seo – Bill Swartwout Photography

I am seeing growth in traffic and page views beyond my expectations.

Let’s begin with a caveat: One must keep in mind that I am comparing January numbers, one of the slowest sales months, to December and the holiday shopping season. Therefore, I believe any growth AT ALL is a significant increase.

Graph of User Growth USPictures January 2022 — Graph of User Growth USPictures.com mid-December, 2021 though the end of January, 2022.

One is tempted, possibly because of innate vanity to describe success based on feelings or “what I think” is happening. That is all a feel good, pat yourself on the back, reaction and may be OK in general conversation. However, what follows is my sharing of actual data, the metrics of which are derived from the Analytics service from Google and from AWStats, an internal statistics package on my leased server space.

Remember the rationale for this is a rebranding of my USPictures domain and to create more SEO “juice” (search engine results) for my own sites – rather than for the stockholders of FB, Twitter or any POD with a forum.

While I have several blog/websites related to (supporting) several of my art photography collections, I have chosen to focus the first part of the year on my personal blog at BillSwartwout.com and my “rebranded” site targeting United States landscape/seascape images at USPictures.com.

USPictures.com was “moved” from being pointed to my premium site at Fine Art America to its own server space in mid-December so I could offer more choices for my customers, including the Free Shipping at Pictorem, another quality POD (Print on Demand) company. See “Rebranding and an Art Challenge.”

Therefore the numbers for USPictures.com and BillSwartwout are based on a comparison of daily averages, not one month vs another month. This is to keep things on an even keel, so to speak.

The Results Are In:

I am not sharing actual numbers, just percentages. The following percentages increases are for BillSwartwout.com & USPictures.com, respectively

Number of Visits: 124% and 189%

Page Views per Visit: 187% and 174%

SEO/Organic Search Results: 175% and 325%

Averaging all of those results yield an average growth in one month of “Daily Posting” of nearly 200% (195.6% to be exact).

But Wow, those Organic Search Results, a 250% increase, are far better that what I was hoping to see at the one-month mark. That means the longer I can keep growing the sites’ SEO the less dependent I am on Social Media.

Hey, these increases are after only one month of Daily Article Posting, or Blogging, if you like. Imagine what may/will happen after another couple of months. Or the whole year. Not too crabby, eh? – Er, I mean, not too shabby.

Yum - a Big Crab Claw Image Matted and Framed

Right?

Geno Prussakov, a long-time affiliate marketing colleague, about a dozen years ago, decided to try posting one new article every day for a solid year in order to help his business grow. He did and it did. AM Navigator at https://www.amnavigator.com is one of the best Outsourced Program Management Agencies in the world today. I am proud to call Geno a friend.

I would certainly appreciate any observations or comments you care to make (below). Your critique or insights may help me improve my outlook and or marketing strategy.

SEO should resolve to my websites – not someone else’s.

Yes, that’s me at the controls of an AT-6 “Texan.” Now I need to take control of my own marketing efforts.

Content that I create should benefit me and my business. Whenever I post on Social Media that content helps attract visitors to the benefit of the stockholders of Facebook or Twitter or wherever. When I post to a forum, the basic SEO benefits go to the owner of that forum. There is, however, a compromise in that some judicious posting to a forum or social media may have the residual effect of sending a visitor to my site(s). Therefore I am not abandoning…just making changes and redirecting the bulk of my efforts.

My aim is to wean myself from a lot of social media and from posting on forums (quite so much). I’m not talking about a “cold turkey” removal from social media but, instead, a re-focusing of my posting efforts. I have have begun a rigorous campaign of article publishing (blogging) on several of my sites (mostly BillSwartwout.com and USPictures.com) that support my art photography. I am sharing photographs and places of where we have traveled. I am also sharing some marketing insights – here on “my site” rather than there on “their” sites. My goal this year is to publish one new piece per day ( on average) for 2022. At the end of January, as I write this, I am ahead of my goal by a half dozen new blog posts.

Posting on SM and forums is good SEO for “them/those.” I am striving for increased search engine clicks for “me” and my photography. So far it is working – I am seeing a two-fold increase clicks from Google and Bing this month compared to December (and there is still nearly a week to go in January). Unique visitors and page views are up, as is bot traffic (the stats on my server separate the two so I can see “real numbers” of visitors).

I want to create articles and photographs that help me, both in the short term and long term. I’ve had some success on Facebook, but I’ve never been able to fully monetize it. With all due respect to the owners of Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites, I have to focus on my own business. I have to be more deliberate in what I post and how I use social media. While I do have a Facebook page(s) and Twitter accounts, I need to keep in mind: there are no real (do-follow) links back to my sites. So why do I need them? Why do I care about “likes” or comments? What does that do for ME? Well, I do receive visitors from those sites and, yes, some of those visitors buy my art photography. Therefore, I am not being “ungrateful” for the work that these sites do for me; instead, I see it as running in place. I just need to keep in mind that the ultimate goal for SEO is rank well on search engines by creating original content that people want to read and share (link back to).

With that said, I am using FB and Twitter to help promote my new articles. For example, an article I published two hours ago (just before I wrote this paragraph) has already had 31 views, with 24 of them coming directly to that post from Social Media. The others were likely me (for one or two) and some from people landing on the home page of BillSwartwout.com where “The Making of a Classic Bridge Photograph” was that first article.

Bill Swartwout Photography USPictures Header

Bill Swartwout Photography at USPictures.com