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SEO: Page Rank

Lesson 17 from: The Photographer's Guide to SEO and Online Marketing

Lawrence Chan

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Lesson Info

17. SEO: Page Rank

Lawrence explains SEO basics and how you can increase traffic to your site.

Lesson Info

SEO: Page Rank

So we're going to be talking about what is today and for the very basic idea of what is essentially getting your website to rank on search engines wherever I mean as much as possible to be number one, but even if you're on the first page in my opinion, it's pretty good already, so your goal is to move your website up there and there are many, many factors that effect where your ranking will be, so I will be going through um many of aspects and as many as possible, but you have to always keep in mind google just like facebook, just like twitter is always changing algorithm no one really knows it, but we just sort of guess what it is and make the best out of it and so far I've had some success you know enough that has generated a sustainable business, so I'm sharing whatever I know with you guys, so the very first thing you have to send about seo is paid drink or in the industry term pr your page rank is very important because it tells other people are tells google how strong your websit...

e is or how if the wench who it is and how you increase your pay drank is by getting people linking back to you those air called back wings and there are two different types there works external links and their internal wings external links would be links that are from outside websites linking to you, but not all of them are the same it's not if you get a link from facebook it's going to be very effective and I'll show you why later, but if you link to yourself internally while that's good cause, of course you can let yourself in terni as much as you want, it doesn't put as much weight to it now. In order to find out what pay drank you are, you have to have a plug in or you can go to certain sites that allow you to see it. The two links I have there below for chrome or firefox. There are plug ins for virtually all browsers, but these are the two that I used mostly so, and I figured most people use them because they're universal platforms for pc and mac, you can download them there and have a re create shortcuts so you can just grab him and I just installed it onto the creative life computer right now, and I'm going to exit out the keynote throughout this entire presentation so I can use the kino as a guide and, um, the browser as away, so I couldn't show you and demonstrate out everything so that's going really quickly when tab over teo chrome now ever installed the page rank to a bar here so if you see right here there's a number four so this is the page rank for my website right now how you increase it is by having other sites linked to you as I mentioned her, but it doesn't mean that any sight linking to you is going to help the weights of their links also matter so if it takes you have to move him okay, just imagine if you start a brand new websites today, which I did I made one yesterday called creative life that bp engine dot com you cannot you watch me live working on this site later, but right now it has nope a drink basically zero and then eventually you're going to have you have other people with sites linking to you so it imagine we don't know the formula no one does except google imagine a thousand zero ten website linking to you to move you from zero to one in order to move from one to two you need a thousand zero you know one out ten websites thinking to you to move from one to two and so forth two two three three two four passing tell sort of how you know like the richter scale for earthquakes like a nine point always not kill two times the strength of four point five because it's using lager rhythms it's exponentially bigger and bigger so it's so hard to get phone three to four four to five ridiculously hard five to six is just really hard and there some really powerful sites that is apple google you know they're all ten attends and amazon and you can have to check out each of them and your competitors page rank by using this to war so one of the homework that want you to dio is to find out what your patron kids as well as three of your competitors in your local area and then we're gonna talk about this in chat rooms I want you to really you know give feedback on this one so for myself I have a paid drink of four out ten generally speaking your index page your home page has the highest rank because that's where most people linked teo however your other pages also have their own pay drink your intern yourself pages could actually be hard on your main page two so let me just give you example my mother my about page it is a three other ten but there is one thing I want to point out when you are dealing with ur l's caps matter so I just changed about from a lower case a to a cap ploy if I were to click on it it goes the same page it lows justice fine but notice to pay drank is no longer three it's blanket zero so when you have links with caps or no caps make sure that you have people linking to the right location otherwise you're going to mix two different pay drink linking and you're not going uh be able to take advantage of everything so when we talk about back wings I'm gonna go back teo presentation here so we talk about back wings we have two types as I mentioned their internal and external external are those from other people now it also matters on the content of those sites it's not like you can get farms to link to you it's not as relevant if you get what I'm saying you guys are photographers therefore you should have photography related links now the question is how do you get other photographers telling to you? Because you guys are all technically competitors now you can do so by creating friends and just linking to each other and I'll demonstrate how you could do so later on and give you a safe place where you can exchange links but it's not so simple as and there are some ways how you have to avoid creating too many links now explain all that later on so it's not just like boring blinks out there but the first step is understand where you rank so the next thing you understand is not all links are the same. There are two types of links r e l or relevance equals follow versus no followings so if you imagine ppe interest or facebook must have very high pay drinks because they're like ten all tens or nine out of ten so let's just go to my facebook page really briefly and I'm gonna show you my facebook and my pinterest right here I have a link to creative lives website where you can watch the show I'm going to copy the link close these pages first so this page right off the bat is a maria for me would be great if I just kept thinking to