new website

www.peterjwood-photography.co.uk

Would love some feedback and any ideas you guys have on getting joe public through the door.

i still have a lot of work to do building my portfolio and adding new pages like prices, special offers and that sort of thing.
I'm not 100% sure if i will put my prices on my site as it might get the phone ringing if i don't.

I would also love some ideas on how to get found on search engines, seem a whole lot harder than i thought it would be.

I suppose some info on myself and my direction in photography will help you to help me

at the moment im doing portraits, baby and todler groups and functions part time. I'm really busy at weekends but am finding i don't quite have enough work to go full time.

I'm looking to do any photography that comes my way, but i'm not sure if this could make me seem desperate, or enthusiastic.

I'm going to try and get on the local wedding scene next year, although i'v done a few regestry office weddings my confidence just is'nt there yet.

any advice on this would be great.

sent you a PM

It aids readability if you put a space after each command and full stop
(ie. Portraits, Wedding, Events)
Looks nice

I've had a Photium site for quite a while... and have sold zippo, nada, zero through it Everyone and their dog are advertising themselves as photographers, and how can someone tell what separates them all??
Punters like to see images for real ...and the website is helpful for those that have already got one or two of your images.

The only success I've had is by taking some mounted, packaged prints to small events and selling them there Only there can they see how well you really can take/print/present

Matt

In addition to Matts's comments on the punctuation you also have a small i where you should have a capital - "anything i can help".

As for getting attention, as Matt says everyone thinks they are a photographer nowadays. Maybe put a small ad in the local papers/freebies, giving your website address as well.
Try getting a stand at local fairs/Christmas Markets etc and show you work "in the flesh".

I can't claim to have any expertise at all but you seem to have a number of spelling errors on the site. "photo shoot's" should not have the apostrophe, chopping and changing with upper or lower case (Studio, then studio), "featherd", "priceing". Just a few I noticed, I'd be sure your grammar and spelling is 100% as it puts some people right off. On the first page of the site the pictures seem to rotate. I'd be more selective about which photo's you rotate there, pick just your absolute best ones. When I loaded the site the first picture I saw was of a boy outside that to be honest looked like a snapshot so didn't leap out at me. I can see where the other comments are coming from, I'd imagine once you have your foot in the door with places like schools you'd be able to build up a customer base. It must be a pretty competitive market. I'm not sure I can truly comment on the pics themselves as I take my own so might be more picky than your average punter. My personal feeling was you don't have very many shots on there that are earth shattering, although most are better than I could have taken

Spelling mistakes aside, I like your layout, Peter. Clean and relatively fast (speed tested on a Hotel Wireless Network, will check again when home).

A big thanks to everyone so far, this is exctly what i needed to finally get ny site up to a state that I'm happy with. alltough it may take a day or two atleast i know where to start.

I may even look for some time to shoot somthing other than payed work, unfortunately this won't be until after christmas.

Thanks again and please don't worry about offending me I don't think some of the work there is good enough myself but it will have to do with the time i have

so keep it coming i can take it

The good news is that your site looks fairly nice and uses well-formed, standards compliant HTML. However, you mention you have had little traffic from search engines which is unsurprising since you have done little in the way of search engine optimisation (SEO).

As such there is plenty of low-hanging fruit that will considerably lift your chances of driving visitors from search engines but it is still a going to be a hard slog.

In general the problem is that your fledgling business and the presentation thereof is based on images, whereas search engines are designed to process text; your basic SEO issue is you need much more of that.

Google have very helpfully just produced a document that describes in broad terms the areas you should focus on; read this very carefully:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.p...

It is nevertheless critical to emphasise that no matter how many page names, jpeg file names and alt property tags you rename, none of this will carry much weight if these hopefully keyword laden nuggets do not appear elsewhere within the body of your web copy.

Therefore depending on how much text you feel comfortable in producing for each of your engagement types, you might consider splitting these into two pages, for example portraitPhotography.htm (nb: not portfolioXYZ.htm) containing lots of copy plus a few choice image examples and portraitPhotographyPortfolio.htm with a broader selection.

However, I think the area with the best scope for increasing your SEO reach is targeting far more regional related keywords. For example, looking at a map I am unsure whether you are North or East Devon, but you should use whichever is appropriate, what about Exmoor, and in particular other regional names commonly in use in your area (these are what your prospective customers are likely to be searching for).

To reinforce these I would try to author 2 new pages; a bio/about page laden with regional references and assignment types, and a sort of CV/work undertaken page, with headings using h2 tags containing type of work and location if this looks reasonably diverse. The former page will also allow you to drop your name from the other pages’ title tags thereby freeing up valuable real estate for more keywords.

Once you are satisfied with your website makeover you should prepare a sitemap as directed by google, then apply for a listing with the open directory project: http://www.dmoz.org/ This is picked up by numerous third party directories and will help to lend weight to you search engine rankings.

Good luck!

Thanks Shakey that will give me something to keep me out of trouble.
I think I will need to enlist some help with grammar and ways of wording things. generally I steer clear of writing these days and it hasn't done me any favours
Peter