Cradoc's BlogOh, and there's a lot more to this survey that will make you think about getting a site that looks cool AND works instead of one that only looks cool. There are ways to do it... and this survey is so amazingly in sync with one we did last year as well.
"Q: Do you use search engines (ex: Google, Yahoo!) to find photographers?
A: The answer was no surprise, 79% said yes, and 21% said no.
This means that those photographers interested in assignment work need to make sure that their website is constructed in a way that pleases the search engines. It should include a lot of what search engines love the most: text. That's right, I said it - TEXT! Make captions and keywords on your images visible with the image. Use HTML instead of Flash, because HTML is text."
Look, as I've said before, you could certainly use Flash on the page as an element, but making the page all Flash is like building a store in a mall and then walling off the mall entrance. Of course you can buy ad pages in magazines, directories and other media that is willing to take your money to drive visitors. (Right about here someone pipes up and tells me about some incredible shooter with a Flash web site... someone like Jimmy Williams. He has a rep, and producers and a book of clients a mile long. I would say to that person... you ain't Jimmy Williams. When you get to that stature... Flash away.)
If you want to know more about how this stuff all works, let me know and I will prepare a special blog post for it. I am working on a large form piece for the Lighting Essentials site. Hope to have it up for March.
4 comments:
Don,
I'd love to hear more about this, it's something I've been reading a lot about lately, SEO etc. and I actually was going to work on my site in this context a bunch tomorrow.
I can also tell you from personal experience that 99% of the photographers out there don't understand how a good online portfolio, a few dollars spent on Adwords and a good, solid linking strategy can quickly turn into a whole lot of work.
Please do tell me, err, us ... more!
I'd love to hear more about the subject. I've been seriously considering purchasing a template from http://www.flashpalette.com. My site (that I created on Yahoo) just isn't cutting it. I'd love to hear more about what you would suggest photographers use. I just haven't found any great drag and drop programs out there for people like me with no programming knowledge but that can offer everything I need.
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