Ah yes the million dollar question – how to increase and accelerate web traffic to your blog or website?  I am here to simply share with you some web traffic tips/tricks and maybe new ideas that have worked for us and can certainly work for you too.

Back in 2009 when we first launched Cole Joseph Photography we had a basic blog from blogger.com and a flash based website through photobiz.com  As we started getting more and more business and posting more on our blog it quickly became apparent that our blog was getting much more traffic than our “prettier” looking flash based website.  Because of this, we have since ditched the Showit site for an integrated blogsite.  (Read all about that fiasco here…)

This post is primarily to give insight about our own results and share some tips or tricks with you all so all of you can potentially utilize ways to drive more traffic to your site and also have more targeted traffic that will ultimately result in more leads and business for your company.

1. Post More!!! – This is probably the most valuable tip (and simplest) that I can share with you all.  As soon as we went live with our business I vowed that I would blog virtually every single that we shoot.  I wanted to do this because first and foremost I wanted to have complete transparency with any prospective clients, but the true value in posting a bunch is: You are showing that your busy and in demand & your posts are showing up in Google searches more which is going to drive the web traffic to you.

2. Use Descriptive Titles & Keywords – To expand off of tip #1 about simply posting more often, having targeted keywords and titles are the true key to boosting your blog traffic.  Google and other major search engines use these keywords and titles to index your blog.  This way you can get random web traffic to your site you’d otherwise not have, and in the case of a wedding photography business this can be absolutely huge.  We get a ton of leads this way when prospective brides are making searches on Google like: Weddings at The Omni Hotel San Diego or San Diego Wedding Photographers.

3. Use & Integrate Social Networking Sites – Make it easy for viewers to share your photos and posts to the social networking universe. Facebook, Twitter and even Pinterest can be huge platforms for spreading the word about your blog.  Try and cross integrate as much as you can too by having widgets on your blog that show these social media outlets and encourage “sharing”.  For example – we have on our blog the ability for guests to leave comments on the blog post, via being logged in as a Facebook user – by making this easy for the user it lets them comment easier and the benefit for you is there comment just posted on their own Facebook page for all of their friends to see.  As for Pinterest, make it easy for them to “pin” your images, one of our wedding images got “pinned” and within 25 minutes already had over 125 “repins”…and the best part is its “pinned” from your blog so anyone can with one click get right back to your blog and see your other work.

A couple great free WordPress plugins that we use are – Facebook Social Plugin & Pinterest Pin It Button.  Note that plugins do change constantly so you may have to research a little and find a more recent version.

4. Good Content – To have sustainable and good web traffic you need to make sure you aren’t just posting often and using good titles to help with SEO but also actually have good content.  For the case of the blog I am not only talking about the photos, but ALSO the words that accompany the photos.  People want to be entertained or intrigued, so don’t bore them.  Tell them about the wedding day or about the couple or about yourself from time to time by writing a personal blog post.  This will get your regular viewers to keep coming back but it will also encourage them to share the post or blog with their friends.

5. Title Your Images – Back to the importance of SEO – want to really get your site seen?  Add titles to your images and change the useless jpg titles like: DSC_6158.jpg to something like – La Jolla Hilton Wedding Photography_01.jpg and while your at it also ad an “alt title” as well,  this will help showcase your images in areas like Google “Images”.

6. Look Professional – Having killer content is a must have but in today’s super competitive environment having a good looking website is extremely important as well.  Luckily for everyone there are some pretty good solutions for us photographers out there who are not web designers but photographers.  We have been using ProPhotoBlogs  (save some money off of ProPhoto with my code: CHUM6844) and have been very happy with the ease of use and customer service when needed.  An easy way to make your blog go from boring and plain to a nice professional look without totally breaking the bank.

7.  Use Tags – Always make sure to add tags to your post, you can choose to have them shown on the post or not but either way they will only help the search engines find your site and increase your ranking.  What are tags?  Simply keywords that relate to your post.  Things like: San Diego Wedding Photography, San Diego Westin Hotel Weddings, Southern California Wedding Photographer etc…

8. Links! – Links in a blog post are not only great for the user and blog reader by making it easy for them but they are great for the search engines too!  So don’t be afraid of adding links.

I hope you enjoyed some of these tips on how to increase web traffic to your blog site.  I’ll admit not all of it is earth shattering news but its good to reinforce these ideas and when doing all these things together you will without a doubt drive more targeted web traffic to your site and starting seeing more and more referrals coming in, and that is what we want for you!

Want to talk more biz?  Head over here for all of my photography marketing & business tips!

Ciao for now!
Cole