# Website Advice Please -FOLLOW UP...



## tonyz (Oct 14, 2014)

Hi there
I currently have been using Zenfolio for my website the last few years although I am pretty unhappy with the lack of images that show up in a Google image search.

I'm thinking to move over to a Wordpress (.org) site to hopefully have more success. Am I starting something too complicated - I know nothing about html! 

Does anyone here use a Wordpress site for their own portfolio or to sell images online? Any recommendations on themes you use or any tips on how best to do this and if you sell your work through your site? 

I would love to have a look at your sites if anyone would like to post their links if using Wordpress - really just to see what is possible?

Any help appreciated!

Many thanks

Tony


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## jepabst (Oct 14, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*



tonyz said:


> Hi there
> I currently have been using Zenfolio for my website the last few years although I am pretty unhappy with the lack of images that show up in a Google image search.
> 
> I'm thinking to move over to a Wordpress (.org) site to hopefully have more success. Am I starting something too complicated - I know nothing about html!
> ...


Hey Tony, I've never used Zenfolio so I can't speak directly to any shortcomings it might have. I have a few thoughts though. If the ONLY reason you want to switch is to hopefully have more of your photos show up in google image search, I would advise against that. Wordpress is amazing, but the learning curve is kind of steep. It's nowhere near as simple as smugmug - which I think is likely to be similar to Zenfolio - where you upload images, choose templates and voila (I know it's not quite that simple). There are templates, but you will be frustrated for 10-20 hours with the non-intuitive nature of setting up a wordpress site from scratch. Youtube tutorials were a huge resource for me. Self taught - so it is doable. 

Switching to wordpress, you should have a bigger need - like the desire to also start a blog, have a particular look in mind, like the plugins, page pops, custom contact forms, sliders ect... if you don't need all those features and the only real feature you want are those images in search, I'd suggest just uploading images to Google+ ... those images often show up in search. 

For what it's worth; I have done all my own website and web design in Wordpress, and you can see my website at http://www.pabstphoto.com ---


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## tonyz (Oct 14, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

Hi Josh

Thanks so much for your reply and you have a fantastic site - really informative stuff in there and bookmarked!

I have done a quick trial with Smugmug and it is very similar to Zenfolio - they are both great ways to sell prints but getting people the site is the tricky part I believe. There doesnt seem to be a similar in Wrodpress that I can see.
But it would seem that any work done to get these sites found by Goolge commits you to stay with these guys (or else have to start again) which is why I was thinking Wordpress would be the way to go - like you suggest - get a blog going and really have a focal point to my photography as a business rather than just an online gallery that noone seems to see...

Can I ask - did you have a lot of html to change to get your site to where it is and other than maintaining the articles etc, is there continual 'coding' needed?

Once again many thanks

Tony


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## jepabst (Oct 15, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

There is not a LOT of coding required if you are satisfied with the template you find. However, event getting your wordpress site to look like the template requires a fair learning curve and could take a couple weeks before you are happy. I suggest visitng a site like themeforest.com and looking through the available templates. I suggest starting a document and saving your favorites. I spent WEEKS searching. It's tough. You really need to think a lot about what you want your site to do and how you want it to look. What is your navigation. Think of your web. Is your navi at the top or on the left - or neither. Is mobile as important as desktop? How does each of the themes you've selected work on the a phone, tablet ect... Perhaps think of a rating system that's important to you. 

1-5 How does the blog look
1-5 how does a gallery look
1-5 how does it display on mobile
1-5 how does it look on ipad
1-5 what's the contact page like
1-5 what's the pricing page like
1-5 fonts/colors/style
1-5 how does the navigation/site use, easy

ect... you get the idea... spend a lot of time up front choosing a theme - because you don't want to redo it. Wordpress is great, but it takes time. 

Measure twice, cut once.


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## tonyz (Oct 15, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

Really valuable advice Josh - I really appreciate that.

Thanks


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## keithcooper (Oct 16, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

Just (last month) put together a new site, specifically to cover aspects of our architectural photography business, and decided to use WP for the whole site.

http://architecture-photos.co.uk

Took about a month (part time) to sort out - much of which was sorting out the photos (it use WP4 and the Elision theme). Working through design ideas (on paper) and looking at what you could do with different templates took quite a while before even touching any development.

