Session Blog Rules
If there is one overarching tenant of SEO it would be consistency. Typically folks take this to mean they need to be posting blogs on a regular basis and while that’s true, it doesn’t fully embody the meaning of consistency in this context. What we really need is to be consistently posting blogs, with a consistent format that shows google and other search engines that we are consistent. I promise I will not use that word again. The format is what you are here for and I have taken the mystique out of Blog SEO below. Some of it is obvious and some of it is redundant but I am a stickler for consistency (damnit) of layout so I broke down everything. I really tried to not use industry terms to define other industry terms but we all have our blind spots. If you need to, google “definition (word) SEO” and you should get a good result.
Purpose
Before we dive in I need to talk about the purpose of blogs as it relates to your SEO. If you are working on your SEO then you should have a target keyword (phrase really) that you are shooting for. Let’s say your long-term goal is to rank on the first page for the query ‘New York Wedding Photographer.’ To do that you would need to rank on the first page for ‘Buffalo NY Wedding Photographer’ ‘Syracuse NY Wedding Photographer’ ‘Albany NY Wedding Photographer’ and ‘NY City Wedding Photographer’. To rank in the ‘NY City Wedding Photographer’ you would need a first page rank for each of the five boroughs. To get one of those boroughs, Manhattan, you would have to get the neighborhoods in Manhattan. I know you have heard of them: Upper West Side, Upper East Side, Lower East Side, SoHo, TriBeCa and the list goes on. So let’s say you work a wedding at the Tribeca Rooftop + 360 in the neighborhood of TriBeCa in Manhattan, in New York City, in the State of New York. The blog you write needs to be targeted in that exact order. Get to the top of the venue, to get to the top of TriBeCa, to get to the top of Manhattan, top of NYC, and NY. So please, please, please don’t name this blog “Beautiful Sunset Wedding.” Unless of course your target keyword is ‘Beautiful Sunset Wedding Photographer’ then have at it.
If your target keyword is more complex than ‘(Location)(Event Type)(Vendor Type)’ for instance ‘Destination Wedding Videographer’ then you need a more complex overall SEO strategy, but for the purposes of your blogs dumb it down the same way. Target specific destinations and grow it outward.
Title
· What is it?
To put it shortly, it’s the name of the blog. It is what shows up in your blog index, and it is what shows at the top of the page on the post. It is *THE MOST* SEO relevant item and that is before you know that in my formatting we will use the title in other sections.
· What are we looking for?
o Follow this simple formula and you cant go wrong ‘(Event Type) at (Venue) in (City, State)’. There are obviously a few exceptions. If it is an elopement and they don’t have a venue then do the closest geographical feature. If the ceremony and reception were two different venues, then typically go with the ceremony or go with the one you would rather work at again.
o If you have already worked at a specific venue and have already used the formula then we get to have some fun and make some real progress! Switch City, State to County, State or Neighboring City, State. Instead of saying Wedding or Elopement put Ceremony or Reception. Add in some of those descriptors you are dying to include, like Adventure, Candid, Intimate, Lux, Boho etc. but then you follow that with the formula. Don’t lose your head.
· Examples of bad Titles
o “Fall Session in Arizona” “Golden Hour Engagement” ”Intimate Beach Elopement” “John and Jane Wedding/Session/Engagement/etc” “01/01/2023”
· Examples of good Titles
o “Wedding at TriBeCa + 360 in Manhattan, NY” “Engagement at Joshua Tree National Park, CA” “Corktown, Detroit Engagement Session”
URL
· What is it?
o Stands for Unique Resource Locator and is added at the end of your domain name to create a unique reference point for your pages. For our purposes, if your domain is www.weddingcreative.net then your contact page would be www.weddingcreative.net/contact the URL is /contact. The URL can be edited on any website platform and the quality of what is automatically selected for you varies by platform.
· What are we looking for?
o This one is easy, match the URL to the title of the blog with “–“ used for spaces. If it is a long title then we do want to shorten it but always try to maintain the most pertinent words.
