary research.

It’s a massive project
All this takes time and there is actually a lot of research that must be done to make sure you are doing the right thing. You can do more damage if you don’t. It gets complex when you target several key phrases and on several search engines. Best USA Photographers figures that we will have over 10,000 pages when we are finished. Each designed for a specific keyword or phrase on a specific search engine.



	31 placement factors by Randall Tomaras This article is FOUR years old and MUCH has changed, but it still gives you some basics. At the time this was written there were less than 2 million pages related to photographer. Now there is over 55 million. This has resulted in some major changes, the most important is "HOW" the consumer now finds what they are looking for on the internet and what are the NEW criteria for search engines in deciding placement. Actually it would be impossible for me to tell you what I have learned researching “placement” the past two years in a short article. First of all there are hundreds of search engines and they all have different rules for top placement. And they are always changing. Think of placement like a lotto ticket with “31 placement numbers” and each state has their own drawing that changes weekly. Fortunately, if you find the winning numbers, it does not change so much that you can’t be in the top 30 for a keyword or phrase. However, you don’t know what keyword or phrase a consumer is going to type into that search engine and a page can not be tuned for all keywords. So you need to have many pages and each page has to be tuned for different keywords. Best USA Photographers currently has over 800 pages and when we have all the state pages complete we will have over 10,000 pages. Best USA photographers is concentrating on the top three search engines that are responsible for 74% of all traffic. That would be Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Best USA Photographers is in the top 30 for over 600 keywords or phrases with MSN. Our initial efforts started with MSN for a reason. Microsoft has been working on a “new MSN” for several years now and it is supposed to do what Internet Explorer did to Netscape. We are currently working on pages for Google and then Yahoo I don’t consider myself an expert and struggle with code. This may be an advantage because I have to simplify everything to understand it. My basic approach is to discover the keywords that consumers are using to find photographers. Then I research which pages are in the top 10 for those words. I take the “31 placement factors” and analyze what each search engine does to them. Then I try to create a page to compete for top placement. To give you an understanding of why I do to my pages what I do, you are going to have to learn some terms. Currently all search engines are based on HTML, so java script and other languages slow down your chances of top placement. If you know HTML some of these terms are familiar. The following has been modified and edited from 420 pages of Brent Winters’ Web Position. There are two areas to HTML Head - This is the area at the top of the page where the Title and META tags reside. Example: <HEAD> <TITLE>Outstanding photographers unite</TITLE> <META name="description" content="Outstanding photographers unite to make it easy for consumers to find photographers in 50 categories."> <META name="keywords" content="outstanding photographers"> </HEAD> Body - The BODY area is where the bulk of the text on a page generally resides. Example: <BODY> <P> bla bla bla . . . . Thanks for using Best USA Photographers.</P> <a href="USAfoundersalph.htm">Check out the Best USA Photographers Charter Member pages</a><BR> </BODY> </HTML> Now the consumer types in a keyword or phrase in a specific search engine or directory. For every keyword or phrase mentioned it has the following 4 characteristics: Prominence is how close to the start of an area that the keyword appears Frequency is how often a keyword appears on the page or in a page area. Count is simply a count of the total words in a given area, excluding HTML tags. Weight is the percentage or concentration of keywords on your page in relation to all other words on the page or area. Keyword weight refers to the number of keywords appearing in the page area divided by the total number of words appearing in that area. Now you can multiplied those four characteristics by the following factors: Title The <TITLE> tag of your Web page is the most important HTML tag or element. All the search engines consider the keywords in this tag and generally give those keywords a lot of importance in their ranking system. Many search engines use the HTML <TITLE> tag as the title of your page in the search results that appear to the user. META Keyword The purpose of this tag is to define what keywords apply to your page. However, only some search engines will read this tag, and those that do often do not place as great importance on it as keywords found in other areas of the page. Still, you should generally include a META keyword tag on your page within the <HEAD> area. Example of a META keyword tag: <META name="keywords" content="Best USA Photographers, Portrait, Commercial, Fine Art, Outdoor, photojournalism, photoshop"> You are safe to list keywords in lower case only, since none of the major engines are case sensitive Avoid repeating keywords more than two or three times, and never list the same keyword twice in a row. META Description The text found in the META Description tag will be displayed to the user in the search results for many engines. Therefore, it pays to craft a good description so that you not only rank well, but so people will actually click on your link once they see it. Example of a META Description tag: <META name="description" content="Place descriptive text here."