It's very different from our main commercial site, which I suppose is probably better known here for its rumour pages (actually only a tiny part of the site, dating from 2004 ;-) 

The new one is much more visual, works on more devices and based partly on talking to clients about what they would like to see when looking at photographers' sites. It's also rumour and advert free ;-)


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## RobertG. (Oct 17, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

Hi Tony,
I started a Wordpress website myself in August. I had not worked on any website since a couple of years and never worked with WP before, so the learning curve was quite steep in the beginning. Choosing a theme takes really a lot of time and the same can be said about adapting it later on. That's nothing you can do in 10 or 15 hours. The good thing about Wordpress is that there are endless possibilities to alter the appearance of your website and the themes are quite helpful. 
Quite a lot of minor things like contact forms, calendars, ecommerce, fonts, galleries etc. can be added by plugins. The plugins themselves can be customized, if needed. My webiste http://www.robertgallphotography.com uses the Photocrati theme and already about a dozen plugins, most of them working in the background. Some of the plugins were modified even in their source code, e.g. the Royal Slider in the gallery showing a transparent background. But the whole website is still a work in progress. Currently I'm still working on the design and a proper grid overview for the gallery. After 3 months and a couple of dozen hours I'm maybe half way through...

Kind regards, 
Robert


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## MrFotoFool (Oct 19, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

So many thousands (millions) of photos are being uploaded these days that I do not think there is any way to guarantee your photos show up in a search. I am not sure a different website format would help (but I am not expert and would be interested on hearing stories from others who have switched).

One of the things I read in articles on the subject is that one factor to increase your ranking is the number of verifiable external links you have to your site. In other words, the more legitimate websites that have a link to your site, the higher you will be ranked in a search.


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## preppyak (Oct 20, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*



MrFotoFool said:


> So many thousands (millions) of photos are being uploaded these days that I do not think there is any way to guarantee your photos show up in a search. I am not sure a different website format would help (but I am not expert and would be interested on hearing stories from others who have switched).
> 
> One of the things I read in articles on the subject is that one factor to increase your ranking is the number of verifiable external links you have to your site. In other words, the more legitimate websites that have a link to your site, the higher you will be ranked in a search.


Yep, the reason you arent showing up high on sites is that, in the abstract, you aren't providing value to the web. Looking at your site, your work is good, but, its just a collection of photos.

Things that show up atop search rankings are things that other people link to a lot. Which makes sense, you want popular items that a lot of people link to to show up high in the rankings. Whether you have a wordpress site or zenfolio, if people arent consistently showcasing your work, you wont show up early in search results. Especially doing work in NYC, that's a high bar to clear.

The move to Wordpress would be worth your time if you were also going to start blogging and providing content that people would want (tutorials, travel advice, etc). If its just a different spot for your portfolio and print sales, you'll be wasting time and money. Truth is, its a TON of work to show up high in search results. It takes years of work, lots of networking with other sites, and some luck.


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## tonyz (Oct 20, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

Thanks for all of your replies and Keith and Robert also for your insight and info!

I understand getting to the top of the Google search takes serious work and links etc - My real issue with Zenfolio and checking some other sites like Squarespace for example was that when you type in the title of the photograph and the photographers name into a Google image search - often the image will not show up at all..!

For example - in my own Zenfolio site - only the gallery 'title' images would show up but none of the contents of the galleries themselves!

Hopefully this will prove better using Wordpress? I'll obviously update this thread with my results as (hopefully) they appear!


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## RobertG. (Oct 20, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

Tony, the problem you described with Google's image search has something to do how you publish your photos. I tried to find out what the exact file name of your pictures is but failed. It seems to be either some cryptic alpha-numeric code or a strange .png file. Hard to tell... It's the same for Google. It searches for descritions of the motif but can't anlysis yet what the image shows.
What will help is adding some proper discription in the ALT tag and name the files with real words (e.g. Istanblue_blue_mosque.jpg). For more information see this link: http://www.shopify.com/blog/7412852-10-must-know-image-optimization-tips. Saving all pictutres in the same folder on the server or in easy to find folders (not some generic endless number), will help also. 

When I type my name and the name of one of my motifs into the google image search, my photo is the first or second thumbnail it shows, although some where uploaded just a few days ago. A few other photos of my website are loaded among the first ten photos, too. So image SEO really works. But I forgot to give one image a proper title, ALT text and description and as a consequence google does not show it at all in the image search, although it was uploaded to my website 2 months ago. 

With Wordpress it is very easy to describe your photos in a search engine friendly way. But it should not be the only reason to change. 

Best regards, Robert


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## Tabor Warren Photography (Oct 20, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

Hey Tony,

I use Wordpress and Smugmug separately with good success.

When you visit my main website; http://photosbytabor.com, you can see the different tabs I've added to the navigation bar as well as one that says "gallery site", that tab, as well as the ones below go straight to my Smugmug page and it is an easy way for friends/family to find the galleries they are looking for as well as new clients to view examples of our work.

