SEO: White Hat Works Too

I am a big evangelist for making your sites SEO friendly. It gets a bit dicey when I try to explain what I do without using the term that I don't like very well; Search Engine Optimization. Eeeuuuwww. Reminds me of shadiness that I see in that industry so often. It has connotations of 'Black Hat" tricks and tips that are meant to 'fool' Google. I prefer a 'white hat' approach to doing it right. Google and the other guys are very open to you providing information that will help them place you in the right search. You have to have stuff worth finding though, and for so many that is the rub. "My content sucks, so I have to trick Google into showing my sucky content to people who are not looking for the crap I have to show."

Yeah, that's a great marketing plan. Let me know how it works out for you. That is why "Black Hat" has been so damned by the industry. Luckily there are some who are playing it straight with great results.

When you have content that is worth showing, then you help Google by providing pages and code and meta stuff that helps them show your good stuff.

That is 'White Hat" SE stuff. I like that.

I worked with a very practical and successful photographer who considers his website his most important tool for getting new work. It is working very well for him.

Recently the pages started to fall down in page rank and he found himself on page 4 or 5 and he had maintained a page one ranking for so long he knew he needed some help. We went through the site, made some recommendations to him and he left with a list of things to add/modify on his site. (Full disclosure: Don is a PHOTOtool user and also maintains his site with our Total-control-site product. These tools make the marketing component, and the content management very easy for him.)

Here is his note to me today:
I worked with a local photographer to help him regain his ranking on Google. Here is his note back to me today.

Thank you again for all of your advice regarding keywords, metadata and Google rankings. We implemented several suggestions and within 10 days our rankings - which had slipped from page one to pages three and four - were right back on page one. We'll be implementing the rest of your suggestions shortly. Let me know when your paper is released.
Can't thank you enough.
All the best,
Don Stevenson

You're welcome, Don.