> The above tag, like all META tags, would appear within the <HEAD> section of your page. Heading Headings are generally the larger print on a page used to emphasize or introduce new topics. A heading often appears at the very top of the page. Headings come in various sizes represented by tags like <H1>, <H2>, <H3>, etc. Some of the search engines give extra relevance to keywords that appear within a heading tag. Example of a heading tag: <H1>Best USA Photographers</H1> Link Text A page's relevance to a given search can be improved by taking advantage of another scoring technique highly favored by some engines. The text within a LINK is sometimes weighed more heavily than words found in the regular body text. Example of a link tag: <A HREF="bestusahalloffame.htm">Visit the Best USA Charter Member</A> Hyperlink URL Keywords within the URL itself (the name of the page) are given extra relevancy by some search engines. Therefore, it pays to name your pages after your important keyword phrase. Example: <A HREF="Arizonacommercialphotographers.htm"> Arizona commercial photographers </A> <BR> ALT The ALT text of an image tag is used to describe a graphic for those users who surf with the graphics turned off. It is also useful for those who are sight impaired and have software that reads the contents of Web pages to them. To see ALT text on a page, put your cursor over an image. If there's ALT text, it will show up in a box beside the image. Some search engines will index the contents of ALT text and use it when determining relevancy and ranking. However, be sure to describe the image first while also including your keyword phrase. Don't use the ALT text area as a place to stuff your keywords since this is considered spam by the search engines. Example: <IMG SRC="clayblackmorewed.gif" ALT="wedding at Washington Monument"> Multiplying the 4 characteristics by the 7 factors you come up with 28 factors plus the 3 factors below equals 31 factors to consider. The key is discovering what is more important to which search engines and directories. Other factors: Link Popularity It is believed that one measure of a site's "value" is the number and importance of other Web sites who felt your site was significant enough to link to. (not really true any more) Link Reputation The popularity of the sites that link to you. The number of links from popular and authoritative sites in your topic area can also play a role. Keyword Placement (Area) The area in which the keyword is found plays a key role for many searches. Having the keyword in the Title tag on most search engines will give more relevance to the page than the same keyword appearing in the body area. To rank well generally requires you have keywords in many of the areas in which a search engine looks. The areas that are the most important will vary by search engine. Examples of "areas" of a page are Title, Heading, Link Text, and Body. All that said, choosing keywords is most important The first step to a successful web site is to conduct proper keyword research. It's the most important thing you can do to ensure the success of your Web site. Target the wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain. Choose the right keywords, and you'll see your traffic skyrocket. Therefore, think long and hard on what keywords people are likely to use to find you. Make lists of keywords and then combine them into two- or three-word phrases. You rarely want to target a single keyword for two reasons: 1) The keyword is probably highly competitive and very general, making it difficult, if not impossible, for you to score a top-10 ranking. 2) If you're lucky enough to get a top-10 ranking for a very general keyword, you may have a lot of traffic to your site, but that traffic won't convert to sales. Aren't you ultimately after traffic that converts to sales? For this reason we do not target general words like photographer, pictures, photography etc. Buyers are more specific. We combine words based on our years of proprietary research. It’s a massive project All this takes time and there is actually a lot of research that must be done to make sure you are doing the right thing. You can do more damage if you don’t. It gets complex when you target several key phrases and on several search engines. Best USA Photographers figures that we will have over 10,000 pages when we are finished. Each designed for a specific keyword or phrase on a specific search engine.
		back to Best USA Photographers home page

		Want free photography advice online?

		Are you a Photographer?

		Best USA Photographers' Resource Center

		Non-Photo Information in the works * Web site info * Models clothing * Make-up * Health & nutrition and more

		Contact Best USA
Photographers - As you can see web placement is a VERY COMPLEX subject that is always changing. It takes a lot of time and research to come up on top. If you have been invited to be a member of Best USA Photographers and have some questions let us know . Thanks for using Best USA Photographers. Check out the Best USA Photographers Charter Member pages