OT – Please pull my website apart and generally criticise my work.

[weary-lol] I just put it there tyke! [/weary-lol]. I did ask for this didn’t I? 😉 Off out for the rest of the day now. Thanks very much to all who have posted. Please feel free to continue and I’ll drop in later.

images don’t scale so they get lost on a big monitor, would be better if they filled the screen.
do people really read the ‘about me’ “i picked up a camera age 5” guff?
maybe it’s just me but i would prefer to look at images and a concise pricing structure and not somebodies life story.

Mr Smith – I’m constrained by the template of the site provider to 960 px sized images – most of my would-be clients are likely to be browsing on a laptop or pad, so I’m happy enough with the size. According to my stats, hardly anyone stays on the ‘About’ page for more than 30 seconds, but it is a good place to drop keywords.

Nice!

Does what it says on the tin. A typical photography website on the better side.

The site is really rather good and you have done most of the obvious SEO stuff already. If i google ‘wedding photographer castle’ you are on the first page. You are now on to the smaller stuff but every little counts in this game:

1. Decide if you want to use the www or not and stick with it. The link you gave us doesn’t use it, the link I found on the web does. Don’t diluted yer ‘juice’

2. You have wedding photographer repeated too many times on your home page header. You may get penalized for that.

3. Most of your anchor text is good but a couple of place say something like ‘more of my photos here’ where the hyperlink is on the word here. Always make the link descriptive.

4. Integrate your blog if you can or use use a subdomain rather than ‘blogspot’. You will be gaining very little from your blog at the moment. E.g. Try to set up blog.youphotosite.com.

5. The photos on your blog are actually hosted on your blog. It is MUCH better to host them on your photo site and then embed them from there on your blog. That way you pass some of the ‘juice’ from your blog to the photo site. You don’t need to do that if you can rename the blog though.

6. I would be tempted to put a footer with your address and phone number on every page to help geolocate you. Google cares about localized search for this sort of thing.

Before you start though set up google analytics to get an idea of how many people come to you via a web search. Then you will be able to see if you are getting traffic but people aren’t booking or if you just aren’t getting the traffic.

Good luck with this. the only person I know who did wedding photography for a living used to swear by paying for google ads but to do that you will need to spend money which means putting up your prices 🙁

I know exactly the image you mean in the home page slideshow and have agonised about it myself – it IS slightly soft, but for me, it carries the emotion of the moment well, so despite being less than perfect technically, I’ve left it in

I think you underestimate people’s ability to recognise a ‘good’ photograph. OK, the subjects describe an easily recognised emotional scenario; but the complete image is shoddy. Don’t you have a better example in your portfolio? If not: why not? These images are going to be assumed by potential customers to be your best, otherwise why would you pick them to represent your services/product?

they also aren’t my target market

Especially considering that your business is struggling, can you afford to limit your target market? Why not just target people who are getting married? Do older people not typically have a larger disposable income? They probably also have two sets of children of marrying age – think of the referrals!!

I know I don’t need to tell you this, but you’re working in a highly competitive field, and getting more competitive every year as ‘Bob’s best mate has a DSLR you know? He’ll do it for a hundred quid…’ I suspect that much of your business is going to be derived from referrals (for example). Do you advertise in any way at the weddings you attend? Apart from your photos, what do you do to increase the likelihood that customers will pass your details on? Do you give them business cards or some kind of analogue copy that they can hand over or forward to friends/relatives? Could you give them some sort of pack that has smaller, printed versions of a selection of images, with your business details subtely adorning the pages! Even just a couple of these little pass-on items could get you one extra referral from each job.

Where is your presence in the referral system? There are several referral programs for local and national photographers, including this[/url] randomly plucked from Google. They also give you as an individual an opportunity to survey/steal ideas the competition…

One small thing – swap a few of the exclamation marks for full stops – overdoing exclamations cheapens the overall tone and basically just reads badly. I only looked at the Why Us? page.

oh, while we’re at it, the words ‘Emerson Photography’ at the top of your page are actually in the background image so while you and I can see it, Google can’t. Yes, you have it at the bottom of the page but that isn’t visible until people scroll down. You get more points for having your name ‘above the fold’

Try giving your background image a real name instead of ‘793_444886344d027a613005a.jpg.jpg’

Give your background image some ‘alt’ text such as ‘Emerson Photography’

Not enough ‘H1’ tags. Google uses those to work out the important text on a page (maybe) – ie. don’t just bold text to make a new heading, use and H1

ok, yes I’m just wasting time until I have to go pick up my daughter.

