Getting Noticed (and the Maine Avenue Fish Market, Washington DC)

I write this blog because I enjoy it.  I write this blog because I like to share.  My desire is to speak to things that are helpful to a variety of audiences; those of you who want to improve your photography, those of you that are interested in both the technical and artistic components of photography, and those of you that simply enjoy see something new and interesting (or even familiar).

I would be happy to produce this blog even if I had no readers.  Fortunately, the collective “you” is a significant number and I am not writing an unread memoir.  When I first started, the site visits amounted to about 50 per month.  Over time this has grown to well over 50 per day.  In the grand scheme of things, this is still very modest.  Given the assumption that I believe there is some value in this blog for a broad range of people interested in photography, the pressing question is “how do we further extend the people who regularly visit?”  This is the subject I wish to address today. 

Fundamentally, there are three ways that more people are drawn to the blog:

1. Promotion
2. Referrals (you, referring your friends to the site)
3. Increasing visibility through search friendly techniques

The most satisfying among these is your referrals, and I encourage you to do so.  I know many of you have, and I am very grateful.  Under my control, are the aspects of promotion and adding search friendly techniques.  I am somewhat humble, so promotion is a passive activity for me.  However, search friendly techniques are a good technique to help you find your interests and grow the readership simultaneously.

I am not an internet visibility expert, but with respect to photography I am aware there are several things that can add to the traffic on a site.  Following are a couple of things that can make it easier for web surfers to find what they are looking for:

1. Add titles to the photographs.  A photo name is a searchable attribute.
2. Make blog titles descriptive and appealing (unlike the title of this post!)
3. Tag all photos – this is imbedded in the metadata for the photograph, and is available for search engines (I am particularly bad at this).
4. Add labels to blog entry – again searchable and a utility to the person visiting the site.

The last of these is my current focus.  If you look to the right column of the blog, you will find a section called “Labels” near the bottom.  This section provides links to the posts I have labeled and organized according to a variety of categories.  In other words, if you want to see posts that feature or address street photography, you can select that “label” and be presented with all prior posts that include street photography.  Go ahead, try it!  Not only is this a searchable attribute, but it is something many people should find helpful for specific subjects of interest.

I plan to address the other aspects of increasing visibility of this blog in the richness and fullness of time as well as adding labels to the 150+ prior posts.  In the mean time, I hope you send your friends here and enjoyed the photography of the Main Avenue Fish Market in Washington DC.

Have fun, and go make some great photography.

Craig