How do you drive traffic to your website?

[Katyxa]

So, I've officially launched my website a month ago. I've also created Facebook page, Twitter, registered my business on Yelp.com. Set up my SEO on the website. But now, got to the point where I need to bring in more traffic to my site that will create potential clients. So far, all my business came from word of mouth, but I'm wondering where else I can promote my business. Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[BK553]

Google Adwords. You can limit the display of your ads to people only in your city, which is very cool. You can pick what keywords trigger your ad. You can set a budget (per day) that you are willing to spend. My budget is 2$ a day, and I get about 200 impressions and 30 clicks a day.

[Izzy]

It seems like you have done everything right so far. How long has your site been up? I ask because it can take 6 months before your site will drive you actual customers. Have you considered running a small local ad in a repetitive fashion? How about a craigslist ad? The more links you have on the web coming back to your website the better you will rank. It also makes it possible for you to dominate the first page of the search results.

Pay to rank is always a bad idea because if you stop paying you stop ranking. Never use one of these services if you can help it. Your website is built in such a way that you should not have to beg for hits or pay for them.

I would suggest getting a copy of Guerrilla Marketing

GM Store

Before you buy any of them check them out of your library so you know it has what you are looking for. I have a first edition that I bought for $1. It is rather helpful but you have to be in gear to do it and it sounds like you are. I steer you at this because advertising (which you are doing) is not marketing. You need to market yourself and brand name your services.

[BuddhaPi]

google adwords, has absolutely nothing to do with the organic listings, nor does google ad-words effect the organic listings.

[BK553]

Right. I don't know if you're correcting Me or Izzy, but adwords won't affect your pagerank at all, which is completely different (you mentioned you already did SEO). While Izzy is correct that it can take some time for your site to show up in the search results, adwords works almost immediately. You DO have to pay for it, but it doesn't have to be expensive to be effective, the website even tells you how effective your ad will be, how it will be ranked in comparison to other ads, and how you can improve your results. There are free ways to do advertising, but Google wouldn't have a market cap of 190 Billion $ if it didn't work.

All that being said, while I do drive enough business from it to justify the cost, word of mouth is always the easiest and cheapest way to get more jobs. Do well, and people will share it. Do poorly, and they'll share that too.

[Katyxa]

Thank you for the feedback. I'm not looking to invest any money on AdWords at this point. But I haven't done any local advertising as well as Craigslist. I guest that would be next on my to-do list. I launched my website in October, so it have been only one month. I guess it will take time to get some traffic from search engines.

[BK553]

You might not want to mention Craigslist around here, the general feeling is that craigslist is for people who own cameras, not photographers. NOBODY goes to craigslist looking for a professional photographer, they go there looking for bargains. If that's what you're after, go for it.

Otherwise if you still don't want to spend money on advertising, I would say work on getting other sites to link to yours, keep putting up new content, and try some offline advertising. Putting up a website and just waiting for people to find it doesn't work. Everyone on this site has a website, and if people can only find it by using your name specifically, that means they have to hear about it somewhere else.

[djb28]

Link your site to everything! A link in your email. On every business card. ( i throw my business cards around like candy. I leave them under doors . I mail them out with coupons. I also make signs so the more people i can reach the better. HAve you placed your name on sites like YP and Yellow Book? Do it locally, But never pay them! I did this for a few months and never got a call. Just do the free listing. Any one in your tri county area will see it if they are looking!
I place an ad in the local paper once a month. I do half a page for 75.00

Also. Get your windows vinyl! The more people that see your website address and business name the better! They will go home and check it out. I have done so much testing on this.I started with just advertising. That was okay for a minute. Then it gets expensive and the hounds are calling you for more money to do less work!

Then I placed vinyl on my truck. I saw the web stats on my site go up 9 %
Then i added it to my girlfriends truck and my parents and sister! Three months later 33%^ increase. I had a sign in my yard but the town made me remove it...

Face book is always good, it works but then you have to have a bunch of people you may or may not want watching you. lol
Anywhere you can place a free link is a good thing and there are many you can do that. Do you join contests? I make logos and signs. So i am a member on 4 logo making sites. I use my business name and we can link our sites in our profiles. There are about 4,000 designers and roughly 10 new contests per day on these sites. Thats a ton of people looking at the contest pages. It really is endless with what you can do to get out there. BUT NEVER PAY! Google ad sense. Biggest waste of 150.00 i ever spent.

Make sure you have a lot of text on your site with relevancy to what you are selling. I made my site 2 months after quitting my job from an employer who had a site up for 10 years. I blow them off the map just for doing what i told you. They come up a full page back in searches when i check. And update your site every two weeks! Keep it fresh.

Hope this helps a little.

[BK553]

Good tips. The only problem I see is that while these tactics definitely drive traffic, they may not be your target audience. I get tons of hits from these forums, but I never expect any of them to turn into any kind of sales, other photographers are probably the least likely customers. Word of mouth will get you jobs, period.

[funcrunch]

Originally Posted by BK553

You might not want to mention Craigslist around here, the general feeling is that craigslist is for people who own cameras, not photographers. NOBODY goes to craigslist looking for a professional photographer, they go there looking for bargains. If that's what you're after, go for it.

That's not completely true. While I've seen plenty of bargain hunters on Craigslist (and I've seen many of the more offensive posts flagged and removed, by the way), I've also gotten a number of paid gigs from it. I've been running an ad every week for over a year and I check the gig listings at least once a day. It's free and takes little time.