· Examples of bad URLs
o ‘weddingcreative.net/blog1’ ‘weddingcreative.net/15215464’
· Examples of good URLs
o ‘weddingcreative.net/wedding-tribeca-360-manhattan’ ‘weddingcreative.net/engagement-joshua-tree-california’ ‘weddingcreative.net/corktown-detroit-engagement’
Categories
· What is it?
o An organizational tool for your blog posts that allows you and google to put them into, well categories. i.e. ‘Weddings’ ‘Elopements’ ‘Engagement Sessions’.
· What are we looking for?
o 3-5 Categories that use words your audience will search for. Good and bad categories are pretty situational to your business so try to use terms that involve what you are selling. Unless you organize styled shoots regularly and as a revenue stream, don’t have a Category called ‘Styled Shoots’. If you don’t want to see another inquiry for a family session in your life, then remove that Category from your blogs page. On the flip side if you would like to do more In-Home Engagement Sessions then split up your engagement sessions into two Categories. ‘In-Home Engagement Sessions’ ‘Engagement Sessions’.
Tags
· What is it?
o Kind of like a sub-Category, Tags should be used to emphasize the keywords that the blog as a whole is targeting. I know a lot of people put a ton of effort into their tags because it feels like one of the things you know how to control. I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Tags have a minimal effect on your SEO and I would suggest putting your energies elsewhere.
· What are we looking for?
o Use the keywords from the Title, expand on the location to your more lofty geographic goals, a few descriptor words that match your SEO brand goals, and move on. There are plenty of areas where it pays to spend extra time but this is not one of them.
Header 1 & 2
· What is it?
o Usually the words at the top of a paragraph, formatting this text as a header as opposed to a paragraph is very important. Headers help google understand the meaning and organization of your content. When analyzing you blog google looks at only the Title before Header 1 and Header 2.
· What are we looking for?
o We want to provide supplemental information to the Title. Continue to use either the venue, or the city in the header but provide some more description or a sub category. So if the session was a wedding at a country club in Ohio, then Header 1 could be Ceremony at (country club name).
· Examples of bad Headers
o ‘John and Jane’ ‘Love’
· Examples of good Headers
o Title = ‘Engagement Session in Manhattan’
o Header 1 = ‘Golden Hour in SoHo’
o Header 2 = ‘Blue Hour in Lower East Side’
o Title = ‘Elopement in Crater Lake National Park’
o Header 1 = ‘Vow Exchange on The Rim’
o Header 2 = ‘Portraits at Toketee Falls’ *You don’t always have to subcategorize the location. ‘Portraits at Crater Lake’ would work nearly as well.
Text
· What is it?
o The body language of the blog. This is the information conveyed by the blog and makes up the bulk of the “work” writing a blog requires.
· What are we looking for?
o Minimum of 1,000 words. There is no maximum, but there are diminishing returns for your efforts. So for the over achievers out there I will give you a hard limit to keep you sane, no more than 1,500 words. Anything more than that is overkill.
o You can use quotes from the couples themselves to extend your text. Reviews are generally SEO heavy text by nature so these are a great tool. Copy and paste it.
o K.I.S.S. It actually works better to break big words down into smaller words and oversimplify things. Google assumes audiences prefer light reading so you will be rewarded for this technique. However. Fluff for the sake of increasing your word count will not do you any good. Fluff that has keywords and vendor specific jargon is what you want.
o As much as possible, tell the story of the day/session. Have your target keywords in the back of your mind, but don’t focus on incorporating your keywords. Let it happen naturally and speak with your own voice.
Internal Links
· What is it?
o These are links that take site visitors to another page under your domain. So they click a button and it takes them to your contact page for example.
· What are we looking for?
o The more overall content you have the easier this becomes but we want at least four internal links on every session blog. A button sending them to your contact page at the bottom is one. A carousel or slider with links to your other blogs is two. Sending them to a blog category is three and looks like, “see more elopements here.” For the fourth you can send them to a specific blog that was at the same venue, or was their engagement and the current blog is their wedding. Its not tremendously important how, just find a way to send the visitor to another part of your website.