myself from facebook would be amazing but it doesn't work that way so you go to view page source every single browser is different if you're using safari it might be actually I do remember what it's called but it's different for every weapon but it's something along the lines of page source so view page source now it's going to look very intimidating to me that looks like a big mess too but I re copied the link so all I have to do is go to cannes command f or control f for pc and paste the link and how we found it so right here I'm looking I'm looking okay I see no problem so far no what I'm looking for is this no follow the moment says no follow means like tell google that don't follow this thing I don't know who this link goes too so they're not sending their page rank to you and it's really important to know that now explained that in a second. But let's, look for this. No relevance for help there this I see no follow, see right here. Target equals blank, which means to open a new window relevance equals no. Follow this telescope gle don't send them my powerful pay drink. I don't know this website. Same goes for pinterest right here I have till fears dot com you page source look for till furious that calm hyperlink reference there it is target blank, which means open the window class is part of c assessed relevance no follow again so you don't want to spend all of your time generating links on places where that's goingto give you any effort but doesn't mean that you shouldn't spend time on pinterest, facebook, because these social media sites have a lot of traffic without pay drink, so keep all of these things in mind. Now you could actually integrate these yourselves, because if you link to a place that has a sketchy content or a place where you don't trust that could actually affect your sight, because the moment you link to somebody, it means that you vouch for that site so it's like saying I approve of this site, I'm setting my pay, drank whatever it may be to him or her or them, but lets just imagine that the site has a virus or a site has pornography content or the site has something very bad, whatever, maybe whatever is classified as bad by google that thing's you and could remove you from search results, and that could be very bad too. So in order to protect yourself when you are composing posts, you can't actually see it here. So in a visual, when you're typing a link teo say google dot com, you actually have to go into well, maybe you can see I'm using war press, by the way, which by a wayward press is in my opinion, they want the most powerful platform out there, and the reason for that is because they allow you to install it onto your whole own hosted server. There are many other platforms such as tumbler, which again say this my space could shut down one day they have benefits, but I still very used tumbler to generate traffic to my site where can convert where I can install plug ins to make conversion easier? Same goes for score space score space is great too, but it is still private company it could shut down eventually war press on your hand is an open source program, which means that it's, a community based effort where they are put their efforts into making a better constantly and it's free and you could install into your sight but doesn't mean that it's going to be you know an end all situation if you use another platform it's okay because if you ever decide to switch even from were pressed to say squarespace or from square space to say my space on whatever new future platform eight maybe there's something calling our ss and you could just pull all the feed information over there's a file called xml for those who are techies you know it just pulls information over and it's not from lawrence can I ask you if you could just tell us the link to check the ranking again is and it's different for every browser he said it's a browser to bar that's it I'll put up here where is it so it's a toolbar that you have on it's a tool bar for your browser and it is a different one for each one because chrome and far folks they don't play with each other so you can just google what is the to borrow for google and then it will tell you the length for crumb for carl I mean or for whatever your servers or safari or operas for those but just look for ceos to war okay thank you paige going too far more specifically say it one more time paige rank paging toolbar got it thank you. No problem so you can't actually do it on here through the visual mode now and we're pressed there is a text mode or you can click and I know you know playing with code is not very fun but it's a very simple process in fact, we can create the link first and add the text later let's just imagine that I'm linking to google add link groups work just type it out I'm using this mode anyway so open bracket a ref this is how link would look like anyway, so to google dot com close bracket and then the text that would say so you can say google close bracket now this is how a link we normally look like if you go into your your coding part and you don't really need to know this because I'm hoping you don't link to people you don't know anyway, but sometimes let's just say you you're working with another competitor for whatever reason you don't want to support this computer, but you have to link because it's just protocol and you know social norms because everybody's thinking to each other and you don't want this person to get your pay drink because maybe you're a pr seven or something some phenomenal number you can put relevance or arial equals, quote no follow and tells google I don't know the sights I'm linking to him or her but I don't vouch for this person so that's it so it's really important to know that little trick because it will help you in the future um I have a question about the page rank and the linking the is it if you say like there's a site that has like you know that's bad and virus is he so you don't want your page pointing to it that's why facebook and pinterest to that but is it bad that they they point to use airway teo that's a very good question and unfortunately I don't know the algorithm to be able to answer that but from my experience it does not affect you because then again I could just create some very terrible evil website with full of everything bad and start leaking into my competitors you know it doesn't it's not fair to them and I'm sure that's already waited you know waiting so the next question is where do you get links that's a very good question and it's a very card question's answer because again competitors are very you know way have to protect their businesses first however keep in mind that father industry is very big someone from sacramento is probably not going to compete with someone and portland or someone in you know, in seattle when we're in seattle okay? You know you