Can Your Website Be Found By Potential Clients

Finding a poorly SEO'ed website on the web is like finding a library book without a card catalog system.

This post is Part Two in a series helping you figure out if your website is worthless.

Do you know if your website is currently search engine optimized correctly?

An easy way to find out is check your website stats and find out what people are searching for.

If people are coming to your site and buying your products and services or engaging with you in conversation, then stop reading. If you aren’t to sure or if you get only a handful of visitors per month, then keep reading.

Many people design a website and throw it up on the web without a search engine optimization strategy. Did you know that you can slightly tweak your web content with keywords and phrases and rapidly turn your web traffic numbers around?

Our goal is to help you get more relevant and targeted web traffic with a few simple steps.

Step 1: Determine keywords and keyphrases you would want potential customers typing in to find your site.

Let’s say you owned a wedding photography business in Kansas City. Pretend you are a potential client and think about what you would type in to find your services. Create a list of keywords and phrases. Here’s a short list I came up with: wedding photography kansas city, kansas city wedding photographer, photography studio kansas city.

Step 2: Determine how often search terms are searched.

I’m going to share with you a remarkable and free tool I use to check on how often search terms are searched. The Google Adwords: Keyword Tool will give you incredible information on how often search keywords are being searched.

I’ll start by looking up ‘Wedding Photography Kansas City’. You can quickly scroll down the list and see what other similar search terms are typed in and the frequency they are searched each month. The exact phrase wedding photography kansas city is searched 1000 times in April!

Step 3: Check out the competition for this search term.

By doing this search in Google I find out that 319,000 results. This is actually very low and would be a great search phrase to optimize your site for!

Step 4: Insert this search phrase into your content.

You can now begin placing this search phrase into your web content. Try to not over do it by inserting the search phrase too often. This can actually worsen your position in search engines. Be sure the search phrase is located in the title of your web page and included in the content of your web page. Try to not use the keyword or phrase more than once per paragraph.

By applying these steps when you write web or blog pages you can actively begin increasing your organic search traffic and gain relevant and targeted traffic.

This post is Part Two in a Series entitled, Is Your Website Worthless. Here is a list of upcoming future posts that will help you achieve value from your search engine marketing.

• Is your website properly search engine optimized?
• What purpose does your website serve? Is it an information repository?
• Do you have clients that visit your website to gain value information or insight?
• Has your website sat there untouched for many years with the same old content?
• What is your website’s purpose?
• Are you actively keeping your website up-to-date with new and interesting content?
• What is your goal with your website?
• Do you have marketing objectives?
• Do you have a mechanism to allow people to subscribe to your content?
• Do you have a way to notify interested parties of new content or products on your site?
• Is your website easy to navigate? When your visitors get there can they find the information they need easily?

Can your website be found by potential clients? Do you need help figuring this out? I’d love to hear your thoughts and answer any questions you may have about your own website! Please comment below and be sure to subscribe to receive future posts.

Thanks for reading!

photo credit: MSU Library

Why Photographers Should Avoid All Flash Websites

All Flash sites can blind your customers

Want to know a great way to blind your customers and keep them from EVER viewing your amazing photography?

Create an all Flash website!

Don’t get me wrong… I’m a HUGE fan of Flash. I used to develop all Flash sites for my clients. I agree that Flash definitely has its place on the web.

I want to arm you with 5 reasons why you should presenting your best work using an all Flash format.

1) Mobile compatibility

It’s hard for many old-school photographers to grasp this thought, but it’s true: Your prospective clients are using their cell phones to view your work. Many cell phones do not come pre-equipped with Flash players and are next to impossible to get a Flash player installed.

Guess what.

Your prospective client just hit back on their cell phone browser and went to the next available photographer.

2) Attention span

Enough said? Good. Move on.

3) Directional URL’s

Email from Prospective Client:  “Hi, I would like to get more information on your studio portrait services.”

Reply from Hopeful Photographer:   “Sure. Go to AllFlashPhotosite.com and roll over About, then roll over Services when that appears, then click on Portraits when that appears, but make sure you wait for it to appear.”

Let’s see how a photographer without an all Flash site would handle it.

Email from Email from Prospective Client:  “Hi, I would like to get more information on your studio portrait services.”

Reply from Smart Photographer without all flash site: “Hi, no problem. Just click this link. http://SweetNotAllFlashSite.com/services/portraits

See the difference there?

4) Accessibility

Again, not all people have Flash players installed on their computers and it’s irresponsible to say, “If they don’t have Flash, then the shouldn’t be on the web.”

Additionally, some people use screen readers to access web information. I feel a barrage of rude comments coming for this one, but seriously…

5) Search Engine Unoptimization

Do you like when people can easily find you on the web by searching for photographers in your area? If not, get an all flash website.

I am discouraging photographers from building all Flash websites for the above reasons.

So, what’s the alternative?

I encourage photographers to use a mix of XHTML and Flash or Flash not at all. Obviously, XHTML and accessibility go hand-in-hand and many more people are using their mobile phones to peruse the web and make purchasing decisions.

In the next week I will be rolling out a design for a remarkable photographer that uses XHTML and Flash together.

What are your thoughts on all Flash websites? Do you have one? Do you run into the troubles that I have mentioned above?

Subscribe to learn more tips on website and graphic design.

photo credit: jgs4309976