Google ad words/SEO on your website? Help?

[James Palanza]

Does anyone out there have a firm grasp on google ad words and how they work? I would love to get my website to appear in the results for my area when someone googles wedding video.
I bet lots of us on here could use some tips on this.
I know this requires "linking" back and forth and lots of blogging with keywords?

Any insight would be great about this from some SEO masters out there.

[Noa Put]

What helps a lot if you have a website with a blog where you post videos to include all the vendors for each wedding and tag them with links to their websites. I for instance get a lot of traffic coming from people looking for a venue for their wedding and googling the venue name and often on the same page my website appears as well with the blog page where I tagged the venues name.

[James Palanza]

Originally Posted by Noa Put

What helps a lot if you have a website with a blog where you post videos to include all the vendors for each wedding and tag them with links to their websites. I for instance get a lot of traffic coming from people looking for a venue for their wedding and googling the venue name and often on the same page my website appears as well with the blog page where I tagged the venues name.

Hm this is a great idea actually - haven't thought of this before. Thanks for the tip.

[Jeff Harper]

James, Noa's idea is very very good.

As for optimizing your pages in other ways, ifyou are serious about increasing your ranking you might consider researching the topic on the web in general and reading everything you can. Or you can pay someone to do it for you, which can be very expensive.

Once you learn how to do it yourself it's rather easy, but it's the learning that takes time.

To explain the in's and out's of how to do it is much too complex for a thread here, and personally I'm not good at explaining it.

I can tell you that a good WP site is easier to make adjustments on. I had an HTML site and did it all by hand for years but went with a great WP template and it's SO much easier to do now.

[Kyle Root]

Also, the rules are always changing on this. In 2013/2014, when google rolled out their new algorithms, they modified the way the do ranking.... I don't recall all the details, but I'm sure it's out there on the web.

The age of the website is given a significant amount of weight most of the time. So, if you've had a domain for a number of years, odds are, you'll show up over someone who has just registered.

Also, link backs - links where your site is linked too from other high ranking domains - helps.

Content is king and as noted, if you have a blog where you can list other vendors on your gigs, that's a sure fire way to work yourself up in the rankings.

Come April 2015. Google is going to be changing their algorithms again and giving out penalties if your website is not mobile friendly. This means, your site either needs to be responsive, or have a dedicated mobile site, in addition to the regular desktop mode. Sites that do not meet the new guidelines will not be ranked highly.

Meta Data and Meta Descriptions use to play a huge role in SEO, but much less so now.

Content is king and doing a combination of the above will go a long way to getting you on the first page. Hopefully.

[Peter Rush]

I create a 2-3 minute highlight of every wedding (if the couple agree) and post it on my vimeo/you tube accounts with lots of nice text and relevant keywords. I also post the same to my blog (google blogger) using the same copy and keywords. I always include the venues names in the body copy and keywords and then email the venue to say it's there to look at. I also post these on my facebook page

I use a library of digital juice/premiumbeat music to avoid copyright issues and include some of the samples on my main website, again with the same copy.

After doing this for 8 years I am now pretty much at the top of Google at least for all the searches a prospective bride might use (I know because every now and then I try searching). The only people over me are the ones that have paid - I'll never do that.

You should also have a Tumblr and Flickr account and occasionally post some stuff on there - always include back links to your main site in your profile and on every post (although I think on some sites, links in posts are ignored by search engines these days)

Also sign up for as many free directories as you can for a backlink at least.

SEO is largely about relevant and regularly updated content - keep it relevant and keep it fresh - you can't go far wrong.

[Chris Harding]

I get bugged consistently with offers on both the phone and email wanting to make my site top of the page on Google ...there must be hundreds of SEO experts out there all trying to get your business.

Because I have a single ad on a big directory here, I don't have to worry about paying some guy $300 a month to have me on the first page of Google. The directory does that for me which is perfect and doesn't cost me anything for the extra service ...I have typed in various combinations of phrases that I "think" brides would use to look for a videographer and the directory listing in my area under videographers always seems to be at the top of the page.

Ok, admittedly it doesn't come up with my site but the directory listing with a page of video guys but that doesn't worry me as the bride is always going to look and compare and it certainly works well without having to pay some guy to keep submitting my site so I'm on the first page ...I don't want to be a skeptic but seriously how can they guarantee that you will always be on the top page and can always have a prime search phrase ?? The few SEO people I have talked to can only get my site to the top with more obscure search phrases... Hell I live in Perth so I want a bride to type in "wedding videos perth" and I must be at the top of page one but everyone cannot be there as that's the most logical phrase that brides would type and I don't want to use less common ones.. I let the directory work for me and it gets results too!

[Leon Bailey]

For Adwords you will have to do local targing and find out what exactly people are searching in your area.

SEO wise, you will need a website with a blog and backlinks from good wedding websites. Also using the social networks helps as well. There really aren't any guaranteed methods to get to page one. I am pretty good at SEO and I am still not on page one. Like Noa said as far as blog posts and make sure you have a website with all of the free wedding sites like The Knot, WeddingWire, My Wedding, thumbtack, gigsalad etc... as links can help.

[Robert Benda]

On the social media side, shares/retweets (at least 10) that include your website link, are a help. That is why the 5 minute trailer video is so useful.

Links to your site from other relevant sites have already been mentioned (other wedding vendors, blogs, or video related sites).

Regular updates to your site content, both a blog and your pages in general, is important. After a while, Google/Bing/Yahoo crawler bots will learn how often to check your site for updates. Weekly is a great goal, but at least monthly.

Don't forget to submit your site to all the search engines either.

Keyword stuffing isn't helpful anymore, and might hurt you, but you still need to make sure your site mentions 1)what you do and 2) where you do it. How to get a hold of you is key, too. Google webmaster tools will let you mark your site info to tell Google exactly what is important, like phone and email so a client websearch will preview the right info, like phone and location.

A Google+ business listing is a good idea, and get a couple of clients to post a new review there, too. Google loves that.

Page titles should reflect content. I have blog posts that are titled 'how-to-hire-a-DJ' and such.