So for the first “official” Friday Favorite I bring back my future second shooter.   I must admit there’s something cute about little kids and cameras, but this one peeking at me over the top of the camera is my all time favorite.

I think my background in Information Technology has helped me a little bit over the years figure out SEO better than some.   Relational data bases and weighted search arguments aren’t foreign concepts to me and over the last few years I’ve built a halfway decent google ranking.

For photographers without that IT background there are many options.  There is a lot of information on the web right now about how this works, some of it free and some of it costs.

Information is Free

One of the best free resources I’ve seen is that of Colorado photographer Eric Bakken and his SEO for photographers series on his blog.

Eric does and excellent job of breaking it down for you and giving you some excellent advice to start getting yourself noticed by the search engines.

Now  while Eric does seem to take some issue with SEO guru’s charging large amounts of money for their workshops I take a more moderate stand that sometimes it’s better to pay for knowledge and have it delivered in a nice concise package than to shift through endless links.

Education is Expensive

One such concise package is the SEO Workshop from Lawrence with Tofurious.  The Tofurious package will set you back about $2000.  So what do you get for that $2k, well probably much of the same info you can find on Eric’s blog, along with some of Lawrence’s results on what’s worked for him over the last year on turning that traffic into contacts. Getting people to your site is only the first part, getting them to connect with you and hit the contact button, that’s equally as important.

Education or Information – either way it takes work

I don’t think it matters too much wether you choose to invest the time and energy to access the information and learn it yourself or invest the money to get that information delivered in a workshop, once you’re up to speed on how it’s still going to take a lot of work.

There’s no magic bullet for SEO, no secret text string to bury in your page to get that first page of a google search result.   It takes dedication and work and an ongoing investment of time.

And it’s only going to get worse.

As more and more people figure out SEO the competition for that first few pages on a search engines results just gets harder and harder.

In the end I think those dedicated to their ongoing business, who connect with their clients and their community will do well and prosper.   Those looking for a quick buck will either regret the time or money they invested into figuring out SEO if they don’t also invest into the ongoing process that makes it work.

One of my favorites from the day was in the old barn.

Being an animal love I of course love working their dogs into a few shots.

of course once they caught the scent of something in the bushes they had ideas of their own.

They had three photo stations setup on the trail, one of the others was manned by my good friend and fellow photographer Dain from Photography by Dain.

Down in the vendor area was another good friend, and who I think is one of Colorados best pet photographers, Jaime Rowe.

Here’s a few shots from my station:

and then when you try and regain your spot you’re given the guilt trip.    Takes “puppy dog eyes” to an all new level.

Fine – I’ll have my morning coffee at the kitchen table.