guys aren't you girls are not gonna compete against each other so linking to each other and helping each other is probably not going to be such a big bad thing it's in fact it's going to help you guys elevator at the same time thie other option is to go from different crafts so a boudoir photographer is not going to compete with a wedding for tougher because weddings are strictly weddings where you are that's all you do day in day out but portrait so you know they could do the same and you can exchange things that way ivory set up a link for a facebook group soto fierce dot com slash f b group if you just want to go there find other photographers so then you can work on the handouts ask creatures lings and a share from there so at least it's a safe place to be and it's not like so shady out there but keep in mind that when you link teacher don't make a single page where you just it's also all links and I'll explain later how those air sort of like link farms but the main thing is you want to be a little bit more clever and how you do this so for example I'm gonna just name you all for as a b c d a willing to be be willing to see see willing to d d willing to eh you know it's how it's not so reciprocating eighty bebe to you know a t d e d t a there isn't like oh, you know, mutual agreement you linked to me having to you back it's a little more clever it's not really exactly gaming the system, but you're also playing it safe that's the bottom line again no one those algorithm but I'd like to be on the safe side this next part where you can get the links will be from publishers so whatever place where you are, where your industry is find the online publishers for those I don't know else any other industry aside from the further one aside from the the wedding industry style me pretty is very big and from my understanding I checked on her site recently and she has no no follows so it's all good but granted that you get to could be featured by her and that's good you know, aside from that I mean paige rank is good, but I understand she has massive traffic anyway, so that's something you should aspire for another way you can get the wreck links would be to simply advertise just advertise somewhere but make sure that you don't have of redirect link a lot of times people have they call you tm are basically it's a tracking mechanism for things where it's google dot com slash double click that you know you tm this long code within check you know how many links are going through don't infact you while that's good to know you can even ask for that I don't want that I just wanted to wreck link just for to pay drink and some sites offer that services well another place where you can get links would be through forms oh you get to see my present no that's a start anyway so there is a sight I've just found this one I don't have to go on there many of you go on to photography on the met it's a form site well what kind of photography in and that is a form and it has a pr for from what I can see from the main page is a pr six but the forum you know pr for of course every cell paged you go deeper in he gets new she ate a little lower but look at this person pll photography I don't know who this is I just found that yesterday so for philip I'm just going to copy this I'm going to look a page source I'm going to find the link there it is h ref link target blank and tag pr photography and a tag there is no no follow so in a way all philip has to do is constantly post on forms and these generate multiple length going back and forth to your site you have a question yeah again with the pay drink linking so it's bad if your page for your page right give you linked to a bad page, right? So if you get maybe a spam comment on your blogged posed does that affecting you? I don't actually know if there's a no fall I I don't have a way to look at it right now. It's a really good question ah lot of times spam people they like to put, you know, comments on your spam sites I mean onto your comments section so they have links back to the sites for the most part work pressed by default hasn't no follow on all comments good or bad but I still have to filter them in the you know manually it's it's that's a good question and yes, that would affect you if it was a follow and by default uh it's not going to say follow because if you have, if you have nothing it means follow it only means no follow every says no follow so another place we can get links will be to become a contributor for a news agency. So huffington post is one example and huffpost is like a pier six or seven or something and you can go on there and become a content creator but of course you have to go through the whole process of becoming an editor vetting yourself I mean you have to let you make sure that you can write and then you have to write compelling posts and you your author link goes back to your site those are very powerful too and the last part very simple way is fotopoulos simply feature each other to say last week I was a creative life or today I was a creative life and I met these wonderful friends and they're also the photo industry here's a link to you know this person's profile here is the lincoln here's the link and this this is a person's photo she does great work and that's a lincoln myself so the other thing you have to be you know, conscious off would be that google plus influences your search results and it did so mohr back then, but they changed that ho algorithm recently, so it doesn't really influence anymore again and it's hard to say it used to be like you're in the circled but now because they're trying to push more for yeah, I'm not even sure what I was trying to do right now so it's constantly changing and what I want to show you is if you go onto a incognita website or private browser for alexis hotel way photography if you know what's at the bottom where my first search result is his toe fears dot com slash wedding that I thought you know but right next to my name is's by lawrence chan in one thousand thirty three google circles that may or may not affect your positioning, and this is getting into google authorship. It used to much more back then, but I felt that they're pulling back, giving that to much weight back then. But it could go back just as easily to it's, always changing, so make sure you monitor that, but nevertheless, I always play safe, get google authorship anyway, so but before that yet again to google, plus, so everything you do, you have to go and do so under private browsing, because otherwise you're gonna have your history, your cookies and all of those, you know, track information, influencing your search results. I've mentioned this before, but the algorithms always changing. And even before then, I don't even know what the algorithm is. You can only guess, but whatever it is, it's so far working, so

