Now you have
- decided what kind of site you want
- carefully structured it
- uploaded your pictures
- written the accompanying text.
If you just want to have the site for you and a few friends, you are done!
However, if you want other visitors as well, you have to give them a chance to actually find you!
Many companies send out messages offering to enter your site details in thousands of catalogues and search engines.
Don’t fall for these offers. You’ll only lose money and you might get a mailbox full of SPAM if your actual address is submitted to all these sites.
Good search engines like Google will find your site by themselves if there are any links to it. If no other sites are pointing to yours, you can always add your address manually, but this doesn’t really make any sense: your pages will probably be included, but listed last among millions of results!
A better approach is to look for other pages of a similar nature and politely ask the owner whether he/she would be willing to exchange links with you.
Also do not forget to add your site details in the appropriate category of major web catalogues. The most important ones are the Open Directory and Yahoo.
Here are some travel-photo related categories:
Open Directory: Photography > Travel and Location, Recreation: Travel: Image Galleries, Recreation: Travel: Travelogues .
Yahoo: Recreation > Travel > Photos
By the way, the above also are good starting points when looking for other photo sites to ask for a link exchange.
Carefully read the submission guidelines and be patient. It can take months to be accepted by the big web directories.
Meanwhile, you can look for smaller ones, some are even listed by the biggies!
Only submit when your site already has significant content. Otherwise, directories will disregard your pages.
If you have good content on your site and succeed in getting a few links, you’ll soon be found by the search engines!
Here are some points to help you make your pages more palatable to search engines.
Another worthwhile resource is Webring . Members of a ring place a common navigation element o their pages which makes it very easy to travel from one thematically related site to the next. Joining an active photo ring will immediately bring you some visitors, but you can also use this as another directory of photo or travel sites.
If you have a photo-blog, there are many special blog directories (search for “blog directory”) that you can submit to.
Also: don’t forget to include the address of your homepage in e-mails you send out.
Before you start
Planning a photo site
Designing a photo site
Optimising a photo page for search engines