How do you drive traffic to your website?

[BK553]

You are an exception than, most of them look like this:
CHEAP WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

[funcrunch]

I'm less irritated by the cheap photographers' ads than by the people posting looking to hire such photographers. The latest take the angle that they're looking for a "student" or someone "new" who wants to "build their portfolio". Again, at least on the SF Bay Area Craigslist site, a lot of the posts blatantly asking for something for nothing get flagged and removed.

[BK553]

Yeah, I've seen those as well. Can you imagine going to a restaurant and asking if the dishwasher could cook your food for cheaper?

[bhursey]

It seems also if you have a blog added to your website the more content you have the more traffic you get.

[djb28]

While you may be getting traffic from places that are not your region, it still helps you in the rank of your site. And the contest site that i frequent. There are so many people from Romania, China,and Italy. But there are also a lot of people from the States and to my surprise, A lot of business's from places that are 40 miles away from me. I seee them and i send them a PM and say. Hey. You are my neighbor! We get to talking and i build a relationship. Now i may not win that contest, but i am now in their head!
And they visit my site and may like what they see. If they just tell two people about me i am happy. I know it is a Rah Rah attitude. But my sour puss attitude got me no where when i started out.

I am not half as busy as i want to be, But after 6 months of really putting my mind to it i can see the benefits. I just got a call from a lady who did a search for vinyl cutters in the area because hers broke down. She found me. Now instead of fixing her machine, she sends all her overflow to me. I dont know. It just seems to be working and no matter what you do once you get somewhat established is helpful. I wish you luck and if you want to talk or need help with a logo or anything. Hit me up. See. I just got my name out there again! lol

And my vinyl and logo work leads to photo work. A business man who sells environmental pumps asked me to do a logo. Then he said i also need photos of my equiptment for web and seminars. So now i have a photo shoot to do with a beautiful set of silver pumps!

[djb28]

Originally Posted by BK553

You are an exception than, most of them look like this:
CHEAP WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER

LOL Now that is funny!

[digirebelva]

Originally Posted by funcrunch

I'm less irritated by the cheap photographers' ads than by the people posting looking to hire such photographers. The latest take the angle that they're looking for a "student" or someone "new" who wants to "build their portfolio". .

Seeing the same thing on the east coast as well..

[digirebelva]

Originally Posted by Katyxa

So far, all my business came from word of mouth,

Even in this day & age of computers, thats still where "most" of your business is going to come from...local clients telling their friends who tell their friends...who happen to be in your geographical area...even if someone finds you online they are most likely going to want to find someone who has used you and get their opinion...
Remember good ole human contact means a lot to a lot of people...the internet is to impersonal...
Whats the ratio, people know 10 other people who they can tell who know 10 people each and so on...and referals from people you have done business with tend to be the ones you want to work with as people generally refer people in their circle of influence & social status..

[danbaileyphoto]

The two biggest ways to drive traffic to your site revolve around relationships and content.

You build relationships through facebook, twitter and in person with clients, referrals and people you meet on the street. You always want to talk your business up with confidence, and if you're good and charismatic, people will talk about you and pass your name along.

With content, you add images, text, blog posts and shots to your Flickr page on a regular basis. These get found by people using search engines and social networking sites. Basically, the more and better content you have out there on the web, the more traffic you'll get to your site.

Both methods take time, though, you need to be patient. Just keep plugging away and eventually, you'll begin to see a rise in your traffic.

[Egy_lover]

Your work is great, so I guess having clients wont be a problem. Try spreading your facebook page more inside facebook. Join photography groups and post some of your work with a link yo your website and page on facebook.

Having a blog is a very nice idea, you can share your latest ideas, photos, tips on photography and even tutorials.

You can offer to guest post a photograpy tutorial/tips in a popular website (like this one!) with a backlink to your site.

When you backlink (now we are talking SEO) to your website, focus on key words. For example, don't use CLICK HERE TO VIEW MY SITE as a "hypertext"....instead, you may use something like : "San francisco family photographer".....decide what keywords you want to focus about and the Google keywords tool is very helpful:

https://adwords.google.com/select/Ke...rceLegacy=true

Using yelp is a very good step, you can also use links from stumbleupon.com and other social bookmarking sites (this is for socializing but doesn't help much with search results).

Also, you can join an articles website where you can write articles or blogs and use them to link to your websites casually, blogger.com, squidoo.com, hubpages.com, for example.

Using flickr wisely is important, too.
In the end, what really matters is good work and original content.
Good luck.