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Ratings and Reviews

Daniel
 

Lawrence has done a great job in trying to simplify SEO and marketing in such a short course. He's obviously a clever and well clued up guy, and he comes across well if a little nervous and bumbling at times. The course itself felt quite fragmented over the first day. At times I almost felt like we were going through a business studies book, but in a disjointed way not knowing what direction we'd go next. Having said that the course is worth watching as there are a few nuggets of gold in there and it's a great general overview of both marketing and SEO which is an incredibly deep topic. There were a few questionable area for me over both days, but I've studied SEO reasonably well, for example he told a viewer to keep her old site and not move to a new domain as she'd lose all page rank. In actual fact the lady could quite easily move from one domain to another, and using a 301 permanent redirect she could transfer between 90-99% of her old pages link juice (ranking power). I understand going through deeper areas like this might have put fear in some people, but I think a few areas could have been better presented or explained. Would I recommend this course, yes I would. Although I saw faults in it, the amount of information on offer is pretty extensive and will help most photographers who run their own websites. SEO can go so much further than has been explained here, but for most small businesses this will be a great starting block to getting your business out there and ranking higher than you ever did before! Note to all: Anyone using wordpress please make sure you get it hosted on a decent host. After hosting my wordpress site on bluehost, and getting incredibly slow load times, I researched extensively to find out that the host plays a really important part in this area and going cheap isn't a great option. If your pages load slow you run the risk of losing a lot of potential customers and hits, so do yourself a favour and pay a little more for a decent host.

a Creativelive Student
 

I have been looking for a course like this to learn more about Online Marketing and SEO and randomly came across this course playing live. I usually decide within the first 5 minutes whether I want to continue learning, and Lawrence Chan definitely had me hooked. I wanted to continue watching his engaging presentation and listen to what he had to say. His quirky and nervous disposition was handled well as he broke into a smile or laughter from time to time, which made him funny yet relatable. Like everyone else, I was impressed by his thorough knowledge of Online Marketing and liked the examples he gave as he progressed with the course. Hopefully Lawrence Chan can be featured in Creative Live again!

Corrie W
 

Brilliant ! Great content, well organized, practicable, understandable. I felt like I had a good handle on SEO and really thought I’d be getting a refresher. I am amazed at the new things I learned. Great resource that I’ll go back to often. Well done!

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