Backlinks?

Hi there.
I've been reading about SEO techniques for a long time and everybody tells you about how nice is to write unique copy and so on.
How about a photography website? How much unique copy can you write? Its not about copy there, it's about the photographs...

OK, some will then say: get as many backlinks as possible. WOW...like let's say you have a shoes shop and you'll advertise how nice shoes is your competitor making...BS.

And then you see sites with as little as NO copy who rank #1 for some important keywords. And if you look at their link:site.com you see hundreds of results. How is that possible without doing "black SEO"?

Example: This is a great site: juliamolner.com (love the photography and design - simple and nice.) The lady is Polish and she ranks #1 for the keyword "fotografia slubna" (wedding photography - in Polish).

How come? What does Google "read" from that website? And if you look @ link:juliamolner.com you get 191 results. Let's be serious. 90% if not more of those links don't even have her website in there.

So, after all this my question is: isn't it a waste of time to play nice?

Looking forward to your answers.
Alex

Unfortunately your cynicism here is rooted in some misconceptions.

First offf one thing is that Googles Link: command is not an accuaret representation. Google shows only a random sample of links to any website.

Use Yahoo. Go to yahoo.com and type linkdomain:website.com for the most accurate measure of their inlinks.

I can think of a lot of content for a photography site. How about a blog? you can write about photo techniques, recent shoots, debunk industry myths, ask a good customer to write a guest post or testimonial. Do Camera reviews talk about yourself and your business.

About links, think bigger picture. Would linking to a photographer across teh country be a direct competitor? How about camera makers, film companies, developers, wedding planners, wedding venues, etc. You see how all of the people involved have the potential of giving you a valuable link to your site, or an individual article.

It is not a waste to play nice, in the brick and mortar business when a customer asks about a competitor you dont talk badly about them and if they want to go check them out you kindly give them directions being confident that they will see why your products are better!

Googler,
I understand your point of view.
BUT: if I have a photography website I want to display my work, not "write about photo techniques, recent shoots, debunk industry myths, [...]. Do Camera reviews [...]."

Talking about myself and the business and the testimonials are ok. I agree, but how much can you talk about yourself? A photographer speaks through he's photographs and lets others speak for him.

Abut the competition I agree that you don't talk back about them and that's fine but when i'm having a business in one city and I would like to rank for specific searches for that city ONLY then i don't think most of the competitors will be so happy to send away the customers to others. (i'm not talking here about link exchanges with people from distant cities ).

Thank you for the answer though.

Googler is right, there's enough you can say about you, your techniques, history etc to make a nice written content base.

In addition - you can write about the photographs themselves, or the sets/collections etc...

Ultimately though, you don't need an encycopedia of written content, just enough to get some good ammo' for associated search terms to complement your major KW's [those you can mention once or twice (in titles) and then rely on links to reinforce]... You can fill the site with pages of pictures, using minimal text content (describing the pic's/collections) and the power of backlinks will do the rest.

To find sources of backlinks takes nothing but imagination and creativity.
To "geo-target" one city you can define your target area in GWT.

If I exhibit photo's in the UK and you ask me to link to your Seattle-based business, why would it adversely affect me?
If I sell cameras (anywhere), same question?
If I'm a Seattle-based sculptor?

Don't be too cynical my friend, the "frustrated phase" hits us all in the early days
Just look for inspiration and - once you pass through it - your imagination is the only limit.

@alexandruv:

Just because someone has hundreds, or thousands, of backlinks doesn't mean they're doing anything black hat. And content doesn't just mean "text content." Photographs make content too. And if the polish lady's got an impressive photo gallery, I can totally imagine many people linking back to her site without her even asking.

Personally, I think you should take Googler's advice and create a blog, or just post articles to your site normally. As ClickyB has pointed out, you don't need to churn out tons and tons of text content; even a few pages will do.

If you really want to beat Julia Molner, I'd suggest creating a photo gallery that's better than hers. Outclass your biggest opponent content-wise, and it won't be long before you outcompete them in the SERPs.

Good luck, my friend

"If I exhibit photo's in the UK and you ask me to link to your Seattle-based business, why would it adversely affect me?"

I just said that I'm not talking about different cities or countries. That I understand and agree with.

"there's enough you can say about you, your techniques, history etc to make a nice written content base."

