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admin
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Posted: Thu Feb 17th, 2005 11:46 pm |
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“If you it build they will come….” Well only in a Kevin Costner movie I’m afraid.
At photographysites.com we see many photographers websites trying to promote their images and services – that’s what the webs about right. Unfortunately for many their efforts are sometimes in vain because their sites just aren’t visible on the web. This doesn’t mean if you type in their URL you can’t find them it means if you type in keyword into a search engine that is relevant to what they are trying to promote they can’t be found or their site isn’t linked to by websites which are visited by people trying to find their type of site.
Like photography itself where it is often important understand why you are taking a particular shot, when designing your website it is important to understand why you are doing it, is it to
A)open your site to the world and have as many people as possible who would be interested in your portfolio of images and services find you or;
B)is it just to use it as a convenient portfolio to be accessed by your existing network of clients, you have enough business and couldn’t be bothered you and you will just put the URL on your business card and forget it.
If B is your answer then read no further, go out and take more shots and have fun you lucky b$%^*$&@ - this is an entirely legitimate point of view which I envy. If A is your answer, and I would suspect that this is the situation for most photographers, then read on. Hopefully I can help give you some strategies which will help you get more targeted traffic to your website.
First you need to know where traffic comes from. Well in my experience it will come a wide range of sources including other photographers websites, maybe discussion forums where people have referred to your site, webrings, photography directories / indexes, and of course search engines. How much traffic should a website get daily – I would think for a photographer who has images from a moderately popular geographic or subject area it should range from about 50 – 100 unique visitors per day. For a site where the images cover a really popular area 100-400 unique visitors per day is not unrealistic. If your objective is to get as many visitors regardless of subject and geography, well good luck, but if you succeed 1000++ is not unrealistic either. Which traffic source will give you the most visitors – my guess is search engines if your site is properly optimised, in particular the one which starts with the letter G – I am sure you know it well. Whilst the focus of this post how to get search traffic you should not disregard these other sources they can be just as valuable not only because of the number of visitors they may send but because they also receive targeted visitors and can help set the theme of your website.
As you read in the last paragraph, I am referring image subject and geographic themes. Why? Well its important for most website owners to focus on getting traffic which is relevant, that is making contact with people who may just be generally interested in seeing shots from your area or of a particular subject or even buying prints or stock images of these areas or subjects – most would agree that this is the object of having your images out there – but why refer to this well that’s how most people search. Knowing which keywords to target and how to make them a central theme to your website via “on page” and off “page factors” so that search engines will relate your site to these terms is critical to the success of a website which is attempting to attract visitors from search engines, and not just the G ster but pretty much all search engines.
To end this section it is worthwhile to have a play with some web tools which will let you see how people search for things – there are many tools but http://inventory.overture.com and http://www.wordtracker.com (just use the trial its enough for this demonstration) are favourites of mine.
Play around with terms to see what people search for - for example use the overture tool and put in “nature photography” and see how many different ways people use this term. Interesting isn’t it.
That’s enough for this post my fingers are tired. My next couple of posts will relate to the “on page” and “off page” factors which search engines use to relate search terms to website content.
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raybilcliff
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Posted: Tue Jun 6th, 2006 05:07 pm |
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Hi to all. I have just joined in the forum and I have looked at some of the quesions and concerns of members regarding web developement, search engine visibility and such. I started photography in 2001 I have built my own websites as I have 2. I am ranked on the #1 page. in Google for my keywords, "true photography", "true galleries", "true photo", and "true website seo," my wesites are http://www.trueportraits.com and http://www.truescubadiving.com I am 60 years old never had a camera or computer until 2001 and I am completely self taught. well..... I am not bragging here but saying to you all, IF I CAN DO IT. SO CAN YOU.
Designing a website for photography. Keep it simple, use a template. stay away from the word FREE. it never is. Get your own domain name it's cheap. http://www.godaddy.com is a good place to start. Good web hosting for around $100 per year with a good control panel. http://www.bluehost.com is a good place to start.
Optimization. Not so easy to do. You will need help here and then it won't take you 5 years to figure it out like it did me. I put my money where my mouth is. Check out my key words above. Build your site and I will optimize it for a nominal sum, say $50. BUT remember no one can guarantee you #1 spot and it can take up to a year for a search engine just to index your site. That is a fact.
If someone tells you they are an expert in web seo. ask them for their keywords and see where their site is in Google. The proof is right there.
Sorry for being long winded. Ray.
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MarkMarek
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Posted: Wed Jun 7th, 2006 11:02 pm |
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Hi Ray,
don't mean to burst your bubble, but what good is it to you to be on a first page of Google with non popular keywords. According to Overture Keyword Selector tool "True photography" is sought for the grand total of 39 times a month. Any website is capable of ranking high when it comes to non competitive keywords - the phrases that are seldom or never sought for. Such as in your case where majority of phrases are virtually never typed into a search engine by any surfer and the one that is would bring you 39 visitors a month - if you're lucky. Being able to score high with competitive/popular keywords, that's when you apparently know what you're doing and you must be doing it right. Your website has a google page rank of 3 - those who know what this is can confirm that's not all that high really.
Mark
Last edited on Mon Jun 12th, 2006 09:28 pm by MarkMarek
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raybilcliff
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Posted: Tue Jun 13th, 2006 06:21 am |
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| Your missing the point here mark. if you are competing for keywords like "photography" then you need very deep pockets. It is just not possible for the little guy to make it. If you are just trying to promote your own little webspace and show your photos then you need a niche. My cpanel statistics tell me that I have had 1192 unique visitors this month [12 days] now that is nothing compared to what Kodak have had. But I am not competing with Kodak. My sites are very well optimized for visibility. THAT is the point here. By the way google shows about 50,000,000 websites for the keywords true photography. Oveture is just one search engine, I submit to 300 only, so if each has 39 well thats 11,700.
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MarkMarek
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Posted: Wed Jun 14th, 2006 08:17 pm |
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Ray,
didn't mean to be a smart ass, just saying that "True Photography" truly is not a popular search term. Of course each of us (or at least most of us) wants as much traffic as one can get hence all that hassle with SE optimisation. So I would just wish everyone the best of luck in as competitive industry as photography beyond doubt is.
Mark
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Forsh
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Posted: Mon Nov 27th, 2006 08:21 am |
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How I would love to just be able to make great images, and not have to worry about SEO/SEPR/Backlinking, etc. It's going to be a struggle just to get our site indexed high-enough to even get a flow of traffic through the door.
And, all of this takes so much time away from me actually creating images. Grrr.
I remember a few years back when I was dabbling in web stuff my sites would index pretty high just based on keywords and content. But now, wow....I do plan to have a few hundred/thousand images indexed (hopefully SEO'd) but the competition for keywords/Backlinks seems quite daunting.
V/r,
John
http://www.hdrjapan.com/Last edited on Wed Sep 19th, 2007 06:31 am by Forsh
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Lingerie.Models
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Posted: Tue Aug 21st, 2007 05:20 pm |
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Hi Ray: I have to agree with Mark. Optimizing your website for a Keywords such as True Photography is not really going to get you much traffic, and is probably not worth the effort. Also, as far as search engines go, you dont really need to submit to / optimize for 300. In fact, probably 99% of search traffic comes from the big 3: Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Just use Overture as an indication of the traffic that is delivered. If Overture indicates good numbers (for me that is anything above 20,000) then it will probably have good traffic from all three search engines.
G.S.
Glamour Models
Last edited on Tue Aug 21st, 2007 05:20 pm by Lingerie.Models
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