Creating a successful photography website

You’ll be surprised at the amount of people who think once you create a personal photography website, that’s all you need to do and the world will see your photographs. In reality, things couldn’t be further from the truth, and taking that approach you’ll have a very limited number of visits to your website, regardless of how good you think your work is.

If you want people to visit your site, look at your photos and other work, you need to set up a long term plan to get your money’s worth from your domain. What I’ve tried to do here is take a look at his to achieve success, based on my latest website and change of approach compared to other websites I’ve run.

One: Have branding or a name that stands out.

So many photographers have their websites as just their names. In a world of “JoeBlogsPhotograpy.com” type websites being one million to the dozen, try and be a bit more creative so people remember you. Think about what you do most, what you want people to remember you for! The possibilities are endless, and people will remember it more!

Two: Content.

It’s an obvious one, but an important one to think about. Do you have enough contact to be interesting? Most people will just click through your images in seconds, do you have enough to keep them interested? If you do, does the image to a story? Do you tell the story to go with it?

What is in context and a memorable photograph for you, will be totally irrelevant for other people, so even if it’s just a title, give meaning to your photographs.

Three: More content.

In this day and age, simply having a couple of pretty pictures doesn’t work anymore. People like to discover new things. If you’ve got the time dedicate your time to writing a blog update as often as you can, it can be about anything that interests you, but more importantly it will need to be something that others may be interested.

Four: Set aside a section for a specialist subject.

Sometimes you need to attract people to your website by offering something you specialise in. It can be anything, for me it’s my Fujifilm Film Simulations section. I have a huge interest in film after shooting all sorts since the late 1970s, and there’s a community of Fujifilm users that enjoy using their advanced capabilities to emulate film.

Whatever it is, it will draw people to your website, and if it’s done good enough, these people will explore the rest of your website. The one thing you don’t want is the same amount of visitors as views of your website, as that will show that people are not looking around.

Five: Metadata and tags

Make sure every bit of writing you do has words or sentences that can be picked up by search engines. Make sure your blogs are still tagged, your web pages full of metadata and make sure everything is relevant.

The importance of this feature cannot be understated. With burning to search for, no one will discover your site.

Six: Collaborate

Don’t be afraid to build up relationships with other content providers who you admire. You’ll mutually benefit from working together in more ways than one. It can push you to better understand audiences, improve your workflow and build up great friendships

Seven: Constant work and plugging.

The single most important point is this final point. You need to be updating your content almost daily, you need to be plugging your website daily, you need to be linking to your blog at every opportunity and you need to be refreshing everything as often as you can.

It’s hard work making a website successful, but it’s also very important if you want to be recognised for what you do. If you fail in any of the things mentioned above, your website will just be another website that your friends and family will enjoy when your remind them about it