• New website feeling the pain…Actually not really

• 19 September 2011 by Matt Edwards 0 Comments

After much consideration I decided my previous flash based website, which I loved, had to go. Its time to get with the times and add a site with the ability to blog and generally include more quality content.

Another important reason for deciding to spend some time on my site is search engine optimisation (SEO). I had been looking at the Google results (other browsers are available) for wedding photographers in my area as was not very reassured. For generalised searches I was not even appearing, or at least not before I had given up clicking to the next page of results. Flash sites are not good for SEO as the processes used by search engines to rank pages look for text content, and have limited support for looking inside flash pages. This has improved and may improve more in the future, but another worrying discovery was that recent research suggests that 33% of people are now accessing the web from mobile devices, and these do not support flash. That’s a third of web users not able to view your page.

As a new business I am concious of driving potential customers to my site and my research is suggesting that traditional forms of marketing for wedding photography, such as wedding fairs, are not returning the results they used to. That’s a topic outside of this blog entry but it helps highlight the fact that the most common way for people to find services now is the good old Google search. It is the first place I go when I am looking for something new. My research is also suggesting that people are looking for more from the internet now and that my site should provide content that not only attracts new customers but also helps build word of mouth within my target sector, and as we all know for wedding photography, there is nothing better than a business largely built of word of mouth. Blog pages are a great way to add this additional content and is very good for helping with SEO.

So I have moved away from my flash template site and am now working with a wordpress theme to bring my new pages to life. It is a bit of a steep learning curve to say the least as it is a product I have never worked with before. But a Google search on wordpress themes gave me a good number of themes that I felt I could work with. I already had a hosting package with fasthosts in the UK and within an hour I had the bones of a site I could work with. I have had a few frustrations. The initial theme has a strange error which was preventing the homepage gallery from loading, and despite the best efforts of support guys at fasthosts (who I would say have been very good so far) we have not go to the bottom of it. Out of impatience I downloaded a different theme which I actually now prefer, I was up and running in no time.

I now have a lot to learn about SEO and how to structure my content to give me the best results. It seems it is a little bit of a black art, but I now have a website that gives me the best possible platform to get those results. I am quite IT savvy and despite a couple of frustrations have found the process quite easy. If you have no technical knowledge then using this route may be more challenging than the usual flash templates sites favoured by photographers, such as Click Pic, Wix and others. However Fasthosts make the process pretty straight forward and their support is excellent. I may not get a handle on the mysteries of SEO and at that point may need to get in professional help. But I am now using one of the fastest growing platforms for web content and so there are a host of companies offering services in this area, and as the site itself is done, my costs in going to these professionals will be much reduced. And the costs to date, £95 + vat for a years hosting, $60 for 2 wordpress themes and a bit of my time. Not bad really.

My site is now a work in progress and I expect it to develop organically over time as my work develops and in response to my customers needs. With that in mind if you have any feedback or would like to know about the process, then please feel free to contact me here.

Matt

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