I too knew very little regarding html, however, I have learned a little at a time over the years and am getting pretty savvy. Also, I optimize ALL of my photos for Google, save them as key terms in PS. Export via the "Save for web" option reduce size, quality (slightly), upload into Wordpress, and SEO them extensively once they're there. It takes some dedication, but it is hard to do an image search in Google for anything related to what we do without at least one if not a dozen or so of my photos instantly popping up.

***edit to add: I use ePhoto, a theme created by a company called Elegant Themes. I also pay for hosting via Host Gator, whom I'm not thrilled with, however, I like them enough to at least recommend checking them out.***

I hope this helps!

Cheers,
-Tabor


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## keithcooper (Oct 20, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

The advice on promotion here is worth following through, but do check (multiple sources) for what works best and what's frowned upon for SEO in 2014

What worked for the Northlight Images site in 2004, would not be best in 2014, so I'm in some respects having to learn again best practices for architecturephotos.co.uk Learn to make use of various free analytics software (Google is the most obvious, but don't forget Bing)

Read the Google webmaster guidelines and design your site for your audience, not for yourself, or what you think your audience should know, rather than what they want to know.

During the design phase for the new site, Karen (wife and director of marketing at Northlight) and I waded though an awful lot of supposedly professional photographers' web sites. Apart from realising how many still think that pictures are all they really need, many almost treated the business as an aside, and made no effort to say what the benefits to me as a potential client were. No answers to the 'What's in it for me' question...

Remember too that little and often works better than a yearly 'promo effort', and whatever you do, don't buy any SEO services without an awful lot of research and examples of their work in a similar business area. As a rule of thumb, anyone who contacts you unsolicited by mail or phone, should be avoided at all costs.


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## tonyz (Dec 27, 2014)

*Re: Website Advice Please*

Hi there - its been some time since I posted and I thought I would give a little follow on in case anyone else was reading this or wondered what happened....

I took heed of all the advice kindly given and decided to try my luck with a Wordpress.org website. 

Its all finally up and running although is a work in progress at the moment - I haven't got the shopping cart going yet and still learning my way around things but the bulk of the pictures are up and key-worded and the sitemap has been submitted so hopefully it will find its way into the the mighty pool of photography websites listed on Google!

I guess I just really wanted to say thanks again to those that generously offered their support.

Please feel free to come and have a look - any feedback or comments would be greatly appreciated!

Best wishes and Happy New Year in advance!

antonyz.com


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## Mr Bean (Dec 30, 2014)

Nice site tonyz. Simple and clean. Out of interest which Wordpress theme did you select?


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Dec 30, 2014)

Web site rankings are based on the number of people who search for it, who add links to it in their sites, paid advertising, lots of factors.

Very popular web sites like CR rank pretty high because of the many thousands of visitors a day. There are 3417 online today so far, and there have been 10,000. 

You can't hope to sustain that many visitors unless the subject is appealing to a lot of people.


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## RobertG. (Dec 31, 2014)

Mr Bean said:


> Nice site tonyz. Simple and clean. Out of interest which Wordpress theme did you select?



He uses the theme "Devision". You can find it here: http://billykids-lab.net/division/  and here http://themeforest.net/item/division-fullscreen-portfolio-photography-theme/5030589.


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## tonyz (Jan 1, 2015)

Happy new year!

Thanks Mr Bean and others

Yeah - its Division from Billy Kids as Robert says - Can't recommend this guy/theme enough - he answers any questions straightaway and haven't had any significant issues (fingers crossed) at all.

Mt S - I completely understand that - This is a very large forum that is publicised and linked to by many other websites itself- but a blog is certainly helpful to potentially help build up any semblance of a regular 'audience'. That said - a website is vital and you have to start somewhere!


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## jepabst (Jan 5, 2015)

tonyz is right; having a blog and lots of readership is a great way to attract more viewers and readers. It's unlikely that the people who are reading the blog are would-be customers, but it doesn't matter. At the end of the day, the blog is driving traffic and over time - hopefully - people are linking to blog pages (these are deep links) and Google would give more credibility to your home page /base URL. I keep a *photo blog* of tips and tricks and business elements. In less than one year I was able to get my *wedding photography* page up to page 1-2 on Google in my super competitive Chicago market.


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## tonyz (Jan 5, 2015)

Jepabst - I wanted to say your site looks great and after your original post last year I certainly checked it out and book-marked to keep coming back - As you say - photography tips aren't probably going to entice customers but I found myself reading them all and appreciating the advice.

Aren't these the things that google wants on the internet - content that people want to read?


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## LiameVans (Jun 23, 2016)

As you have such a problem yet, I can suggest you one new solution, that'll be http://getsocio.com


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