February 4, 2012

Get Free Traffic to Your Photography Website

You have a lot of things working against you when you try to get free traffic to a newly created website.

  • The search engines and especially Google likes old domain names. All new domain names end up in the sandbox for a few months and it takes years to garner trust from the search engines
  • It takes time to get incoming links to a new website
  • It takes time to create content for the website
  • It takes time to get a higher PR (Page Rank) value
  • etc.

In short, it’s darn difficult and takes time to get a new website ranking high in the search engines. But there is an easy shortcut you can take.

Here’s how you can take a “free ride” on other websites and get free traffic

You can “piggy back” on the hard work other website owners have done to get traffic to their website and the best part it’s free traffic for you.

Note: the concept of piggy backing might not be new to you but i’ve added a unique twist that makes it much more effective.

Step 1: Find a photosharing website that fulfill the following criteria’s

  • You can put an outgoing link in to your website from the photo sharing site. It’s great if you do NOT get a “nofollow” link but it’s OK if you do.
  • The title you give the image is included between the TITLE tags
  • The title you give the image is included in the ALT tag
  • You can set keywords for the image
  • Old site with lots of traffic and images, a high PR and rank high in the search engines.

It may sound complicated but it’s quite easy to find out if the photo sharing site fulfills these criteria’s. And once you found one it’s as easy as 123 to piggy back on the free traffic from the website. More about that later…

Step 2: Upload your best images images to the photo sharing site and give them keywords

After you uploaded the images you need to give each of them a very specific keyword they should be optimized for. For instance, if you have an image of the Niagara falls at sunset you can use the keywords “niagara falls sunset”. Make sure the keyword is relevant to the image and that it’s a keyword you think people would use when they search for an image like this. There are many free tools on the web that helps you find out how many times a certain keywords is searched for.

Important: Make sure you include the keyword in the caption and/or title field for each image.

Step 3: Put a link to your website in the description field

Now you just have to put a link to YOUR website by mentioning something like this “You can find many more beautiful images like this at YOUR WEBSITE”

So people come to the high traffic website, find your images and get interested, Then they click on the link and come to your website.

You just got free traffic to your website!

This concept to piggy back is not new but there’s a unique twist in that you keyword each image and put the keyword in the caption/title filelds and that the keyword also is added in the ALT and TITLE tags. This makes it easy for Google and other search engines to find your images.

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SEO For Photography Websites

Optimizing a photography website for Google and other search engines often seems like a futile and uphill battle for most photographers.

Why?

Most photography websites contains mainly images and are often flash based. Google likes text but doesn’t like flash based websites at all. Actually, Google probably have nothing against flash as such, but it just can’t understand what it is.

Text on the other hand is easy for Google to understand so Google is very efficient in gobbling and understanding text based web sites.

So is it hopeless to get a photography website ranking high on Google?

No, it’s not. In fact Google is pretty good at understanding images and have started to like them even more lately. In fact, nearly 30% of my website traffic now comes from Google’s image search and it’s growing fast. You just need to help Google to understand what the images are all about.

Here’s how you can help Google to interpret your images:

  1. Include a descriptive file name including the keywords for all images (for instance angkor-wat-temple.jpg)
  2. Include a descriptive ALT tag including the keywords (for instance angkor wat temple)
  3. Give non relevant graphics (bullet points etc.) a number instead of a name (1.gif or 55.jpg etc).
  4. Include caption text for each image (of course including the keywords (or synonyms)

You should of course also do the “standard” SEO for your webpage:

  • All webpages on your site should be optimized for different keywords.
  • Include the keyword(s) between the TITLE tags (for instance <title>Angkor Wat Temple</title>)
  • Include the keyword(s) between the H1 tags (for instance <h1>Angkor Wat Temple</h1>)
  • Include the keyword(s) in the filename (for instance angkor-wat-temple.html)
  • Include the keyword(s) and synonyms if you have some text on the web page.

These small tricks are fast and easy to do and gives you good value for the small amount of time it takes to do it. There are more advanced tactics but they’re more time consuming and often not worth the time it takes.

Note: don’t keyword spam because Google is not stupid. Only include relevant keywords.

Of course, getting incoming links to your website is also needed to rank high on google but i’ll cover that later in a separate blog post.

Cheers!

Share and Enjoy:
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  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
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  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn