Name of your website?Travel Photo Base World Image Collection
Your name?
Jim Steinhart
Your Location (city, etc)
Toronto
When did you start your website and why?
Having worked as a travel photojournalist for my career, I have been given many wonderful opportunities to visit the world's wonders. Now that I am reaching retirement, I want to share my photographic view of the world to allow those who will not have the same opportunities to travel in the future to come to know just how rich human culture is and how beautiful our planet can be.
Please give us a short summary of your website, business model, etc
The prime reason for the website is to preserve my life's photographic work, my art. If I can license a few photos to help support the effort, so much the better, but it is not the primary objective
What has been the most difficult part of creating and running your website?
With 25,000 photos on line so far, even getting Google to index the entire site has been a challenge. Their crawlers don't reach everything even with all the sitemaps they demand. Furthermore, even though I have hundreds of high-quality, original photos in my various country sections, Google tends to give higher ratings to small low-quality collections that concentrate on single regions.
Who maintains your website and why?
I do all the work myself, having had a second career as a computer programmer since the 1960s.
What are your views on Search Engine Optimization (SEO)?
I am well aware of the methods of SEO, but in several cases I have had to make a choice between what is required for SEO and what is required to serve my viewers. When such choices are required, I always take the option which serves the readers. It is frustrating to structure for Search Engine because it is like trying to hit a moving target.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
The quality of the website, without ads, without cookies, with very fast downloads, with good design & high-quality artistic photos, has resulted in a situation where 90-95% of people who visit http://www.travelphotobase.com/ have added the site to their favorites list. The number of people linking to the site is growing steadily, which I attribute to its pure information.
What is your website address?
Travel Photo Base World Image Collection
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