How many websites will a bride look at?

[KevinCarter]

A big issue with web advertising is placement. The more you pay, the better you come up on lists. Curious what you all think -- how many sites will brides check out on a given list. thanks.

[MattRadlinski]

First, brides will look at every website they can find, and at every photo on each website. Seriously, brides sit at their computers for hours looking at absolutely everything to do with weddings they can find on the internet.

That said, you shouldn't need to pay for web placement. Research Search Engine Optimization (SEO) on google or something and learn how to author your website so you'll come up high on the search results. If you search google for "Gainesville Wedding" or "Gainesville Wedding Photographer," my website, korphoto.com, comes up first, and I never paid anybody a dime.

[KevinCarter]

that great info thanks Matt. that's helps for the wedding websites where you pay to get on list. So I'll keep that in mind. Maybe I don't need to pay those extra big bucks for 1st page or 2; but isn't always a better response if you are on the first two pages of like 40 pages?

No for Google, forget it for me. Do a search for wedding photographers los angeles. You wont hardly see any photographers. We are pulverized by other vendors and sites in this biz.

[MattRadlinski]

Well, that's true, Gainesville is small [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I wouldn't know where to begin advertising in a huge marketplace like LA.

That said, I absolutely hate wedding websites. I'm not going to mention any names, but you know who I'm talking about it. We used to advertise on them, and it worked out well when they ran articles about how to have a great wedding. When the economy slowed down four years or so ago, they retargeted to "brides on a budget" and it only went downhill from there. These days, they run articles about how to have a cheap wedding. Their articles advise brides to haggle with their wedding photographer, to have a "friend who's a shutterbug" do it, or even put out disposable cameras on the tables at the reception instead of hiring a pro! After that kind of content went into effect, we still got a lot of hits from our listing, but they were all bad. We'd get emails from girls detailing an enormous laundry list of things they wanted...all day coverage, the negatives, prints of every image, albums, parent albums, on and on...and they want it all for $1200. No thank you. I would put my advertising dollars elsewhere...anywhere else [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] Good luck.

[KevinCarter]

thanks Matt. I'm sure that's the truth. Funny cause when you hear about wedding shooters, you hear, oh great they are making 5-10G a day, great. But , of course, the only shooters many good $, are getting it from years and years of referral business.

[joedmiles]

I think it's always a good idea to get a listing on high ranking wedding photographers directories such as www.findaweddingphotographer.co.uk and www.onlineweddings.co.uk. This way you'll be found immediatley in the top 10 Google or MSN searches without having to pay major amount of money to SEO's to keep you in the top 10.

[MattRadlinski]

Except such link dumps are generally ignored by Google. Thanks for the advertisement, though :/