For gawd sake lose that no right click malarky. It’s not big and it’s not clever. It’s annoying me and I’m just looking to help you. As a customer I might want to open the gallery up in a new tab at the same time as looking at the prices. Hey, so someone uses a photo of yours. The right click doesn’t stop them anyway. And I can’t get to hairy dog site either without leaving your site (i.e. customers leaving your site..).

Yep, loose the furry hat. Don’t necessarily have to have a suit and tie kinda picture but I think it comes across slightly ‘crazy’ – will he or won’t he turn up for my wedding.

Daft point – if you’re hoping for Newcastle weddings potentially maybe less Sunderland Stadium of Light photos – could be putting the poor diddums geordies off, they’re not that bright. 😛

Consider getting a pause (even if just hovering over the image) on the slideshow – let people see each image rather than having to wait for it to come round again. Just imagine some bride getting the groom to look up from the footy to see a nice photo on your site, and it’s gone.

Don’t use the title as your keyword spamming tool – it should be something like “Top quality wedding photography with Emerson Photography” or something. I’d suggest also putting “Emerson Phographers – ” as the first text on all your titles. Meta name description probabaly needs a makeover too.

Put a few more uses of the word ‘wedding’ but be subtle. Maybe “I’m Jamie Emerson, a wedding and portrait photographer based in Houghton-Le-Spring and covering weddings in the whole of the North East, including Sunderland, Durham, Newcastle and surrounds. I will also travel throughout the UK if required. “. You have the word wedding just once on your landing page. Check out http://www.takingthepic.co.uk/ (taken at random) – Google robots are more confident this is a wedding photographers because it mentions weddings a lot more. Though don’t go over the top!

I’d also lose the “please look at my ‘why I’m good page'” aka Why Choose Emerson Photography off the intro text and I’d be tempted to move the first paragraph from your ‘why us?’ page onto the homepage instead. You need a bit more density of wrding on the homepage for the search engines to pick up on and decide what you are about. Alas, photos are nice but Google et all can’t see them and know you are a wedding snapper.

On your about page the last line paragraph caught my eye – just the words ‘my hobby’, I’d either hide it more in the wording or maybe flip it round to say “professional photography is still my hobby…” or those kinda lines.

And I know ‘I enjoy shooting…’ means taking pictures but maybe a different phrase?!

Personally, I’d be tempted to combine the about us and why me pages as they are doing the same job. Maybe you want to change ‘about me’ to ‘about you’ and do some slushy prose about how you look after the bride and groom, and how special their day is blah blah blah.

Your main selling point is not even on the navigation – Gallery link needs to be on your main nav. I’d probably go to the gallery first as a punter rather than find out you like guitars and ride bikes.

And I don’t think it’s ‘properly insured professional photographer’, maybe ‘fully insured’?

Despite what I said above, it’s a nice site. Don’t think I’d be paying megabucks to SEO experts (they’re rarely that). Skim some of the relevant points people have said here and it’ll be slicker. 😀

Get the keyword density up a bit and it might help the google rankings.

And if you can, it might be worth getting some free site analytics – Google Analytics is free and fairly simple to plug it. It will give you some stats on how your pages are performing – are people actually looking at the gallery – do you need to make the link more prominent etc., bounce rates etc.

Its really hard to think what people get from your site without some cold hard statistics.

I don’t know much about websites, but know a bit about photography having worked in the industry for a few years (assisting Ad and fashion photographers in London and then on my own)

I’d consider working on your artistic and technical skills. I had a look through the shots on your website and although there were some good ones, a lot were average. I might be coming off a tad harsh, but I think honest opinion is more useful if you are struggling in the competitive world of wedding photography.

I found studying the masters of landscape photography, helped with composition in fashion photography and photographing people in general. Working with models is also useful as you can learn every single angle and get better at directing people.

Mixing natural light with flash is an art in itself. I was obsessed with lighting when I was a student and would spend ages lighting different things at different angles to understand how light worked. A good understanding of light (hard, soft, shadows, shapes etc) will stand you in good stead to compete against the masses of wedding photographers who have no idea how to light.

Good photoshop skills are a must. If you can retouch photos to a decent level, you can create your own actions which will have your own signature style to them. At the moment your pictures look like they have been tweaked a bit in lightroom, but are not quite right in terms of colour and contrast and do not have a particular style.

I think that it would be helpful if you came up with a style that people can recognise, whether that be framing/composition, lighting style or retouching. Retouching is the easiest way to stamp you own style onto an image.

Something that I have noticed that the top wedding photographers do, is capture amazing candid photographs. I don’t have much of a clue about this as I was never much of a reportage photographer (even though it is the style I most admire) but if you can get your head around finding the balance between directing and shooting reportage style, your work will stand out dramatically.

