Gallery page with text below, Or split into two pages

[JPRichardson]

So i'm a professional photographer, so my gallery is pretty important, probably more imprtant than the copy supporting it. Right now I have a gallery with supplementary info pushed below. I'm wondering if it would be better to remove the text from the bottom and put it to the top of it's own page, and leave the gallery page as just images, or keep it mixed with both.

You can see my site directly HERE if you would like to see what i'm talking about exactly- the lightbox is broken, its a work in progress.

[EGOL]

Without knowing full details about your business, I would personally use JPShots.com because it is so short, easy, and communicative.  I don't know anything about Yost.

[JPRichardson]

Wow, that was an incredibly well written response. I get the idea that you may do photography yourself...  I think you bring up some seriously good points!

Further question, back to the SEO standpoint. I origionally set up my domain as "overlandparkphotographer.com" and then have my "jpshots.com" pointing to it. What I recently discovered is that even though the pages of my I set Yost SEO Title to be "JPShots Senior Pictures | Wedding Photographer" When you search "overland park photographer" the snippet tile is just "overland park photographer" which sounds super sketchy.

I don't know if this is something to do with yost, or if my sneeky URL isn't worth much, and I should simply use my regular jpshots.com URL as the primary. I know it works like a charm with yahoo, but i'm not sure how much the URL name factors google these days.

[EGOL]

I think that "experience" and communication are more important than the photos themselves.  People are not going to pay a lot of attention to the photos if they have to wait for them or if the page is jumping all over the place.  They might leave your site or worse, they might not find it because Google realizes that it is bad experience.

Many photo sites try to present overly high resolution images and they try to incorporate a lot of rollover, etc. effects at the same time.  These individually can be too much for the weak processors and tiny memories of mobile phones and tablets - and even some of the skinny browsers in inexpensive or poor-performance computers.  So, I would not try to impress the visitor with special effects and fancypants design.

Present the images and present your message.  If you wait to present the your message to the people who call you, you will only reach a tiny percent of the people who visit the website.

Don't underestimate the value of your text.  Yes, your service is high quality photos but there is a lot more to your service than the images themselves.  People might not know what professional photography includes.  The photographer does a lot more than snap photos.  There are elements of capturing the story of the day with the right composition, accommodating the many lighting conditions that the day and the location present, the family courtesies that must be kept in mind, and the experience and knowledge that is needed to capture a hundred one-time opportunities that are either photographed or lost through the day.  You get one shot at wedding photos and if they are not done well you can't go back and shoot them again.

[JPRichardson]

That's an interesting idea in how to integrate the whole thing.

I know the loading situation is sloppy, the current state was just my solution for what to do while i wait for the tech support on my gallery. I figured it was better to give the viewer a larger thumbnail until a proper lightbox was in place.

Assuming that the thumbnails are easily half the size that they are now, and they load quickly without the scroll load, would you still consider it an issue?

[EGOL]

I would mix images and text down the page.

Prewedding photos... and explain why people like them and what might be shown.

Before the ceremony photos...

Ceremony photos...

Leaving the church photos...

Reception photos....

etc....

I think that this presents better to the visitor, gives you a chance to educate them, explains what they really get from your service, gives them ideas for your service. and makes you think about what you really do.

Google doesn't want a big bunch of photos with a bunch of text waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy down the page.

I don't want to enter a page that takes forever to load and jumps and starts while I am trying to look at it.  Allow the page to load from the top down, people can see photos, scroll, encounter your words, while the rest of the page is slowly loading below.

Lots of photographers place lots of overly high resolution photos on a webpage and then the visitor's computer chokes trying to load them.   That gives a bad first impression.  They gotta wait for the loading, it loads sloppy, and instead of presenting a nice experience, the experience is the worst and the slowest loading page that they have seen this month.

[JPRichardson]

I have fixed the link, however you can also find it simply at www.overlandparkphotographer.com

Thanks for the advice in advance!

[Christy-Correll]

Hi  JPRichardson,

Thanks for your question! Would you mind checking the link to your site?

Christy