my website is way down the pages.

claire21

I run a photography business and my website seems to only be found if people have my web address. How can I improve its viability? I know next to nothing about the internet and websites, I have just set up google adwords as an attempt to get myself seen.

I am a photographer who covers weddings as the main part of the business in one county, Somerset.

Many thanks for any advice.

martindow

It would be much easier to comment if we had your site address. Not sure if this is allowed on this forum. Please PM it to me if it can't be shown openly here and I'll have a look.

alanobrien

claire21 wrote: »

How can I improve its viability?

By this i suspect you mean a higher page ranking in the search engines.........if so then "content is king" comes to mind. Along with reciperical links to other sites that have a higher ranking.

Still another is google ads i.e. an add you pay for which comes up when people search for something like "photography" and "Somerset"

I am sure more suggestions will be forthcoming from others shortly.

Torby

Good Luck to everyone

claire21

alanobrien wrote: »

By this i suspect you mean a higher page ranking in the search engines.........if so then "content is king" comes to mind. Along with reciperical links to other sites that have a higher ranking.

Still another is google ads i.e. an add you pay for which comes up when people search for something like "photography" and "Somerset"

I am sure more suggestions will be forthcoming from others shortly.

I have no links on my website.
I have just done google adwords.

thanks

martindow

claire21 wrote: »

I have no links on my website.
I have just done google adwords.

thanks

You do need to be a bit careful with the links you get and avoid link farms or dubious neighbourhoods. I would seek relevant links from trade associations or other established people in the same sort of business as you (but probably avoiding direct competitors). The general feeling now is that links while still useful do not have the weight they once did as they have been abused by people seeking thousands of inbound links.

claire21

Thanks everybody for your help.

I have had a go and doing more keywords etc and am sitting here fingers crossed hoping it helps.

I had a go at bttradespace also.

Thanks all.

If anybody has anything else to add it will be gratefully received.

Claire

Tooticky

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is a very lucrative business, there are two ways to look at SEO; black hat (very naughty) and white hat (a little bit naughty), most of the advice here is sound but you shouldn’t try and trick the search engines because if you do it badly you may end up being banned completely... but like thats going to stop you!

Blimey, where to start?...

There is soooo much to SEO but stick to white hat methods search engines work on a set of algorithms, these vary for each search engine, and they are neither published nor static, so they will change, these algorithms define characteristic of a web page in what they see as relevant to a search result.

They use web crawlers (or bots) to read your site, then take a snap shop (cache) which they hold on record, (they do this to make the searches faster, than having to search in real time)

They (in the main) read the Meta tags (the title of the page as shown on the browser), Meta descriptions (a brief overview of the content) and Meta keywords (key words for the content of that page). Then they read the page itself (some flash sites are hard to read and may be harder to rank as a result).

(you should be able to identify you current Meta tags by right clicking on you web page and selecting 'view source' they should be in the first few lines of code)

The key words should be included in the content text where ‘Alanobrien’ is spot on “content is king”

The best way to achieve a good search engine ranking position (SERP) is to write a website jam packed with relevant information, the search engines are looking for informative sites for your target audience, not sites that have been written for search engines.

Links will help, but they should be one way and relevant (i.e. they should be IN to your site and from web pages about photography not knitting etc.) the more links you have the more frequently the crawlers will happen across your site (the more relevant it must therefore be)

Links from authoritive site are the most ideal.

Finally if your search term is competitive then go for the niche terms, i.e. your local geography, because the less the competition the easier it is to compete.

There is a lot more to it but that is the basics. I hope it helps and I hope my competition doesn't read this J

claire21

Thanks everydody who helped. I had really great advice from another mse also and he has helped me adjust my site. Time will tell, keep your fingers crossed. This website thing has been a step lurning curve!

overdrawn30

Speak to other people, customers, suppliers, friends etc to get their take on what they would search for if they were looking for a business that provided the services your company provides.

I tried this at work and the company's website now appears as no 1 rather than on page 4

HTH.

Drag-Den

Hi,

Our new businesses website goes live tomorrow and I was just wondering how the OP has got on and if anyone including the OP has any tips for us to increase traffic to our site? So far I've signed up upto bt tradespace and will shortly be doing the other free business directories - or at least the ones I know of!

Cheers