Need tips to increase traffic

kleonin

1. Finally settled on a look & feel that I like - check
2. Uploaded the photos - check
3. Set up pricing - check

Now, it's time to generate traffic. Any tips? Thanks in advance.

-Keith

Leonin.net

Angelo

congrats Keith. You have some gorgeous images.
there are lots of threads on this subject and many good people here to help with advice. hold tight for some great replies

.

denisegoldberg

kleonin wrote: »

Now, it's time to generate traffic. Any tips?

Hi Keith -
Nice job on your site - it looks good, and you have some wonderful photos there.

To improve SEO, you need to make sure that folks searching will find you. You have very few keywords and no text that I can find on your site.

• Are you trying to attract clients? If yes, then some information about your services would be a good thing to add to either your smug site or your blog.
• You might consider adding a short description to your galleries
• Make more use of keywords

Your email link in your navbar will only work if the viewer has an email client set up on the computer that is being used to view your site. You might consider using something like a Wufoo form instead.

Your blog includes photos but the photos don't link to your smugmug site. I recommend using html to place the photos instead of using the built-in wordpress photo gallery. Clicking on a photo in your blog should take the viewer to your smug site if you are trying to build traffic to that site. I also recommend formatting your blog to look like your smug site so it is obvious they are part of the same online presence.

Take a look at the following pages for some tips on SEO and smug:
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93327
http://news.smugmug.com/2011/01/05/seo-on-smugmug/

--- Denise

kleonin

Thanks Angelo and Denise - yes, I do need to add more keywords as well as descriptions. Also, good thoughts about updating my blog - that was more of a quick and dirty job just to get it up and running. As I had suspected, I still have a lot of work to do. Thanks again.

kitkos

You tricked us, just the fact that you posted this thread is generating traffic on your site. ;-)

the site looks nice, I can't add any advise that hasn't been mentioned already.

Light_prod

google also really likes it if it can verify your a real life business. In other words, get yourself onto google places.

dogwood

Light_prod wrote: »

google also really likes it if it can verify your a real life business. In other words, get yourself onto google places.

Get yourself onto google everything! G+ is another very, very good place to create an account. Post frequently there since google indexes it and also you'll quickly build up followers.

Keep in mind good SEO takes time. In other words, google frequently ranks urls that have been around for a long time higher than urls that haven't been around for a while. If you've abandoned an url (ie went from wordpress.com to wordpress.org), you might consider having wordpress automatically forward to your new url. Yes, there's a fee, but google will notice.

Anyway, entire books have been written on SEO. Time and persistence are really the key aspects of driving traffic to your website.

denisegoldberg

dogwood wrote: »

G+ is another very, very good place to create an account. Post frequently there since google indexes it and also you'll quickly build up followers.

For those just getting started on Google+ - I found it a bit disconcerting at first because I would post photos and they would get no apparent notice. That changed, but it seemed to take some time before my posts started attracting followers. Keep at it though - keep posting, and find some photographers you like to follow. I've kept my own following list down to photographers whose posts really interest me so they don't get lost in a sea of posts.

I found that participating in the daily themes helped quite a bit - http://ericleslie.com/guides/daily-photography-themes-googleplus/.

--- Denise

kleonin

Thanks all.

Denise - thanks especially for a separate post of yours re: posting original size images... didn't realize originals could be obtained without the watermarks (another Smugmug member gave me a heads up).

I'm familiar with SEO; I was just wondering if there were any Smugmug-specific tips.

I'll explore Google+.

-Keith

dogwood

kleonin wrote: »

Thanks all.

Denise - thanks especially for a separate post of yours re: posting original size images... didn't realize originals could be obtained without the watermarks (another Smugmug member gave me a heads up).

I'm familiar with SEO; I was just wondering if there were any Smugmug-specific tips.

I'll explore Google+.

-Keith

The thing is SEO isn't limited to smugmug specific. In fact, it's just about impossible to get good SEO by concentrating only on one website. Google is looking for links to your site that indicate other people like your content or are recommending your work. That's why a blog is important and also social media. For example, you can tweet a blog post and on your blog, of course link back to your SM site.

A fabulous resource for SEO for photographers is Rosh Sillars website I highly recommend you subscribe to his podcasts. He posts one every week that deals with SEO, business, social media, etc.