boydphoto

hi, gang. i would like to get more hits on my website:boydbilbo.com. no www, just my name and .com. i have searched google and tried some of the stuff, like putting keywords in the title and in the body of the page, but when they talk about html i might as well be reading urdu. there are a bunch of sites who SAY they will get hits for you, but they are either very expensive or sound amateurish. any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. thanks, boyd.

Evil Nemesis

you're posting in wrong section }

Rich

Big subject. My uncle does handyman work and put his .com on the side of his work van. He only gets about 40 hits a month but they are highly targeted leads. The people going to his site are looking for his kind of services. Since he did that, he has to turn away work or hire people to help him.

It's pretty old school but works for him. I think he went to guy that does it in vinyl.

I did a couple of things for him like registering the site with google and linking him from my sites but most of the business he gets is from referral or seeing his van.

Rich

peekingrabbit

First of all, your site promotion is severely lacking. Go to this site http://www.submitexpress.com/linkpop/ and check the results; you have a score of 2.

My site however has a score of 23,000 and I have 1,500-2,500 visitors a day.
Why the difference?

a) What my site has to offer is more popular and is quite unique
b) I?ve done lots and lots of site promotion and I'm still doing it

People have to find your site and now they can?t. People go to Google and type ?Photography? and your page probably ends up on page 1,677,004 of Google.
Also because of your very low link popularity, search engines will rank you lower, which means that for example Photo.net will always end up much higher in the rankings than your site.

What kind of keywords you use or how search engine friendly your web site is only plays a minor role for a site like yours and those things will only have the most impact if your site is already ranked pretty high. You can have the best keywords and a highly optimized site for Google, yet you probably end up in position 1,543,455 instead of 1,677,004 and people still can't find you. Sorry, but that?s just the way it is.

Promote your site by affiliating with successful sites and submit your site to web directories that have Photography sections. This will always give you some traffic.

Also consider to redesign your site;

Some pictures are good, some are bad. The picture with the lady in the purple dress is not professional quality and should never be placed on the main page. I?m pretty sure that the family involved loves that shot, but I and many visitors like me have no emotional bond with this image and only look at the quality; unsharp, bad lighting, wedding dress overexposed, distracting background, face of lady in purple dress not visible, poor framing/composition, etc. Simply said; your main page should have a lot more ?wow!? factor if you know what I mean.

Text in capital letters is considered ?screaming? to a lot of people. Only use capital letters if the English language asks for it.

Pictures like these
http://www.boydbilbo.com/sitebuilder...sm-429x515.jpg
http://www.boydbilbo.com/sitebuilder...y2-312x428.jpg
? is what sells, yet you place them on a page with dozens of other shots which is distracting.

Redesign your galleries; use gallery navigation and show only one image at a time, so that the focus is on the image only. Now the galleries look a tad disorganized; b&w white pictures mixed with color photographs, different sizes, frames, techniques, alignments, borders, etc. There is simple too much going on each of these pages. Keep it simple; use thumbnails that open a single preview.

Also consider to redesign your site to make it compatible with 800x600 screen resolution.
But even if you consider to only support 1024x768, then make sure that all pages stay inside this resolution and avoid pages like this http://boydbilbo.com/fineart.html where the visitors with 1024x768 still have to scroll sideways.

Don?t use animation and transition effect between pages; they might look cool, but in reality they just irritate your visitors. Potential customers care more about content and what you as a photographer have to offer.

Btw, if you want my honest opinion; if you want to be more successful with your Photography business (or services), then ignore the internet and focus on your local area and promote your business using the traditional methods.

A site like this (and that?s just the reality) will never get lots of visitors unless you extend it with alternative material like articles, resources, advice, forums, etc.
Also ask yourself the following question; what percentage of the people who are looking for a wedding photographer will use the internet to find one. Of course, it?s easy to find wedding photographers, but how many are living in their area? Most people will just grab the phone book, look around in their home town or ask others for advice.

chillman

I took a look at your keywords, and you need a whole lot more than what you have. The sites that offer traffic builder options can definitely help, but in agreement with peekingrabbit, I would focus on the semi local market, unless you are willing to travel. I do some graphic design work and amatuer photography as well as PC repair work. (Busy Busy...) and have found that word of mouth is the best advertising you can get. Also, find a high traffic activity that gets a lot of public attention, and distribute some flyers. It may cost you about 50 bucks and a couple of hours of your time on a Saturday but it pays off, and lets people see you and notice you. An idea that I am working on, is I am going to set up at a local church picnic, and offer free 4x6 portraits. Get the people's name and address, and send them the print. The print may only cost you 17 - 29 cents, and then the stamp. In the mailer, (which now becomes invited instead of junk mail) include the picture, an enlargment price, and your other services. Hope this helps.


BTW, you may be in the wrong board, but rather than give you a thumbs down, I would suggest that you request one of the mods to move the thread or politely direct you the Other General Interests section. Maybe even Photoshop for the web... \:] 8))