Getting your site seen!!!

Hey all,

I know theres alot of people in here with websites offering prints for sale and photographic services and the like, so i thought id pose this question and get some ideas.
How do you get people to goto your site, and therefore increase chances of sales.

Ive got alot of work that im starting to put together to put into a website. Im going to put the money into it to have it professionally made even though its generally a side venture and nothing too serious as yet. The way i see it, if your trying to offer a professional product/service then the last thing you want your potential buyers to see is a dodgy site. My thoughts anyway.

Im curious to hear peoples most effective methods of getting ur site out there!! (advertising if u will).
I find it hard to believe that paying for the number one spot on search engines is the way to go in this instance. How many people decide to search for landscape photography on google so they can buy a print??? I could be wrong...

anyway would love to read your comments!

TYIA

I get a large number of hits from photo sites where my signature contains a link to my site, like here. It costs nothing and generates a fair amount of traffic. I'm a small-time seller so I don't pay for advertising - can't afford it really. You can also put your work up on other sites like Artbyus.com where your profile can contain a link to your site. I'm sure that there are better ways, but right now that's what I am doing. There are a few threads on selling your work that have other ideas. If you do a search for 'selling' you should come up with some of them.

- Randy

One possible way is if your pictures are on a particular subject or theme, then find out if there are other websites that cover the similar interest and are willing to swap links. For example, on my site Images of Kent, I've managed to obtain logos from tourist related sites, and one of them has also linked to mine.

Content, content, content. Search engines work off content.

I'll second the comments about including your website in your signature and about content. If your site is related to the forum(s) you're posting on it will generate interest right there (so a photo site in your sig for photo forums is great). That's the obvious part, it's putting the word out there to people who are likely to be interested in seeing your site. What's also useful in this is that many search engines look at how many pages link to your pages as a way to determine how relevant your site is. If your site appears (to a search engine) to be photo-related and is linked from a lot of pages that appear to be photo-related then the search engine will consider your site to be more relevant for photo-related. Obviously, photo is a broad topic so the more specific you can get the better.

As mentioned before, the other big one is content. Search engines don't "see" images, they "see" text. Even the image search engines work off of the text on that page, not the image. So it's a good idea to include some text content. Maybe a bio page, or how about a page or more talking about your processes and techniques? Include some information with each image (such as captions, location info, possibly technical details), this will all help search engines think of your site as interesting. For instance, I posted an article on Dead Link Removed on Dead Link Removed, I wrote that article years ago on one of the rec.photo newsgroups (so that should tell you how old it is), the question kept coming up and I got tired of copying and pasting it so I put it up on my website and just started posting the link. I haven't promoted that page in several years (well until today) yet it still gets over 1000 hits every month. Now I don't know how many of those hits translate into viewing other content on my site, but it's certainly something I could look into and work on improving.

Just wanted to add something else to my post. You'll notice that in the link to my article I made the link say "the difference between DPI and PPI" rather than linking the word "article", that was deliberate. A lot of search engines will look at the link text to figure out what the linked page is about. So "the difference between DPI and PPI" tells the search engine a lot more than a link that says "article" "page" or "click here".

Ben,

Getting your website seen by people is one thing. Getting sales from the site are another. Part of the problem in making sales is that the website can only show a small image (for fear of theft) and certainly can not convey and render the image nearly as well as the print itself.

From my experience, and I participate in Art Shows so I am constantly seeing potential customers and clients, the website is more of a catalog of work to show what is available. Additionally, my website provides information regarding the photos and the available sizing and pricing.

Robert Teague's website provides much more including information about other photographers, shooting tips, many kinds of links, etc.

Rich