Everybody writes about themselves, about how in love they are with photography and how unique their photography is. In reality 80% have similar styles or lie. The real thing is their portfolio NOT the words that describes it.

What I ment when I wrote this thread is to prove that IF a website like the one i mentioned in my first post - juliamolner.com - which is very nice (design and photographs) - but lacks the copy (and don't tell me that the text that she has is original or even enough...) CAN rank #1 for a given keyword (competitive keyword for one city as big as Warsaw) then it must be ANOTHER way to achive this, not good old SEO that everybody is talking about.

Alex

@alexandruv

I have to disagree. Please understand that text content on your web pages isn't the no. 1 criteria for achieving good ranking in the SERPs.

Don't believe me? Do a search for "here" in Google. Click on the first result and see if you can find the keyword anywhere in the page copy. As I've said already, text alone doesn't make content; pictures, videos, audio... just about anything you can see and hear on the internet is CONTENT. And if that content is good enough, you will garner links automatically. You don't even need to think about a link building campaign let alone "black hat SEO."

Pacific Monk:
"Just because someone has hundreds, or thousands, of backlinks doesn't mean they're doing anything black hat"

TRUE. Hoewver if you follow those links they don't take you to someone's page that speaks highly of her work (and they should), on the contrary they take you NOWHERE. What kind of hat is that then?
And don't try to find one example just to prove me wrong...

Her photos are GREAT. But there are lots of other GREAT photographers in there (i'm not talking about me here) showing nice work but they don't rank even close to #20...

What do mean by "NOWHERE?" Do you mean to say the pages that were linking to her site have been removed or something?

If there are other GREAT photographers in there who don't rank, it could mean one of many things. For example:

1) They probably don't have as much content as this lady does.
2) They don't have a lot of backlinks because they haven't been around for too long.
3) Since they haven't been around too long, they don't have the kind of "domain trust" that the top ranking site has.
4) The top ranking site probably created better linkbait than did the other "GREAT photographers." Having great content doesn't suffice in a high-competition marketplace; you need to promote your content as well.
5) and MANY, MANY other factors.

There's a lot more to SEO than meets the eye. Judging from your posts, I'd say you need to do some more reading and research before you can pass accurate judgments on someone else's work.

I am a photographer and visit many photography sites. They *all* have at least some written content. Pictures by themselves are simply not that fascinating in my opinion without some written content to go with them and supply more context. Okay, I can think fo a single exception to that, but it was still a site I visited only once.

As for backlinks. Why do you need to praise anyone to get backlinks? I have one site with hundreds of backlinks, all spontaneous because people wanted to direct their readers to my material. I never solicited those links.

You won't be able to compare the level of SEO these sites are doing. The quantity of inbound links is just one factor as some have already pointed out. It's also about the quality of the backlinks and some other factors in the search engine's algo which is unique to each engine.

OK bad example if you take it too literally, but what would be different about Chicago Vs Seattle?

Right, the portfolio should be AND IS enough to get your backlinks. The text doesn't matter so much in that respect. It can help to "reinforce" your backlinks but it also matters for hitting associated / related search queries, exact text matches, longtail keywords,etc... "peripheral" stuff. Not just the ultra-specific, common and obvious rubbish that the majority of these people turn out in their "similar style" sites.

Right...

You're right.

Where you're wrong is in assuming that "ANOTHER way" means blackhat.

The "other way" is to have content that rocks...
Pictures, text, movies, good copy, interesting subject or writing style, great idea, innovative way of providing a service, great product, crap site but loads of money / friends with websites etc etc etc..

If you do that you don't need text content.

But text content will always help to improve your search engine traffic (therefore your "SEO") vastly, because of what I said above.
So you can fill your page with crap text and still be#1. But fill it with "optmised crap" and you'll do wayyy better.
That's not blackhat, it's just intelligent.

In the end, it's about putting something out there that people want to link to, or that you can pay/coerce/force/beg/convince people to link to and then taking advantage of every free/legitimate opportunity to improve your exposure.

The better/more popular it is, the less you need to do to get links, the less you have to spend to get traffic and the greater your chances of success.

You arguing with these SEO's will not get you to the number one spot. What will get you there is to see what your number one competitor is doing and do it better. Period.

How do you do that? Look at the last 6 or 7 posts. Don't try to prove these SEO's wrong until you have tried what they recommended. Then in a few months come back (after you have atleast tested what they recommend) and see if you still pose the same argument.