Search Engine Optimization Books

[QT Luong]

> I think the important thing is to generate "quality" visits to your website not just volume.

> If it works so well then why aren't the Getty or Corbis sites a sea of keywords?


It's like hunting by shooting at random. It doesn't work that well. The ratio buyers/visitors is dismal, and "good buyers" are even more rare. Getty and Corbis have an advertising budget that makes it possible to rearch good photo buyers with targeted campaigns, which the individual photographer doesn't. However, if you reach enough people, you will end up reaching some good clients.

[Frank Petronio]

If you check out a guy like Doug Plummer, you'll see that he gets quality stock and assignment customers from his website because he does quality work and also writes original, intelligent content about his work.

http://dougplummer.blogs.com/dispatches/ is one of the entry points to his web presence (not the only one... he has a mini "web empire").

So rather than join into the other ten jillion landscape photographers trying to sell stock photos of rocks and trees, you will do better if you write about all the fun and hassles involved in photographing those (often generic) rock and trees. In an W3C standards-based XHTM and CSS properly built website (no Java, Flash, Dreamweaver BS).

Gabeesh?

[400d]

If you check out a guy like Doug Plummer, you'll see that he gets quality stock and assignment customers from his website because he does quality work and also writes original, intelligent content about his work.

Off topic, but this guy, Doug, is an arrogant dude.

[Frank Petronio]

who sells more photos than you...

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

who sells more photos than you...

How do you know?......

[paulr]

Here's an interesting case ... can anyone figure this out?

I've always wished my site would be easier to find with searches for things like "urban landscape" + "brooklyn" + "photograph" .

But I'm always burried pages and pages down. I just did that google search, and the first individual phtographer's site that came up was http://www.jenniferneal.net/.

I've snooped around her site a bit, and the only place I see any of that text (except for "urban," which shows up once) is in her meta tags.

Meanwhile, I've put a fair amount of stupid text on my site primarily to make it searchable. I'd rather get rid of most of it!

What does Jennifer know that I don't??

[Greg Miller]

Here's an interesting case ... can anyone figure this out?

I've always wished my site would be easier to find with searches for things like "urban landscape" + "brooklyn" + "photograph" .

But I'm always burried pages and pages down. I just did that google search, and the first individual phtographer's site that came up was http://www.jenniferneal.net/.

I've snooped around her site a bit, and the only place I see any of that text (except for "urban," which shows up once) is in her meta tags.

Meanwhile, I've put a fair amount of stupid text on my site primarily to make it searchable. I'd rather get rid of most of it!

What does Jennifer know that I don't??

Her "Title" (in the head section of the HTML) is "Jennifer Neal Contemporary Urban Landscape Photography" - that helps a lot here by including the words "contemporary urban landscape". You could update your Title in a similar way. Your Google page rank (4) is higher than hers (3) so eventually you should be able to get above her in the search results. Unfortunately the Google spiders can be very slow in getting back around to your site so it may be a while before you see any results.

Also, text that is high on the page counts more so strategically placing menaingful text as high as possible on the page will hep you too. So (just an example) if you changed your top line of text to "Paul Raphaelson - Photographs of Brooklyn's Urban Landscape" you would eventually receive a higher position in the results for the search that you mention.

[paulr]

Your Google page rank (4) is higher than hers (3) so eventually you should be able to get above her in the search results.

interesting ... where does that information come from?

[Keith Laban]

interesting ... where does that information come from?

http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

[400d]

Ah ahahaha can we start making fun of people's website using the page rank system?!