How do i increase my visibility on Google?

SEO, ranking, what are they in real life and how to improve these will be the game of the day. Below are few tips to solve the impossible equation on how do I increase my visibility on Google.

For the novice, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It basically means: how to make sure your webpage will be on some result, as Google or Bing, but if you are reading this, you know this already.
Ranking is your position on the search engine response to anyone request. Better ranking is obviously what you are looking for to make sure you are on top of the search results.If your business depend on clients that contact you remotely, clearly, you should invest a lot of time to makes things better.

If you try on Google for “cameraman in Shanghai” or “camera operator in Shenzhen” obviously, this website will pop up on top of result.

Did I spent money on SEO ?
No, but a day to day optimization that I would like to share here. And google love living website.

Why it’s important for me to get the right presence online?

If I look back on last 5 years, I can clearly says that 100% of my new clients found me on-line. This is actually exactly my plan. Local China based customers can be hard to manage as the way to do and process a project is very different than mine and I feel way more secure working  without last minute surprise and cancellation.
Also, foreign crew coming for a shooting are more likely to teach me something than locals. It’s a great way to expand your knowledge by looking what is going on outside of your own world. I also not so much a social person and going to meet community; trying to sell my business is not my favorite part of this job.
I found than displaying what I have done these past years in China should suffice to let you choose your right photography/video partner in China.

This very website is my best portfolio is you are serious about video and photography. I may actually own the oldest foreign owned video business in Shanghai, actually.

#1 Step one on how do i increase my visibility on google :

Having a working website. That’s seems quite obvious, but the way your website is built is a very important factor. I have a business competitor website’s in Hong Kong with only one page and no back-links hitting the first page in Google. At the same time, another one with 10 sub fake websites, 20 pages filled with keywords about shooting in China who just barely hit the first page. Obviously, size do not matter.
For sure, your website should not have any coding mistake and respond to the latest security request. This is quite easy to check with some on-line SEO check tools. I will not list them, they all have their own views and result, but getting a 75% acceptance on most of them is a great first step! The structure should respect SEO standard for sure.
Few tools let you access one time per day, but using a VPN or a cookies cleaner plug-in gives you plenty of extra check.
In order to give you an example, I have designed this page with a very common request and put the title, description and even pictures names following this.
All is linked to a sentence like: “how do i increase my visibility on google ?”.
Google is also looking for sentence, so the list of this few words should be a bit everywhere in differences presentation: how-do-I-increase-my-visibility-on-google for instance.

Speed? SSL? how do I increase my visibility on Google?

As speed is an important factor on ranking, you need to ask yourself where are located your client and found a fast hosting solution working for them first. I’m based in China but my targeted clients are based in the US and Europe. I needed a website that they can access from their search engine. The technology your hosting is using is also a bit important and this is something you should not try to minimize from a cost aspect. About 100 USD is the right price for a simple hosting with SSL provided and SSD shared server. On my side I have opted for Hong Kong as it’s a 12 hours difference with the US, so the busy hours are overnight and still got a very fast link to the US. You can check this using some Virtual Private Network and locate your IP over there to get the ping respond time.
On the technical aspect, you can also compress your pictures and HTML page, either manually or with some WP tools. As a photographer, It’s a bit tricky as I love to produced quality. I also compete with local way of doing business, so I need to get genuine not to be copied. You can see easily that all my picture have a tag on it to avoid getting your own footage copied to your competitor website. (Yes, it happens here)

Getting a SSL ready website is a must have these days and a complete control of the sub-domain, alias and emails is also a great way to communicate online without getting one email flag as spam and stuck with this. SSL key may be included in your hosting as well as all the alias names you may have registered. A old website will also bring more trust for google than a brand new registered one.

#2 Step two on working to increase my visibility on search engines:

Now that the structure is fine, the connection are fine, you still need to put something on you website. The first question you should ask yourself is what kind of request your potential clients will look for when searching for a service. I assume you are starting a business, so your name means absolutely nothing for them. Let’s face it, they will probably put a service and a city and the wording “Looking for..”. In my case “looking for a camera operator in Nanjing” for example. Also, I have no point getting a high rank on baidu.com as I’m looking to serve overseas crews coming for a shooting in China. Be aware that google .com will answer in different way that google.fr and you need to make sure both are happy with your website. For example, creating page in different language.
I guess if you landed here, you type something like: “how do i increase my visibility on google ?” and that’s the way things work.

I strongly suggest you on answering this request per page. For example, if you want to serve video and photography, time-lapse and so on; you should have one page per answer to make sure you are focusing on this request. Same with language, one page in full French, and one in full English instead of a bilingual one.
It’s quite unlikely a client will ask all many services at same time. He will just type the sentence he is interested in and get the answer for this particular need.
If you put China when you want to describe you video business, you may not be too good; it way too large. “Videographer in Shanghai” or “Camera operator in Hong Kong “should be represented by 2 different pages with each of them a specific and rich content about the answer you can have on these cities. Creating a page called “video in China” will be quite useless and will fight the million of video pages about China already.

