Why WordPress Web Sites for Photographers?
With a little bit of instruction I learned how to do everything related to my web site by myself with no knowledge of HTML, but with a self hosted Word Press web site theme (website template) and blog. Six months ago I was averaging 500 to 800 visitors per month to my photography web site. Most of my traffic was from various places where I had placed free classified ads on the internet. I had very little in the way of organic search results directed toward my site.
The fellow that I work with is a sort of Word Press Guru. He explained that if I focus my posts toward the subject mater that I wanted to draw into my site, that once I had made 50+ blog posts that there would begin to be a critical mass and the numbers of visitors would really start to grow.
It has been fun and challenging to create posts that I think that my prospective customers would enjoy reading and enjoy seeing. Each post, of course as a photographer, includes several sample images from my most recent senior portrait sessions or equine portraits from a recent farm call session. This post, that I am writing right now, is for all my photographer friends that follow my web site and are introducing themselves to me on facebook, twitter, and linked in.
You see from day one and my first post on my self hosted wordpress blog / web site (this will not work on a site that is just a free blog on wordpress which has “wordpress.com” in the URL address) I have seen consistent growth in the number of organic searches that have led people here to look over what I have to offer. Well over 65% of traffic to this site is from organic searchs. That means the traffic is from people typing in several words and doing a search on Google. It might be something like, “creative senior portraits” or ” senior portrait with horse” or ” taking pictures in snow” as these have all been words used in posts that I have put on my blog. The balance is from links and references like facebook and those free listings I mentioned above and from people who have my business card etc.
As I mentioned it has been fun to watch the graph from the wordpress STATS plugin. In six months my site has gone from 500-800 visits in a month to 5000+ for the month of May with several days to go before the end of the month. The graph is continuing in an upward trend which astounds me.
I appreciate my prospective clients coming to see what I have to offer and I also appreciate my photographer friends telling me what they think of my images and my web site.
Over the last six weeks I have been running an online course sponsored by The Equine Photographers Network on advertising and marketing your equine photography business. Understanding SEO, Facebook, and the internet was just one week of the course about effective advertising. I have asked all 31 class members to sign up for my web site updates and would be delighted if a couple of them would comment on this blog post about the course. The Equine Photographers network has members from all over the world and as a result I have course participants from Canada, UK, and other countries around the world. In addition equine photography is quite diverse with fine art photographers in Arizona and Belgium, show photographers, race horse photographers, some focused on a single breed of horse, pet and portrait photographers and so on. Each niche has differing target clients and focus of their work so the challenge was for the group interaction to bring more to the course than I could offer alone. I have to say, that this year the course was outstanding with discussions and input from members contributing in depth information for others to use in their businesses. I offer the course once each year and you do not have to be a member of the Equine Photographers Network to participate in the course.
If you have questions, feel free to contact me via email at peter@photosbypdemott.com
Also, please visit my web site called Grow Your Business In Dayton http://gybindayton.com for additional things you can do to improve your findability both locally and on the internet.
Related posts:
- The power of a self hosted wordpress website/blog for photographers
- Would you be interested in an equine photographers podcast?
- How much do photographers really make?
- Getting noticed on the Internet and SEO tips for photographers
- My friend Janne’ Peterson of Jannephotographics implements WordPress with total Pizzaz
I am one of the members that has been taking Peter’s class and not only has he recommended the WordPress Blog, which many of us have adapted, he has also encouraged many other ideas and techniques that have really made a tremendous impact for the class. I alone have more then doubled my bookings but have expanded my business knowledge and skills and am already booking for next year. I couldn’t have done it without Peter’s instruction and knowledge.
UP DATE: I had visits to my web site/blog top 6,000 in JUNE.
UP DATE: July 7,760 visitors to my web site/blog.
It’s fun to watch the stats isn’t it. I have two sites that are relatively new but but the ability to actually monitor the activity is key to knowing what direction to take in the future. So many people feel that just because they have a website they feel someone is coming to visit but they don’t really know if that is the case and unfortunately in most cases there may not be much in the way of daily visitors. In this economy every little bit helps. When are you holding your next course?
I usually run the course for 6 weeks starting in late January.
I didn’t take the course this year as I wasn’t thinking it would have this kind of info in it. Looks like I better schedule it for next winter! There is some great stuff in these wordpress related posts that is giving me some serious food for thought regarding my own blog!