I'm gonna start my first website soon, whats the first thing I should do? it's gonna be a pic site for culinary food. I have alot of pics, so what are some first steps I should do? I what to make a clean easy browing website, that attracts traffic and then have affiliates to try to generate money. thanks
add recipes and a blog. People will come to look at pics but the search engines can't see your pictures so you need content and recipes are a great way to get people from search traffic. Also, make sure to fill out ALT tags and captions on all of your images so the search engine can tell what they are. Sounds like a great premise to work from.
Create a website plan...Figure out your target market (niche), decide on your navigation system, sections, blog categories etc. Then once you go ahead and create your site you can follow a plan, rather than make things up on the fly and confuse yourself.
1. Use Wordpress and get a Premium Theme. This will help you do away with design headaches and also allow you to easily manage your content and present it in a way that looks professional. 2. Spend 2 weeks getting related blog comments linking back to your site (especially if this is a new domain). 3. Send out a Press Release from WebWire announcing your site. 4. Join food forums and join in the discussions there. After a good post volume, add signature.
Its going to be a picture site? Have you picked out what gallery software your going to use? Are you going to invest into commercial grade software, or use the free stuff? Picking the right content management system is one of the most important decisions you can make. You do not want to get 1 or 2 years into the project, and then decide you picked the wrong system.
Update content often - Search engines give priority rankings to sites that have freshly updated content. Keyword placement is important so put keywords in key areas such as headings and titles well as in less obvious areas such as image labels and tables.
Just like a business plan, you'd need to plan (in detail) where you want this site to go and how you want it to grow. You also need text content so search engines can pick it up easily. Update the site as frequently as you can (even if it's just once a week via a content management system) and do some basic research into SEO.
To me, once you have your list of 5 - 10 keywords, your keyword domain name, keywords in titles etc sorted, spend some time uploading your content and blog posts so that your website is ready for visitors. Monetize accordingly. Then do a press release, build backlinks, post on forums, write articles etc to drive traffic - preferably to your squeeze page so that you can get their e-mail addresses and build your list.
Well, make sure you get a catchy domain name that matches whatever keywords you're trying to promote. Google likes EMD's. If you're not targeting keywords, then just a catchy title will do.
you should go with http://sourceforge.net/projects/immgr/ or any open source from http://sourceforge.net/
Make sure your site is working properly before you go out there an promote. Once you are sure of that, go to related blogs and forums and leave comments to build links. Let Google and other search engines pick up your site and then promote!
Get content: free content or pvl articles. Edit your website by adding this content + pictures and then find a professionnal design. Then, add your affiliate links. And promote your website.
How are the affys making money - by selling your culinary pics? That's fine. It is a tight but important niche , especially if you have any kind of name as a foodie photographer. That is where you have to start. If I was looking for foodie pics I would first look for freebies in morguefile and sxc.hu and you can bet I would find something useable. Maybe I would not find something stunning but I would find something workable. You have to set yourself apart. You are selling 'special'. So, if you are asking what is the first thing to do when considering your website, it is to think about why someone like me, would come to your site instead of to MF or sxc.hu. What makes you better? There are some stunning photo gallery themes out there. If you are not a web designer don't waste your energy re-inventing the wheel. Buy a theme and then concentrate your energies on social 'knitting'. Sell your name subtely in forums, blogs, FB, twitter, create buzz.
If you are completely new for making a website, then I would advice you to do just stick to these points for atleast a month. 1. Create a normal website with an attractive domain name of your (cooking) niche (subject) 2. Start writing good quality articles on your site "everyday" (one) and insert some 2-3 nice looking pictures. Make sure you put the name of the picture as per your article keyword, so that it will eventually show up in the images search results. Important : try not to copy any images or article from the net. Make it as natural and unique as you can. 3. Visit the DP forum and write some good valuable content in the topic you like and put your site in the signature column. 4. There is a site called addthis.com, get the widget from this site and bookmark your individual article in the sites which are recommended by the addthis widget. No need to sign up in all the bookmarking sites right now. 5. If you have a facebook account, post your site URL under your profile and post your article URL on your facebook profile, which will also show the images in the articles. By this method, your friends on facebook will view your article on their homepages. 6. When you have some free time try searching some blogs on your subject and write some interesting comments and link the comment to your site. You can do these things for a month and two. By this time keep upgrading yourself about all the techniques of creating backlinks, SEO, searching and implementing keywords of your subject. After you are thorough with the SEO stuff, you can start creating some valuable backlinks for your site. BTW, for your information, I have a food blog too which I had created because I Just Love Food a lot, cooking as well as eating... lol !!!!