Webmaster after help

phillip ingle;226534 wrote: Hi all I 'm looking for feedback on my site and ideas on how to improve it and promote it better on search engines any comments welcome the site is philinglephotography.co.uk

Hi Phil,

Regarding your other thread about deleting the files:

Your web host should make backups of your site, you could ask them to restore your site before you deleted the files (if it wasn't that long ago that you deleted them).

With regards to this thread:

I'm going to be blunt (you may not like it but I think it's for the best) I think you should scrap your site and start from scratch.

The reason I say this is that like you said it's a competitive market, I think you have fantastic photography skills but that doesn't matter if people leave your site after the home page loads. You need a website that reflects the high standards of your photography skills.

The way I see it you have 3 options:

1) Get a web designer to create you one, you could get a good site designed from around £150 - this is certainly the quickest and most professional solution. Indeed it's costly but the investment would be well worth it and would pay dividends somewhere down the line.

2) Use a website template, you could search for a free template or purchase one for £30-80. The down side of this is that you'll have to learn some basic html to add the content - though you could come here for help.

3) Use a site builder, most hosts provide website builders for free, you'd be able to choose a template from their selection and add the content from the admin selection. It's a little easier to add the content compared to a template but the quality of designs are usually not as good.

I would really hate to see you spend your time or money marketing your current website, because I don't think you're website does your photography skills any justice. I do hope you take my words as productive criticism and not as an insult.

All that being said on the marketing front:

I think it would be a good idea to start locally place an ad in your local newspaper with a link to your site, too many (in fact most) people neglect their local community; they seem to think that because their site is online so should their marketing. That fact of the matter is that businesses in their infancy will get more and quicker exposure locally than they will from online marketing.

Search engine optimisation and online marketing is important even from the start, but it is a long term root to market and you won’t get results over night. Having said that you could start to write articles on photography to get some quality links to your site. You could write about different types of camera, lenses ect... You could also participate in online communities where your audience, or part of your audience, hang out (possibly wedding forums...). Marketing whether it is online or offline is simply about getting your name and brand out their, think of as many different ways as possible to achieve this, try them all, if one is successful keep doing it if it isn't you've learned your lesson don't do it again.

If you have any questions please reply or PM me and I’ll do my best to help.

Again I apologise if the criticism seems a little harsh, but I do have your best interest at mind, I also want to apologise for the length of this post as I have gone on quite a bit.

Regards, Steve