I need some serious SEO help

[mikekelley]

First things first: I'm using squarespace to host and run my site. I'm not sure if this is a help or a hindrance. Currently, I have a single flickr album with outtakes from my company's shoot in it that gets higher google search results than the company itself, which is starting to bug me. If someone searches for "new gravity imaging" (the name of my company) I come right up on google's search results. If you just search for "new gravity" you get some mediocre rock band, a bunch of stuff about science, black holes, and then somewhere between the 14th and 16th pages, my site is in there.

I've got a blog that I try to keep freshly updated, but I'm always working on more content to add to the other parts of the site. The website is

http://www.newgravityimaging.com

and any tips or help would be appreciated. Should I just ditch the squarespace and build it from the ground up? I like that it's easily editable and as of right now I don't really have the budget to go ballistic on the website. Over the summer i'm going to be re-tooling and getting some more cash flow, but it's the end of the snow season here and we're winding things down. So for next year...we'll get there. As of now, what can I do to impove my SEO?

[dsd17]

I wouldn't think that squarespace would be of any issues. First thing I notice is that your site is 63 days old. SEO takes time. Especially for brand new domains. You have 80+ pages indexed at google, so that's a good start. You just need to be patient. People say that the google sandbox doesn't exist, but I think it still does. Basically what that did was penalize new websites for the first 6 months or so just to make sure that it wasn't a spam site. One thing to somewhat counteract this was to purchase your domain name registration for more than one year.

Edit: You also need to submit your sitemap to yahoo and bing (at least). I only see 5 pages being indexed on yahoo.

https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
http://www.bing.com/webmaster

Also, have you loaded everything into Google Webmaster tools? https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

[mikekelley]

Great, thanks, I went ahead and submitted to both of those and made sure to update my google webmaster tools files as well. We'll see what happens - if I were to extend my domain purchase a couple more years, do you think that would help?

[dsd17]

It won't hurt anything, but I'm not certain that it will help much. Next things to do would be to start getting links.

[digitalphotocandy]

What you are looking for is new clients right? Then I would try to buy a url with the keywords that people would search for in your area. Like laketahoephotographer.com or bestlaketahoephotographer.net or something that incorporates the actual keywords into it. Most new clients unless it's a direct referral will never enter new gravity imaging in the search engine. Just sit down and brainstorm what people would type in Google. That would be a good start, but SEO takes time that's for sure. So try to be a little patient.

[cdifoto]

IMHO the best thing you can do for search rankings is have lots of relevant content. Search engines rank sites in order of relevancy so it stands to reason that the best ranked sites are those that stay updated, have content that's relevant to what they're doing, and use strong keywords.

Get some inbound links as well as outbound, but don't go crazy and use those link websites. Search engines don't like those and will penalize you for being associated with them.

[tracknut]

IMHO the best thing you can do for search rankings is have lots of relevant content. Search engines rank sites in order of relevancy so it stands to reason that the best ranked sites are those that stay updated, have content that's relevant to what they're doing, and use strong keywords.

I would seriously echo this point. Look carefully at what keywords you would expect your customers to type in to Google, and make sure those key words and phrases appear at least twice on your home page, close to the top. As mentioned, nobody's going to type in your business name, what they will type is "ski photography Tahoe", "snowboard photography", "sports photographer" etc. I don't know your target market, perhaps that's not quite right, but I see very little on your home page that will connect to searches. Frankly "party in Tahoe" seems to appear more often.

Dave

[Anthony S]

Don't forget to register for things like the yellowpages, google's local maps directory, yahoo's local listing, and maybe citysearch or any local directories.

[photoguy6405]

IMHO the best thing you can do for search rankings is have lots of relevant content. Search engines rank sites in order of relevancy so it stands to reason that the best ranked sites are those that stay updated, have content that's relevant to what they're doing, and use strong keywords.

Get some inbound links as well as outbound, but don't go crazy and use those link websites. Search engines don't like those and will penalize you for being associated with them.
What's a "link website"? A website that does nothing but links trying to circumvent the system?

[photoguy6405]

What you are looking for is new clients right? Then I would try to buy a url with the keywords that people would search for in your area. Like laketahoephotographer.com or bestlaketahoephotographer.net or something that incorporates the actual keywords into it. Most new clients unless it's a direct referral will never enter new gravity imaging in the search engine. Just sit down and brainstorm what people would type in Google. That would be a good start, but SEO takes time that's for sure. So try to be a little patient.
My limited experience backs this up. "Ken's Photo Vision" didn't get much attention. Was too generic and non-descriptive, I think. "Iowa Landscape Photography" got alot more attention pretty much right from the start.

[KRStwo]

What's a "link website"? A website that does nothing but links trying to circumvent the system?

I think he means "link farm." Basically, a site where you buy links. These crop up all the time and google gets hip to them and devalues the worth of their outbound links.

SEO is all about getting good, quality links to your site. Create good content and market it.

Dave is right, you need to focus on keywords people are going to use. Here's a good starting point from which to research keywords: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

You should get Google Analytics up and running on your site. With it, you'll be able to tell where your traffic is coming from and what keywords people are using to find your page.

[mikekelley]

Yeah, I got google analytics running. I'm working on re-working (heh) some of the site, so we'll see what happens with it. Also trying to get more content and some good links in and out.