Hi,
I started a blog, http://www.TravelandPhotographyToday.com about 6 months ago and I share our first hand experiences of places around the USA and Caribbean! I would love some imput! My goal this year is to increase my traffic and I'm looking forward to learning how to do that here!
Any advice on my blog is greatly appreciated!!
Thank you 
Jeanette
Hi Jeanette,
I'm going to give you some brutal honesty because I could just say "nice site" and blather on about all the same things everyone else would say about how to get more traffic (back links, comments on other sites, guest posting, etc), but that won't really help you much.
First off, the very large ad that is the first thing I saw when I looked at your site (for restaurant.com) is a huge turnoff. Combined with the overly huge header/banner area, that's all that can be seen on a lot of folk's monitors (you can't see anything below that without scrolling down), and given that most people assess a new site within the first second or two of landing on it - without scrolling - you'll have a high bounce rate, which will cause Google to give you a low PR. Save your ads for where people expect them to be, which is either the upper right of the banner area and/or in the sidebar, or at the very end of a post. Front dead center on the home page makes people think you're just about the ads, not about the info. If the ads you use are really relevant to why someone is at your site, they'll draw some clicks, don't worry about that.
Second, you'll find that the travel blog community is one of the most supportive and friendly around - it's why I love working with travel bloggers - however, without a better focus you'll only ever attract other travel bloggers, and that won't help you get the traffic numbers that you want.
As it is from glancing through a number of your posts, I really can't figure out what your blog is about - I found recipes (a cooking blog?) and some fairly long-winded "first we did this, then we did that" type of diary-entry posts about your trips - too much irrelevant details to appeal to someone looking for tourist information, not enough narrative interest to appeal to someone looking for good essay writing. Either approach (information aka reviews, or travel essays, aka narrative) are good approaches, but you should pick a style and practice getting good at that style. Personally I lean toward reviews (also called service pieces) because there are mind-bogglingly-far more people searching the internet for solid travel advice than there are looking for narrative essay. So unless you're a Hemingway wanna-be looking to interest publishers in your novel, go with where the numbers are. BUT remember to think like a soon-to-be tourist to where you're writing about and trim off anything that isn't helpful - no one has the patience these days to read very long posts unless they are truly full of exceedingly useful tips. That doesn't mean don't offer your opinions - you should, as that is what most people want - but it means don't try to write a narrative of your day.
Also, although your blog claims to be about photography as well as travel, I'm not really getting that at all from what I looked through......some of your photos are stunning and display real talent (the St. Patricks pudding, some of the Sea World Orlando shots) but many look like the same old boring vacation photos that everyone takes and that look amateurish. But nowhere did I learn anything about how or why you took those shots, what type of camera you used, did you add extra lighting, etc. - nothing that a budding photographer could learn from reading a "photography" blog.
You'd be better served to narrow your focus a bit so that you can actually appeal to the demographic that paying advertisers (not just affiliates) want to reach......so figure out if you want to be a photography blog that specializes in travel photos (a good niche), or a blog about various destinations and attractions in the US (better get out and see more of them), or a blog about what people can do in Florida (also a good niche), but don't try to be too much.......I'd ditch the Caribbean stuff unless you plan to make regular (several times a year) trips back there in order to have enough information to appeal to someone considering a trip there. If not it's just a distraction.
Once you've picked a focus, then you can get really in-depth. For example, say you want to teach people how to improve their vacation photographs by offering examples based on attractions in Florida - for each post you could pick a different spot - whether that's a typical tourist destination or somewhere off-the-beaten-track - and "revisit" what most people do when they take photos and how they could get better photos with a few tips from you, maybe even how they could get photos good enough to sell as stock.
Or for another example, you could blog about how to be the "anti-tourist" in Florida - not everyone wants to do Disney World (I wouldn't), but how would I learn about many other fun things to do that the locals enjoy - things most tourists wouldn't know about?
Remember that there are a BAZILLION travel blogs out there - some are really good, some are even great, but most are just mediocre and few people read them beyond the friends and family of the blogger. The only way to stand out from the mediocrity is by offering real value to readers - something they can't already find at hundreds, if not thousands, of other similar blogs.
I hope this is helpful and that you're not too offended to come back from time to time and let me know how your site is doing.
Good luck!
Hi Trisha,
Thank you for your brutal honesty. I really appreciate your feedback, that is what I was looking for. Although it hurt a little, I've already made some changes! As I mentioned, my blog is fairly new and we all have to start somewhere, right?!
I'm not a professional photographer nor have I claimed to be in my blog so I have to figure out a way to make it clear (?). It's not about learning photography (because I'm not qualified to teach that); it's meant to be first hand photos of places that I've personally visited. I've taken all of them and although some may be more like snapshots, I'm okay with that
I am constantly learning and I know it is going to take time so thank you once again for your critique.
Warmest Regards,
Jeanette
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