Unbeknownst to you, I’ve been hard at work making some important behind-the-scenes changes to the website.  Those changes aren’t so behind-the-scenes any more though, because they’ve resulted in a few really cool upgrades.

First of all, I’ve made the entire site more interactive by removing the simple menu bar and replacing it with a Spry menu that had drop-down features.  Now, no matter where you’re at on the site, navigating somewhere else should be easier.  The menu bar is also now at the top of each page, so you don’t have to scroll all the way to the bottom to navigate.

The first change involved most of my time, but it isn’t the coolest.  I’ve separated images into two groups.  I still have all the images (and layout) you’re used to in the Image Library, but I’ve set a select few images aside in a series of Portfolios.  I have a landscape portfolio, one for flora and fauna, and one of my personal favorite images (with commentary!).   I’ve tried to keep the layout simple, while still leaving it functional and user-friendly.

Check out the new changes and tell me what you think!

Although you probably haven’t noticed many changes on my website lately, I’ve been working very hard behind the scenes to make it easier for you to navigate, as well as easier for search engines such as Google to find me and my photography.  Everything is the world of search engine optimization, or SEO, is pretty new to me, but I’ve learned a lot in the last few months.  I really have Phil Colla to blame…er…thank for this, due to one of his blog posts last May.  Basically, as happens all to often with me, I needed the obvious to sink in.  What I learned is that if I want people to enjoy my photography, I have to work to let them find me…the hordes won’t come rushing in on their own.

Since then, I’ve been reading a lot of great blog posts by other photographers (here and here) on their own search for SEO Zen, as well as reading about it straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.  After making my changes, I entered my website’s URL into a free SEO tool over at websitegrader.com.

According to the folks at websitegrader.com, I scored a 93%, which in my book is an A.  What this means is that of the millions of websites that have previously been evaluated, their algorithm has calculated that my site scores higher than 93% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness. The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over 50 different variables, including search engine data , website structure, approximate traffic, site performance, etc.

In addition to this, I also moved from a Google Page Rank of 0 four months ago, to 2 as of yesterday afternoon.  Considering that a 6 is the best you can do, this much of an improvement seems significant to me.

So what now?  Obviously, I’ll be tweaking things over the next few months, to try to improve not only my Google Page Rank, but also my score over at websitegrader.com.  Go ahead and give it a try…its fun!