Web Marketing Tips to Increase Your Visibility
Well, by now you are inspired, you have a truly remarkable set of images, new website, images for sale, some stock and a burning desire to get found. Welcome to the club. Building a site is not a guarantee that anyone anywhere will even know it exists.
Let's focus on getting the word out now. In fact, that is our mission... Get The Word Out (DAP8)
Forums are a great place to participate, learn, teach and get some notice. It's fun to participate in forums that are specific to our own interests, but what about participating in forums that are specific to our intended clients interests? Wedding shooters should be participating in forums that have to do with their intended clients. Be the best idea giver for photography on a wedding forum. Be the most creative, helpful advice giver on a site devoted to young graphic designers. There are many other niches that you can use to propel your name and your reputation into the conscience of the customers you want to reach. Google your interest forum.
Your signature file becomes a vitally important feature of your posting as that will be what the interested participants see and click on.
'Link Exchanges' and 'Link Farms' are generally not worth anything as they are a mishmash and Google has ignored them for years. However, some well researched directories can be valuable. for wedding shooters there are places like PartyPop.com and Alltimefavorites.com. These directories spend lots of money to get in front of potential buyers so you can get some very good exposure there. Commercial shooters should look into the various professional groups like ASMP, and APA. These national and local sites feature photographer look-up pages that will bring some exposure as well. Local chapters will also feature pages that will link to your site.
PPC advertising is cost efficient and can be a great benefit to most photographers. PPC stands for Pay Per Click. It's those little Google Ads that are on the right side of this page, and you will see them on millions of pages all over the net. What makes them powerful is that Google looks at this page and delivers ads that are relevant to the content. If I am talking about photography, as I predominantly have for the last 10 days or so, the ads will invariably be about photography.
Recently we discussed fine art prints... so at the time of this article these are two of the ads running there:
Bid on Originals,
Limited Editions
Over 90% Discount
-100% Guarantee
Giclee Printmaking
for Artists Fine Art
Reproduction & Editioning
See how they reflect the content of this blog? That is the power of PPC advertising. You can make your ads appear when certain and specific content is displayed. Now the trick is discovering where you want your ads to appear and what specific terms and 'keywords' you want to buy. Now, I am not going to go into the complete tutorial of Google AdWords, or the rival Overture PPC plans. That would take way too long and is more appropriate for you to learn yourself. You may have to have a webmaster or designer add some code to your pages, but in the grand scheme of things, PPC is very powerful and easy to maintain.
Budget is easy to control as with most PPC plans, you make your budget known and the ads are delivered to your needs. You wont be overbilled, and you can turn the campaign off for awhile, change it up, add more keywords and phrases and keep tweaking the ad until it starts to pull the response you want. If this seems like too much for you to do, find someone to manage your Google AdWord or Overture account and provide you measurable results.
Getting links coming from other sites, especially popular sites, will greatly increase your ranking in the search engines. In other words, the more popular sites that think you are popular, the more popular Google will think you are. Getting the links can be as simple as an email to a webmaster, a sign up form or request to clients that you are working for to be added to a link page. And it can be as difficult as performing a root canal on yourself. Keep after it, make it a priority. You don't need thousands of links in... a dozen or two popular sites will do it. (Forums, remember? And the signature file with your link in it...)
Traditional means still work as well. And they shouldn't be discarded entirely for the web. (My personal feeling about sending out 10,000 postcards to some list you bought is that it is lame and silly. Doesn't work.) However, sending cards to targeted receivers telling them that there is some new stuff to see on your web site... that works.
I have seen bumper stickers, posters, t-shirts... all kinds of little things that can be used for a guerilla approach. Some may find it silly, but it can be quite effective if done correctly and with a sense of humor.
One last way to consider. And I have said it before. Get a Blog, post on it once or twice per week. Make interesting images and tell your visitors how much fun it is shooting images for them. Make it personal. And it will give you practice writing. Then - write article for magazines, trade journals and web sites... they don't have to be long ones, just a couple of paragraphs on what you do, how you do it, why others should consider doing it your way.
These tips and ideas will get your site, and you, noticed. Try them, you'll see.
Tomorrow: Cool Web Tools to Help You Do Stuff
Previous:
Get Inspired (DAP7)
Selling Prints and Fine Art (DAP6)
Taking Stock of Your Stock (DAP5)
Web Design Options (DAP4)
Flickr… more than just a photoblog. (DAP3)
Show More Pictures (DAP2)
Be Found on the Search Engines. (DAP 1
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