Hope you find something useful in this and don’t take it as me just bashing your work, as you have some great shots in there.

“Why us?”

There’s only you isn’t there?

The royal “us”?

I’ll post some feedback when I get on my laptop, on my phone at the mo. Amazing the level/amount of response you can get on STW – cant wait to do the same with my new site when it’s (eventually) ready 😉

Cheers all. I do have Google analytics and yes, it’s very helpful. They’ve just done away with the old version and I’m yet to get to grips with the new display, but I’ll persevere.

A few people have mentioned the disabled right click issue. If I want to open a new window whilst keeping the page I’m on open, I use Ctrl + left click, hth 🙂 I had no idea it was an issue tbh.

grum – yes, an incredible amount of feedback, almost all of which is very useful. Criticism is always hard to take, but I accept it’s necessary to understand how others view your work.

Sorry I’m too shattered to respond to all the comments – they have all been read and taken on board – some of it will definitely be acted upon over the coming week.

A few people have mentioned the disabled right click issue. If I want to open a new window whilst keeping the page I’m on open, I use Ctrl + left click, hth I had no idea it was an issue tbh.

First pitfall in web development – assuming someone knows some strange keyboard combo will fix the issue. If you have to explain something to someone then it’s not working. I’m a web developer and I don’t use the ctrl key. Remember that some people on your website would probably struggle with the concept of the ctrl key at all, let alone how to use it.

I think there’s some great constructive criticism, nobody is slagging the site off per se so I think that’s positive.

That’s the first wave of changes implemented – the ‘About’ and ‘Why Us?’ pages have been amalgamated into one page, which makes a lot of sense. I’ve tried to keep it personal – with wedding photography, as with all services, clients buy the person first, then the product, so I have left in some personal details. My qualifications and other big-me-up stuff is now more prominent, as suggested.

The home page now has a better mix of keywords and phrases and some of the photos have been removed.

Various typos and out of date text have been sorted. I will try and find a better photo of myself, preferrably at work to replace the scary hat photo… Next steps include a complete gallery overhaul and a pricing structure simplification (one price for all day, one price for half day).

breatheeasy – yes, overall I’m hugely grateful for all pointers but believe me, it really isn’t easy to have complete strangers pick the flesh from your baby (so to speak) – especially on STW where the sh1t sandwich is unheard of (compliment – criticism – compliment). But that really is why I asked here, I suppose – I knew I could count on brutally honest feedback. I don’t have to agree with all of it, but it’s all helpful.

So once again, thanks to all who have contributed!

I’m sure you know already but the stuff that breatheeasy suggested is all good, and the way that Google search works you have to do even the small stuff to rise above everyone else as they are all doing the obvious stuff as well 🙁

If it helps here is the link to help you rename your blog to use a subdomain of your main site. You will of course need to set up blog.jamieemersonphotography.com with wherever you have your name registered first but then the rest is quite easy

http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=58317

It if all looks like gibberish then ask again here. The info. is often blunt but usually high quality as well

as with all services, clients buy the person first, then the product

really? i would say the images are what sell the ‘product’, as long as the first interaction suggests you are not a sociopath then things can progress, if the images are mediocre that email or phone call is never going to be made however wonderful your personality is.

Maybe that’s the case in the commercial world, where photo editors know their onions, but there are a huge number of non-awesome photographers out there, doing very well on force of personality alone. Domestic clients can really and truly be a bit clueless when it comes to photography, and I honestly don’t think I do them a dis-service by saying that. They’ve never had to choose a photographer before – why should they know their split-toning from their spot-colouring? (shudders).

There are just so many PASSIONATE gals and guys about who say all the right things and who happen to have hit on a particular fad or wedding zeitgeist – it doesn’t matter that their portfolio looks like it’s been dipped in dogshit (oh, that’s just soooo vintage *squeal*) and consists of one wedding and a day with a couple of wannabes from Model Mayhem.

Hopefully though, these people are not my clients – I would LOVE to shoot for people who really do appreciate good photography, and indeed, have shot the weddings of some photographers who I’d consider to be very good indeed.

Following on from that, and to answer the point made on page one about just marketing towards everyone who’s getting married – that is simply a bad idea. I have a very set idea about who my target demographic are. It’s where i spends me marketing dollars. It’s a prove fact that we’re likely to sell our services to those who most closely resemble us and is the reason that very good salesmen use ‘mirroring’ techniques. That’s not snake-oil – it’s just good business. Casting your net too wide just means missing out IME.

EDIT; leffeboy – thanks for that. I’m afraid it does all look a bit like gibberish right now, but I’ll have a proper read of the article later today.

