how to appear in Google Images, etc.

GoofBckt

I know there have been other threads about this, but I'm still unclear on how to make sure my photos come up in Google Image searches, etc. Currently, nothing of mine ever comes up.

Thank you!

denisegoldberg

This post of Andy's implies that using a descriptive file name will cause Google to find the image. I would hope that's not the only method to use, but...

I have found photos of mine in google image search but for the most part they seem to be photos that I've linked from my blog.

--- Denise

Andy

denisegoldberg wrote:

This post of Andy's implies that using a descriptive file name will cause Google to find the image. I would hope that's not the only method to use, but...

Of course not.

Site meta description
Keywords
Captions
Album Descriptions
Gallery Titles
Nicenames
Category Names

Blogging
External Linking
Getting people to link to you
Twitter
Facebook
etc etc

All of this goes into the mix of getting in good with Google.

http://www.smugmug.com/help/search-engines

Google Image Search, is a different sort of beast though - and it's tougher and more challenging to get your stuff ranked high there. Apply all our suggestions and you will & can though!

GoofBckt

That's kind of a bummer. So essentially, I would have to rename ALL my files and reload them? Thanks, Denise.

denisegoldberg wrote:

This post of Andy's implies that using a descriptive file name will cause Google to find the image. I would hope that's not the only method to use, but...

I have found photos of mine in google image search but for the most part they seem to be photos that I've linked from my blog.

--- Denise

denisegoldberg

GoofBckt wrote:

That's kind of a bummer. So essentially, I would have to rename ALL my files and reload them?

No, that's just one part of the picture. Did you see Andy's post above?

I have been able to find my images in Google images when I have linked to an image in my galleries from my blog. Yes, the link goes to the blog entry, but my blog links to the photo in my smug galleries.

It's not a simple single answer...

--- Denise

GoofBckt

Yeah, I looked at it after I replied to you, sorry. It's quite tedious, but can be done, I see. Thanks again.

denisegoldberg wrote:

No, that's just one part of the picture. Did you see Andy's post above?

I have been able to find my images in Google images when I have linked to an image in my galleries from my blog. Yes, the link goes to the blog entry, but my blog links to the photo in my smug galleries.

It's not a simple single answer...

--- Denise

Andy

GoofBckt wrote:

Yeah, I looked at it after I replied to you, sorry. It's quite tedious, but can be done, I see. Thanks again.

It's true. Getting found by Google and having high seo requires hard work. You will see evidence of this by the hard work many do out there, shooting, keywording, captioning, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, and more.

chuckinsocal

Hi Gang,

After reading this post, I searched Google Images for some of my photos using some keywords that I use frequently.

I was happy to see 6 of my photos on the first two pages of one search and five of my images on the first two pages on another search. Some were linked from my blog and some from my SmugMug galleries.

I can only guess why I found so many on the first two pages:

1. I used very specific search terms. I do some incident photography for our local fire and police departments so my search terms were "carlsbad fire" and "carlsbad police". I think had I used "fire trucks" or "police officers" or california beaches, my images would have been buried among thousands, if not millions of photos and I'd have never found them.

2. Google looks at image alt tags which are the same as our SmugMug photo captions so I use very specific keywords in my captions. I occaisionally put a few keywords in a hidden div in my caption that Google can see but don't show in my SmugMug caption.

3. Several of the results came from my blog which no one reads, but I don't care because the blog is just another thing that Google can find and it's a tool to provide links back to my SmugMug site. Google likes to see links back to your site so the more you link to it from external sites, the better Google likes your site.

Just my $.02 but I hope it helps.

r9jackson

It's a full time job

Andy wrote:

It's true. Getting found by Google and having high seo requires hard work. You will see evidence of this by the hard work many do out there, shooting, keywording, captioning, blogging, tweeting, facebooking, and more.

I agree, I've been spending a lot of my time doing all of the above (well except Facebook which I just can't bear yet). Who has time for shooting? I've been busy with keywording and blogging.