Outbound Links
· What is it?
o Links that take a visitor to a different domain entirely.
· What are we looking for?
o We want at least two outbound links for session blogs and we want to use trusted and established domains as much as possible. If you have a session in a National Park then use a link to the National Park Service’s page for that park. Do not send them to a blog about that park that hasn’t been updated since 2010. You can use cities government pages, venues home pages, and government pages for permits and passes.
o Having a list of other vendors is another great way to add outbound links. These are (typically) less established websites, but they are more on topic and fit the overall content of the blog better.
Image Name and Alt Text
· What is it?
o Image Name is the file name of a specific image and Alt Text is a description of an image. Alt Text was created for areas where the internet service is not strong enough to generate photos, and for programs that read websites to the visually impaired.
· What are we looking for?
o We want the image name to be short and targeted. You can use the title of the blog and just add a number to the end. So if the blog title is “Wedding at The Louvre in Paris” then the images would be wedding-thelouvre-paris1, wedding-thelouvre-paris2, etc.
o The Alt Text should just describe the image in a concise manner. ‘Photograph of the ceremony at a wedding at the Louvre in Paris.’
· Examples of bad Image Name
o ‘img105’ ‘(businessname)’
· Examples of good Image Name
o ‘engagement-joshua-tree-1’
Meta Title and Meta Description
· What is it?
o To keep it simple, this is what will show up on a google result. The Meta Title is the highlighted link, and the Meta Description is the text underneath.
· What are we looking for?
o The SEO for this is important but it’s more important that we convince prospects to click on the link. We do this by making them relevant and to the point.
o The Meta Title should simply be the name of the blog. Your website platform will generate that as ‘(Name of your business) – (Name of the blog)’
o The Meta Description should have your primary keyword phrase, your business name, and what the blog is about.
· Examples of bad Meta Descriptions
o ‘Blog about Jane and John’s session.’ ‘Wedding in Arizona with great photos.’
· Examples of good Meta Descriptions
o ‘Michigan wedding photographer, Jane Doe Photography, shares the experience of a wedding at the Rosewood Country Club in Detroit, Michigan.’
I know, I know, I know this is a lot of information, but it does get easier with use. I hope this information has been helpful and I am available by email if you need any further guidance to make the most out of your session blogs!
CHEAT SHEET
TITLE - ‘(Event Type) at (Venue) in (City, State)’ “Wedding at TriBeCa + 360 in Manhattan, NY” “Engagement at Joshua Tree National Park, CA” “Corktown, Detroit Engagement Session”
URL - ‘weddingcreative.net/wedding-tribeca-360-manhattan’ ‘weddingcreative.net/engagement-joshua-tree-california’ ‘weddingcreative.net/corktown-detroit-engagement’
CATEGORIES - 3-5 Categories that use words your audience will search for. Good and bad categories are pretty situational to your business so try to use terms that involve what you are selling.
TAGS - Use the keywords from the Title, expand on the location to your more lofty geographic goals, a few descriptor words that match your SEO brand goals, and move on.
HEADER 1 & 2 - Title = ‘Engagement Session in Manhattan’ Header 1 = ‘Golden Hour in SoHo’ Header 2 = ‘Blue Hour in Lower East Side’ Title = ‘Elopement in Crater Lake National Park’ Header 1 = ‘Vow Exchange on The Rim’ Header 2 = ‘Portraits at Toketee Falls’
TEXT - Minimum 1,000 words, don’t try to stuff in keywords, use testimonials, and tell a story.
INTERNAL LINKS - Four links that take the visitor from your website to another page on your website.
OUTBOUND LINKS - Two links that take the visitor from your website to another website entirely. You want to use trusted and established web pages.
IMAGE NAME - ‘engagement-joshua-tree-1’ Title of the blog with ascending numbers.
ALT TEXT - Describe the image in a concisely. Subject - verb - location.
META TITLE - Name of the blog. Keep it simple.
DESCRIPTION - ‘Michigan wedding photographer, Jane Doe Photography, shares the experience of a wedding at the Rosewood Country Club in Detroit, Michigan.’