PhotoBlog SEO Image by: Majid ( PhotoDen )
So are you a photographer, or an artist (whether digital or traditional painter) and are running a blog. Well this post is to give a little information about the process of search engine optimizing photoblogs. So here I will try to help the people running a photoblog with the essentials for promotion marketing. Well a photoblog is nothing less than a photographers/artists business. So you might want to give the article “Taking your business to the next level” a read. It helps on building a social media presence and gaining a wider fan base.
Now you’re a photo blogger (an artist, a regular blogger or a photographer) and you encounter you images and you want them to be indexed in the search engine. So how is that possible? I will try to give a few handy tips about seo in photoblogging that you can use. This is a generic tutorial about photoblogging, not restricted towards a single platform (such as WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc.).
Step 1: Image insertion and optimization
The first step is the inserting of images into posts. This step is the most important and must do step about an image tagging. A typical image tag looks like
<img title="PhotoBlog SEO"
src="Source of the image"
alt="the title image" width="100%" />
Notice the alt or alternate tag. The reason is this is the keyword that will allow search engines to crawl the image. Considering the example of a sunset, we can have the following for alt= “a beautiful sunset”. This will help the search engines crawl and detect the image and let users come to the blog.
Using the image captions for keywords, an image caption also helps optimize the images. In WordPress, it gives a lovely interface that allows the user to add the title, image alternate, caption, etc. You can add caption in Blogger without much of an issue as well.
Image description contains the image description and is quite helpful as well. Add a little one line or so about the image. This is a unique feature for WordPress. Blogger will not let you add descriptions for images.
Make a habbit of uploading good quality images (i.e. the resolution).
Step 2: Ping services
The step number two is pinging the search engines that you have a new post added to your blog. You can use Pingomatic for this. Make it a habit of sending a ping to search engines after every post
Step 3: Submission to search engines
Submitting your blog to search engines, its quite a hassle to submit your blog to all the search engines manually. You can submit to Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc manually. But use submitexpress to submit your blog to other search engines.
Step 4: Making the galleries look prettier
Use Lightbox, Colorbox or such jQuery plugins to help your images load in a better fashion when clicked for higher resolution. The biggest reason behind this is that the user will not leave your blog, otherwise an image pops up ruining all the fun of the image and the website. It also makes the photoblog more presentable.
Step 5: Submission to Photoblog Directories
Submit your photoblog to photoblog directories. These are directories specifically made for people who photoblog to share their work with other community members.
• Photoblogs.org
• Cool Photoblogs
• VFXY
• Photoblogs.com
• Photoblogdirectory.net
Step 6: Submission to blog directoriesYou should also submit to Blog directories like
• Blog Web Directory
• MV Blogs Directory
• BlogMeeting.com
• Bloggeries
• Blog Rankings
• Blogadr
• Blogged
• Blog Directory
• EatonWeb – The Blog Directory
• Blog Flux Blog Directory
• Dmegs
• Bloghints
• Blogging Fusion
• Bloghub.com
• Social Blogger Community & Blog Directory
• Blog Catalog
Step 7: Submit feed to feed aggregators
Submitting your feed to feed aggregators
• Feedage
• Feedfury
• Goldenfeed
• BlogDigger
• RSS mountain
• RSS micro
• RSS motron
• Technorati
• Icerocket
• FeedAgg
• Rss2
Step 8: Submit images to Image bookmarking websites
Submit your works to image bookmarking websites as well, this helps a lot in getting proper critics, comments and developing a fan base.
• Flickr
• Deviantart
• Weheartit
• Pichaus
• Jalbum
• Imageloop
• Picforme
• Vnovember
• IMGFave
• Webshots
• Shareapic
• Photoree
• Iimmgg
• Photosig
• Smugmug
• Photosynth
• Photoshelter
• Fotolog
• Enjoysthin.gs
Step 9: Connect with others in the same community
Connecting to other photobloggers, well no one is perfect right. It is always good to be in touch with people who do the same thing as you. Photoblog in this case is what is common between every one. The best method is to build a relation with other photoblogs by leaving your valuable feedback there.
Let other bloggers/ people use your images. Connection with other bloggers as well who blog will help you get a good reputation if your putting high quality images. Ask them to link back with a caption that you took the image. It actually helps a lot in backlinking of photoblog and this is where it goes much viral as compared to a text based blog. Non- Profit Organizations, other organizations can use your image too but linking back is a must. That is the easiest and best way to link back.
Step 10:Adding website/Posts to social Bookmarking websites
Add your website to social bookmarking sites such as
• Digg
• Delicious
• Stumbleupon
• Pinterest
Step 11: Build a social media presence
My favorite part of SEO is social media presence. Social media definitely is the most important tool in building a good and extremely quick method for traffic and fan building. If you want to read in detail, please read the “Taking your business to the next level” post. But the most important steps here are
1. Make a Facebook Fan page
2. Make a Google Plus page
3. Make a twitter account and tweet about your photos.
4. Pinterest has made image blogging really good. It helps people pin images. The best thing is it actually helps get a good amount of fan base if your image is good. I have seen images being repined a lot of times with massive inflow of comments.
So I guess this is it. Have fun blogging, photoblogging and getting ranked by doing photoblog SEO.
It is meant to be helpful 
