SEO

SEO (search engine optimisation) simply means helping Google and other search engines find your site and show it well. Both the hosted plans and the WordPress theme do the technical part for you. There is no plugin to buy and nothing to set up before it works.

What is done for you

• A list of your pages for Google (a "sitemap"), kept up to date as you publish.
• A proper preview when somebody shares a link to your site — your title, your description and a photograph.
• A business record describing your studio and where you work, which is how you appear in map and local results.
• One address per page, so the same page is never counted twice.
• Client pages kept out of search. Galleries, invoices, contracts and quotes are never listed, and there is no setting to change that.

On a hosted plan: the SEO screen

Open Website → SEO in your panel's menu. Work down the screen:

1. What is left to do — a checklist of the things worth doing, each with

the reason why. Ticked items are done.

1. Your home page — we write a starting text for your home page so it is

never empty. Choose What you mostly photograph, then edit the Headline, Opening paragraph, Sections and Questions into your own words. Press Save my page, and See it to look at the result.

1. How it looks now — a preview of how your site appears in a Google

result.

1. Your words — the Title (about 60 characters) and Description

(about 155 characters) Google shows for your site. Leave them blank and we write them from your sessions and where you work; writing them yourself is better.

1. Where you work — Areas you cover (separated by commas), **Town or

city, State or county, Postcode, Country** (two letters, such as AU or NZ), Street (optional) and Price range. Most people search for "wedding photographer" plus a place, so this is the most valuable part of the screen.

1. Your accounts — your Instagram and Facebook addresses, so search engines

know they belong to the same business.

1. Press Save.

Keeping old links working

If you rename or move a page, its old address stops working — and so does every link anybody ever made to it. A redirect sends visitors (and Google) from the old address to the new one.

1. On the SEO screen, go to Send an old address somewhere.
2. Under The old address, type the old ending, for example /about-us.
3. Under Where it should go, type the new one, for example /about.
4. Under Kind, choose Moved for good (passes your ranking on to the new

address) unless you genuinely mean to move it back, in which case choose Just for now.

1. Press Add it.

Your redirects are listed below, with Remove beside each.

A page and a redirect cannot share an address: the redirect wins and the page can no longer be reached. Worth a look warns you if that happens.

Worth a few minutes lists any published pages with no description for search results, and how many photographs have no description.

Descriptions for each page and set

Every page has its own Search appearance box in the page editor (see your website), and every portfolio set has **Title in search results and The line underneath it**. One or two sentences, written for a person deciding whether to click.

Describe your photographs

When you add a photograph under Media, write a line in What is in it. Screen readers read it aloud and search engines read it too.

Booking on another website

If your main website is somewhere else, Booking on your own website at the bottom of the SEO screen lets you show your booking form on it:

1. Under Websites that may show it, type your other site's address, for

example yourstudio.com.au (separate several with commas).

1. Tick Allow those sites to show my booking form and press Save.
2. Copy the text under Paste this into your page and paste it into a page

on that website.

In WordPress

Go to Meridian Photographers → Settings → SEO:

• Default description — used for any page that has no description of its own.
• Google verification — the code Google Search Console gives you to prove the site is yours.

Press Save Changes. The screen also shows where your sitemap is.

If you already use Yoast, Rank Math, SEOPress or All in One SEO, the theme's own SEO features switch themselves off so nothing is doubled up. You do not need to do anything.

The honest part

The technical side makes you eligible to appear; it does not put you at the top. What actually helps photographers is pages that describe the places you work, journal posts about real weddings at named venues, and a site that is quick on a phone. The last one is handled for you.