Be specific on your content, add relevant pictures and links. There is no mystery; just copy and paste a list of keywords do not work anymore and will also scared the client when connecting to your website. Each client is a niche market to serve. For you, it may be just another shooting, but for them, it may be the only time they will come to Shanghai and they have a lot of question and fears trying to get all things done remotely. I will says that you want to put yourself in a position as you where looking for a right cameraman 20,000 Km away.
Don’t forget to give description to each pictures and feed the metadata. Again, respect a way that the result fit a unique request.

#3 Step three: Back-link and traffic boost your visibility on Google 

Fact: back-links to your website will push your ranking.
But if you have a niche website, it’s quite unlikely it will generate a lot of back-link by trusted websites. At the same time; generic web pages (kitten and other fun videos) will generate a lot of traffic, but also quite irrelevant. You need to get quality.
A quality website giving you quality back-links. One obvious way is to follow your clients quest and type yourself what you think they will hit. Check which are your competitors, which back-link they have and get yourself in the game. There are also plenty of online tools free to use for this.
Traffic is good for my Google adv campaign, and It generate revenues that I can’t forget, but I still need to get relevant content. One of my most seen page is about the Sony FS7 mark I versus the mark II as this is a question a lot of possible buyers will have. My own portfolio page can’t cope with this.
If you think more globally, talking about SEO in this post, is also more likely to attract more people that an obscure video service in Shenzhen. I’m no expert, but I’m quite sure this page will be visited more often than others. But again, the person landing here may not be someone looking for a videographer in Guangdong.

It’s interesting to see that I feel Google is working more on content per page than content per website. When you ask a request; it will return a page, not so many time a full website for small players like me. You can check Videographer in Nanjing or camera operator in Shenzhen; both will return my website, but with different pages. This is a good way of how do I increase my visibility on Google by specifics pages per specific subjects. Keep each of these tips when redesigning your website content.

Quality back-links are the key if you looking how do I increase my visibility on Google.

Few years back, any links were giving you extra credit; but these days are over and it’s even more the opposite. For example, I was using comment windows to manually add links to visionrouge.net but I was quickly see as a spammer as many others will do so. Even if the main subject was video, the list of comment quickly get spammed with adv for sun-glass and magical pills. The email I was using has been banned. It can’t be used for quality comment anymore. There are also free online tools to check if your domain or e-mail is considered as a spam. For e-mail, it will be easy to setup a new one, for the domain, you can also use alias (.net, .com, .blabla) to make sure you can switch at one point.
Another way is to split your website in many-sub websites. For example, the hosting of this blog is on a different server than the product page. (Note: This is note like this anymore since 2019) It could almost transparent from your clients, but will still be seen as back-link between both website and increase so your ranking. This is something I’m thinking of doing for the next step to get my video blog about equipment linked to my main video production web page.
A test I did is to register this domain: http://www.video-photographer-in-hongkong-freelance-cameraman.com bought a template website, fill it with content and tweak it a bit. In less 3 months, this page shows on rank 15 on Google and 2 clients contacted me…

Very high return on investment if you ask me!

Last but not least: Time matters to get good ranking under google.
This is the bad news. Setting up a new domain names, putting all in place and excepting to be on top ranking the next week is a dream. Everything you are doing is for the next 3 to 6 months if you don’t have 10 persons working on your SEO. Register your domain as soon as possible, even if you have no hosting yet, the registration date will be the trusted start of your website later.

Disclaimer on how do I increase my visibility on Google.

I’m no SEO expert, but I have spent plenty of time trying many options to make it to the highest page on Google. This is 2018, many things changed since I started my website. It seems for example that social media link are now a very important part of your website structure. Getting your article shared is a things more than writing something. People do not create so much these days; they share!
And if you are reading this, that means I’m not too bad on how do I increase my visibility on Google 😉

On a technical side, you need a few programming knowledge to get things done if you don’t want to spend too much money on expertise. I often prefer to spend one day in front of my computer tweaking my server more than going for an half paid job. Things are changing very fast and you need to keep up to date with latest SEO tips from search engines. A great website and high ranking will bring more trusted clients that a small shooting that anyone can do will. Choose wisely when going out! Maybe you see the immediate return for the day more than the larger picture on your next amazing project. These adv about making money in front of a computer are quite true, yes, it’s working!
For sure, hosting yourself your website will gives you way more options than using a predefined website out of the very large Instagram and Facebook community. I like to think that all social media are a link to your business than a way to host it. I feel always better sending an email to a real email server than a (bot) chat on Facebook.

Thanks for reading, feel free to share you views on this article about how do I increase my visibility on Google.