After yesterdays article on labeling your images I realized something. Wedding professionals have begun to wake up to the positive effects of blogging. They are adding blogs to their website and posting occasionally but still aren’t seeing any results. Well the truth is it takes more to reap the search benefits of blogging than just having one. There is an art to writing blog posts for SEO. It isn’t hard, you just need to know what makes those posts so valuable and then follow the pattern that works for your business.

The investment you make in writing an effective blog post has long lasting effects. For example, due to my recent down time, I have only posted twice on my Wedding Dish blog this January. Amazingly enough, my traffic still doubled that of January 2008, thanks entirely to posts I had written over the life of the blog.

You can learn how to write effective blog posts, it really isn’t that hard. What you need is to see exactly what one looks like for your business. The best way to do that is to have a few professionally done. You then have some solid examples to follow.

That is where I come in: let me write some posts for you. I normally charge $127 for 4 blog posts, as a first of the year special I am offering that service for $99. Just enter the coupon code BLOG at checkout.

You send me a couple of images and the who, what, where and when of the event. I’ll put together a few paragraphs that are keyword rich and craft effective labels for your images; then all you have to do is post them. Easy. It saves you time, starts you on your way to effective posting and saves a few coins in the process.

At the beginning of the month we ran a special on blog transfers and I want to make sure that all those clients get off to a fabulous start. I also want to show you how easy it is to do. This offer will only be good for a limited time so don’t delay. Kick you 2009 off with a bang by doing something that will pay you back for years to come.

It may well be that the most important things you post on your blog or website are the images. We all know that brides love pictures; they spend literally hours looking at pictures on the internet. There isn’t a better way to communicate your unique style to prospective clients. That is only the beginning of why they are important.

First off, remember that your web presence has two target markets: Brides and search engines. The real gold in your images is with the search engines, here is why.Search engines don’t ‘see’ your pictures; they only read the text you use to describe them.

Every time you post an image you are given the opportunity to give it a title, an alt tag* and a description. Every one of those is an opportunity to add a gold mine of keywords.

Yesterday I was working with a client to set up his galleries and all his images were labeled along the order of img1434.jpg. That was the title, there was no alt tag or description. Those pictures were virtually invisible to search, unless someone used img1434 as a search term.

If instead he had taken the time to properly identify the image he could have added a long list of search terms that his prospective clients may actually use. Let’s take a look at a sample image. I have highlighted the potential search terms in red.

Title: Centerpiece in pink and purple for outdoor summer wedding

Alt tag: Centerpiece in pink stargazer lilies and purple stocks for outdoor summer wedding

Description: Décor for outdoor summer wedding at The Frist Learning Center at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens in Nashville, TN. Featuring Stargazer lilies, pink peonies and purple stocks in comtemporary glass containers on white damask linen with mahogany chivari chairs. Designed by Branching Out Event Florists, Nashville, TN

When a bride searches for any or all of those red words your website is now in the mix. Believe me, that is the way they search. They use incredibly long, very specific search phrases. Or you could just leave it titles as IMG_0367, which is how it is labeled on my computer.

Your website and blog come with some amazing tools to increase your search if you just take the time to use them.

*an alt tag is what shows up in the unfortunate event that your image does not open in a visitor’s browser.