Websites and Photographers

30/01/10

Maybe not as difficult as you might first think... With a little bit of planning and a few hours’ worth of work, you could be well on the way to creating a web presence for yourself to help drive customers to your site. Getting a site up and running to show off your photographs is obviously the first step. This can be done very inexpensively and with limited web technology knowledge. There is no need to learn complicated HTML or other web based content languages, as many sites exist who offer specialist services to photographers. These sites will help you to easily construct a site and be up and running with a web presence in a matter of hours.

One mistake made by many photographers is to believe that once their site is live, visitors will come flooding in and business will be brisk. Having a web site is not the same as having a web presence! Consider this; take a small pin and walk to the centre of a large field of grass. With your eyes closed, throw the pin into the air. Now try and find it. Having trouble? Now imagine that you were faced with several thousand fields all containing tens of millions of pins. How likely are you to be able to choose the right field to start looking in, let alone find your single pin?

The web is a big place; current estimates put the number of websites as being around 234,000,000 (Source: Netcraft web server survey), now that’s a lot of websites. And yours is just one of them. That makes your new website virtually invisible. However there are ways to ensure that those first customers start to stumble upon your site:

Ensure your site is search engine friendly
Include relevant Alt tags (text descriptions) on your images – search engines can’t ‘see’ your images, but they can read these text descriptions.
Spend time to create a list of keywords for each page of your site, these are the primary method used by search engines to measure your site and page relevance.
Make sure you have a relevant and punchy description of your site in your site heading.
Give each page a relevant title.
Notice how many times I have used the word ‘relevant’? Relevancy is critical if you want search engines to treat your site seriously and for it to appear in organic ‘normal’ search results.

Make sure your content is interesting
It’s no good just loading a bunch of your favourite images on to a site and expecting to get business. There has to be something engaging about your site to ensure people want to stay once they find you. Include an article or two, a biography of your experience or skills, a clear outline of the services you offer maybe, the list goes on and on; get creative!

Every page of your site should have your contact details visible
At any given moment whilst viewing your site, a prospective customer may choose to work with you or at least communicate with you. If your contact information is hidden somewhere or is not on the page that user happens to be on then you have lost them.

Use Social Media
You have got a Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn account right? If not then get them sorted and investigate other networking sites or groups. The best way to promote your site is by getting your URL - your unique web address - promoted to as many people as possible. Start by letting your friends know and they’ll tell their friends to take a look and so on. You’ll be amazed how quickly you can grow your social network.

Sign up to Google analytics
Find out where your visitors are coming from and what key words they used to find you. Armed with this information you can tweak your site settings to attract more and more people.

All of the above tips won’t cost you a thing except for your time. There are many more things you can do to promote your site and get it noticed, don’t just set it up and let it sit there. Trust me, no one will find it! You have to get your web address (the URL – Unique Resource Locator) published in as many places as possible, or your shiny new website will sit alone and gather cobwebs.

(c) Copyright – Jim Selby 2010. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.