Driving Traffic to Web Site?

[BrianEE93]

I was think of setting up a Web site to sell my photography. What are some suggestions to drive traffic to it?

[blinking8s]

well, you put the site in your sig on forums, that gives you link-backs and starts to give you some kind of search engine placement, and you have prints up in local galleries ect, tell your friends to hit it, send it to you mom, hand out business cards...it's all just a big chain of events, and it's a very slow process. The issue is what target audience are you trying to sell to...that's what you need to find out more than anything

[EricKonieczny]

Hey Brian,

Please take a look at this post : It will tell you what i did


If you have any questions, just message me

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=129466


I am happy about mine, but also have big hopes for the future

[sageone]

You can't beat word of mouth. However, there are places on the web that you can use to pimp your site (a la free advertising). Biz cards could help. But honestly, a website probably isn't going to get you business. Word of mouth and making contacts will help your business and when people want to see your work, drive to the URL. Don't even think about search engine placement either because it's only hype...google does a great job for finding sites for people. The important thing will be making sure you have your meta tags in order - meta tags, if you don't know, are key words that will get you noticed when people search the web for certain things.

[gmen]

This is a useful resource (one of many): http://www.thesitewizard.com/sitepromotion/spellingerrors.shtml

It gives some simple common sense ideas regarding keywords etc. It's important to have keywords in the actual text of your site, not just in the <meta> tags. Have a look at the section on keyword density - try to incorporate the keywords that are relevant to your site into coherent sentences and this will raise your profile in the search engines.

Also I drive traffic to my site via my membership of PhotoShelter and SportsShooter - my gallery pages there generate additional traffic, as does my photoblog.

Another thing to consider is getting visitors to come back again. Make sure that your site looks professional and pay attention to the basics like spelling. Also try to keep your content dynamic through regular updates.

I've just added keyword searching by IPTC data via PhotoShelter and this has resulted in more enquiries/sales as it enables photo editors to find relevant images very easily.

Link backs are vital as well. If your site has a specialist leaning then try to make associations with as many other sites as possible. All those additional links are going to help Google find you as well as regular surfers.

Of course, don't forget regular marketing as well - as mentioned above, business cards, stationery... have your url on your baseball cap, on the side of your car... ;)

---- Gavin

[Mike Panic]

do a google search for SEO, aka, search engine optimization.

as everyone else has said... traditional marketing is prob one of your best bets, flyers, biz cards, custom license plate frame and / or stickers for your car

[BrianEE93]

Thanks for all the help everyone. I have some reading to do.

[ChameleonPhoto]

Google Adsense works well if your looking to pay to drive traffic to your site. Apart from that just get as many links to it as possible. This will life your search engine rankings.

Doug