A Natural Success Story

“I was looking for a custom site with great natural search rankings to help me stand out from other photographers in Chicago’s saturated market.

“Alison Smith of Paper Foxes is very creative and has the technical background that I was looking for.

“I know that 70% of the clicks that come from search are on the natural search listings, so finding a website designer with the knowledge to get my website ahead of the competition was key.

“After a few short months I am showing up on the first couple of pages on tail end terms.

“Not only am I showing up in natural search listings, but another key feature that Alison could do for me was I can update the site on my own with little knowledge of HTML or Java Script. This is extremely helpful in saving money and getting my content updated in a timely manner.

“Thanks, Alison, for all your hard work. I couldn’t have done it without you!”

Now Featuring: April Kitchin Photography

The Situation

April needed to showcase her photography and take advantage of natural search. She also wanted to edit her website, making the myriad of changes a perfectionist often makes, without paying for each little edit.

The Process

Most photography websites are built using Flash so they look more like a video than a website. I knew we didn’t want to use Flash for the following reasons:

• People who want to view a Flash-based photography site need to have a Flash player already installed, or they have to install or update their Flash player before they can view the site.
• Flash websites take a long time to download, so viewers spend a lot of time waiting.
• People can’t send a link to a specific page on a flash site. If Mom wants to share pictures of Junior with Grandpa, she sends him the link to the photographer’s site, and he has to sit through the whole presentation.
• In the code for a Flash site, there is almost no text. Search engines like Google display websites according to how relevant the site is for the user’s search terms. If there aren’t any words that match the user’s search, search engines don’t think the site is useful for that person.

The Result

April’s website uses Javascript to run her gallery slideshows. Almost everyone has Javascript installed. It runs everything from drop-down menus to fancy image animation. In this case, April’s site uses the Javascript to advance the images, allowing people to stop and restart the slideshow, as well as choose which image they want to view next using thumbnails. She has all the functionality of Flash with none of the disadvantages.

April can upload and change photos and text whenever she wants using the WordPress blog system. It functions a lot like a word processing editor, and gives her all the flexibility she needs. The more she blogs about her photography, the more photography terms are on her site, and the higher her search engine ranking becomes.