3 Marketing Mistakes Photographers Make

Eastman Camera by The Javalina on Flickr

Next week the Wedding and Portrait Photographers Association will be holding their 2012 conference and trade show at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Each WPPI event draws thousands of professional photographers looking for ways to improve their photography skills and their business skills. Most of them are making the following three mistakes on their web sites which limit their search engine results and their web traffic.

1.  Building the site in Flash - Adobe Flash is a powerful tool and the websites that utilize it are dazzling for those who visit the sites from full sized computers. But the world is going mobile with 7% of all web traffic coming from smart phones and iPads. Most of those devices are not able to view your website.  

2. Blocking image copying - Many photographers block the ability to right click an image or copy an image which protects their copyrighted work from misuse. By doing so, you also prevent your fans from sharing your work and spreading the news about your talent. If you were to watermark low resolution images and allow people to link to them, your work could be shared on Pinterest, Facebook and other sites where potential clients would see your images and studio name. Those links bring people to your website and improve your search engine rankings.

3.  Image only sites - Many photography sites feature images so strongly that they neglect any captions or text explanations. People love stories and a short caption can put an image into context and give it more meaning. It also helps the search engines know how to classify the images. When you are adding an image to your site, consider adding a caption and be certain to name the image and include your copyright information in the alt text field that the search engines read.

Are you making any of these mistakes on your site?