Following on from that, and to answer the point made on page one about just marketing towards everyone who’s getting married – that is simply a bad idea.

I didn’t say have one ‘thing’ to market towards everyone, which I would agree doesn’t make sense; I said that you should consider everyone who is getting married to be your target. What that means is being able to cater for more tastes, and what that means is broadening your portfolio and being able to give as many people as possible what they ask for. It also means improving considerably on developing your styles/repertoire; but there really isn’t going to be that much variation in what people expect/want. You’re struggling; you can not afford to turn people away – which is basically what you’re wanting to do at the moment – and you don’t appear technically skilled/developed enough to offer ‘something special’ to this (non-existent) target market that you think you’ve identified. It sounds more like an excuse for something than a genuine business strategy. Get better at what you do and then, maybe, you’ll be able to pick and choose. No shit sandwich, sorry.

Lol! thanks for the blunt reply Three Fish! It’s not a case of my being a prima-donna and picking and choosing my clients – it’s a strategy based on very solid business principles, drummed into me through years of crappy sales jobs, followed by dozens of dull business seminars. The basic message repeated time after time is,; don’t ever, ever think that your target market is the general public. Find your target market (and it certainly does exist, thankyou) and stick to it. And despite the downturn this year, I have been doing this with a degree of success since 2005, so I must be doing something right – the way you paint it, I’ve just picked up a camera and have no clue at all – not the case – five years in education as a mature student and seven years working full time as a photographer. That doesn’t necessarily make me good in your eyes, but I do feel I’ve learnt a thing or two…

you don’t appear technically skilled/developed enough to offer ‘something special’ to this (non-existent) target market that you think you’ve identified. It sounds more like an excuse for something than a genuine business strategy. Get better at what you do and then, maybe, you’ll be able to pick and choose.

Tbh though, that last bit of the post just stinks of nastiness – care to put your URL up so I know who I’m dealing with? No? Thought not… Genuine critique is always welcomed – piss-taking from an unknown with a Flickr account is not.

Tbh though, that last bit of the post just stinks of nastiness – care to put your URL up so I know who I’m dealing with? No? Thought not… Genuine critique is always welcomed – piss-taking is not.

Much of my work is non-public at the moment as I’m putting six months of work together into collections; but you can see a small selection on Behance for preview of an upcoming exhibition. I’m in the process of arranging some more exhibitions locally and have also had expressions of interest from people in Berlin and Amsterdam. I’m meeting with a curator over in Amsterdam in a couple of weeks, so it’s all very exciting at the moment! My ‘market’ is a bit more niche than yours, I appreciate; and I’m grateful that I do not rely on photography to earn my living. I can just do it because I enjoy it.

So by the same token, why not attempt to sell your images to everyone who has eyes? You see where I’m going here? Your photography really isn’t that much more ‘niche’ than mine, truth be told.

Bleedin’ nartists 😉

Just popped back in, in the hope of a link from the lighting guru. Still nothing – no surprise there then… I did have a quick Google though; four photos of drainpipes and rooftiles? Srsly?!

Get better at what you do and then, maybe, you’ll be able to pick and choose.

Well sunshine, an art degree doesn’t impress me, mostly because I have one in Photography as Conceptual Art. I’ve done all that dithering about trying to capture the sound of a raindrop (or whatever) at uni, and long since got over it. Perhaps you can come back to me when Aunt Euphemia’s trust fund dries up, and you’ve put in a few years hard work lighting a bride and groom during a fast-moving, ever-changing wedding day, when there’s no time to set up a tripod and consider the parallels between a drainpipe junction and the cutting edge of an urban reality before taking the photo.

Then maybe you can come back and tell me I can’t light a photo properly.

Harrumph.

Just popped back in, in the hope of a link from the lighting guru.

I beg your pardon, I thought from your response that you’d followed the link to my Behance project, which I then proceeded to unlink. I didn’t respond to your questions because they appeared somewhat rhetorical. I won’t respond to your latest assumptions as I don’t really see what I would gain from doing so. Well done with the degree, by the way; you must be very pleased to have qualified. I can not boast of any formal arts training, let alone a degree, so I think perhaps you may have Googled upon somebody else’s pictures. I do have some quite nice drainpipe shots in my back-catalogue, though.

Harrumph, indeed.

At the risk of repeating a suggestion, because I haven’t read the whole thread, can you change the web address to just emersonphotogrpahy.com, then it matches the ‘company’ name?

I see that it has now made its way to the front page – but why is the gallery (prob the most important thing on your site for someone quickly browsing for a photographer) still not on the top selections? It should be at the top and one of the first things people see how to get to without scrolling..