I'm really baffled about traffic. I use Google to give me analytics. No matter what I do it seems the only people who seem to visit me are relatives, and I almost have to beg them to visit. I can understand that for a few months, but I am coming up on my annual renewal and I am rarely getting a visit from anyone.

Naturally I would like to sell some of the images, but I don't think that is very possible without getting visitors.

Does anyone have any keys to the kingdom? I don't think my photos are really that bad.

Sorry about the downer on the 1st post, I should probably spend more time in the forum.

Cheers,

Jim Adams

www.jgadamsphotogallery.com

www.jgadams.com

Hi Jim,

There are lots of reasons why you may not be getting any traffic to your site, is mostly going to be down to its visability on the internet.

Even if your imagery is poor (which I dont think it is), you would normally be receiving visits to your site even if they never return.

I did a quick search and can see hardly any sites linking to your website, you need to change this for starters.  I would suggest adding signatures to any forums you use and submitting the site to all relevant search engines.

I have myself received over 1500 hits from a single (rather inflamatory) post on a gaming forum some time ago, it really does make a difference.

Facebook and other social networking sites are also great for getting your name out there, these account for about 80% of my traffic currently, so are well worth the effort even if you dont like social networking.

key tagging your images is also very important, but as someone still setting up my seo on zenfolio and cannot really give you feedback on how effective it is on zenfolio yet, but you should be able to type words relating to your images and have the search engines finding them.  I used to have first page rankings on google images for pretty much all of my imagery about 18 months ago then switched to clickpic and lost all rankings and am yet to drag them back.

regular content updates and improvements are also essential, add content over time not all in one go.  not sure how this helps but it does increase hits to your site especially if you are linking back to your website everywhere you go online.

you could also look at buying traffic to your site, it can help boost your rankings somewhat though its not going to guarantee you sales.

hope some of this helps

Henry

 Thanks for the advice. The forum thing really worked, although I don't get much traffic in return my hits have gone way up.

Regular updates is not too difficult. I'm retired, although my family says if I put as much effort into my old job as I do into photography I would have been very rich. Oh, well.

Tagging, good idea, but so tedious. I am trying to do a better job of all new images and backtrack 10 or 12 a day. Someday they will all get tagged. I still don't quite understand how that works in Zenfolio. It certainly does not carry through to search engines and even within Zenfolio I find it difficult to find my images on the 1st or 2nd page unless I use a very exact search.

Oh well, things are getting better and I truly appreciate the help.

I can attest through Google Analytics that tagging really does pay off.  A lot of hits come from search engines finding those keywords, and it takes some time for the search engines to find these.

Patience is a big key as well.  This is a tough economy for photographers, and unless you were hired to take pictures of a wedding, graduation, etc., you shouldn't expect to sell "fine art"-type prints off the internet right away.  It took me more than six months before I finally sold something to a stranger who happened upon my website.  And as previously mentioned, regular updates mean more photographs, and if they're tagged, will result in more traffic and more chances to sell.

There are a lot of different marketing strategies (social sites, postcards, local shops/businesses), but it does take some work.  Unfortunately, we can't just upload our photographs and then wait for the traffic and money to roll in.  I wish it was that easy.  I would recommend giving it another year and get aggressive!  You have some great photos and you just need to get people there.

 Patience is not one of those virtues that I have been blessed with, although working with some of the stock companies I am learning.

You're right, I need to work at the trade, not just the craft.

Thanks for taking the time to provide your valuable insights and thanks for the complement on the photos.

Don't feel bad, I am in the same boat.   

I think I had (according to Google) a grand total of 17 visitors for the whole month of Nov !!   

My photos are not the best, and I can understand if no one was buying, but expected to at least get more search related visitors even if they thought my photos sucked.  On the positive side the visitors do spend some time browsing the site, but with so few its not worth the expense and time of keeping the site running. Again, my intent is not to get lots of random sales or expect 1000's of hits, but 17 for a whole month???

Yes, I have extensively keyworded everything out the kazoo. Titled pictures, and done the "usual" stuff to raise the SEO.  I submitted the site to DMOZ, Google, Yahoo, etc...  

I try to attach to forums when I have time, and this will raise the count for a few days, but as soon as the post is buried so go the counts.   

I feel your pain.....  I didn't expect a miracle with Zenfolio, but thought it would be better than this. I have built several small scale websites for some local charities that I didn't even publicize, and they rack up some respectable hit rates just from random visitors.

Would appreciate any feedback. Am I doing something wrong from a SEO standpoint?