How exactly do keywords work?

marchex · February 7, 2010

I've been just working on the appearance of my site and adding a lot of the photos that I have. Just wondering how exactly do the keywords work? If i add them to my gallaries, if someone searches some of the words up in good will my site show up?

or can i add just a list of keywords for searches, not for each gallari I have?

thanks

marchex · February 9, 2010

anyone?

richpepp · February 9, 2010

Just a quickie, hopefully this will make sense.

You should add descriptive keywords to each photo or gallery to say what is in the picture e.g. car, bicycle, dog, sunset, etc. Then if someone is looking for a picture of a car with a dog on your site then they could type 'car and dog' into the search box (on your site) and they would find all pictures of cars and dogs.

Search engines will also pick up these keywords but then it gets more difficult. Given that there are probably a lot of pictures with cars and dogs on the web just typing 'car and dog' into Google won't get you up there. You will have to do a lot more work to increase your overall ranking of your site so it appears top of the list.

Is that what you were looking for or I have got it wrong?

good luck

Rich

WinsomeWorks · February 9, 2010

marchex wrote:

I've been just working on the appearance of my site and adding a lot of the photos that I have. Just wondering how exactly do the keywords work? If i add them to my gallaries, if someone searches some of the words up in good will my site show up?

or can i add just a list of keywords for searches, not for each gallari I have?

thanks

If you're interested in keywords for Google or that type of search, you can also (or instead) add them to the "Gallery keywords" box inside your "Gallery Settings". However, those work a little differently and I am not clear enough on the differences to give you a detailed answer. Hopefully someone in the know will see this, because I'd like to know more details on how the Gallery keywords work as well. I believe I read somewhere that phrases should be entered there differently than they are entered in your regular keywords. I also am not sure if/how those Gallery keywords get picked up by someone already on your site. I should know, but I don't. Anyone???

richpepp · February 10, 2010

WinsomeWorks wrote:

I also am not sure if/how those Gallery keywords get picked up by someone already on your site.

As far as I can see if you search on your site for a keyword then the galleries with that keyword get listed first in their own group. Then the photos with that keyword get listed separately.

How Google will use gallery keywords is a completely different matter as to Google it is just text on a page (unless SmugMug feeds the Googlebot something special to tell it what the gallery keywords are). For that reason I tend to embed my keywords in photos before uploading wherever possible so that I know that search engines can find them associated with the photo. However keywording photos in SmugMug seems to work equally for being picked up by search engines. I'm not sure that keywording galleries is any better than picking a good gallery title as the gallery title is then put in the title bar for the page which is important.

Hope that makes sense (and is correct)

Rich

marchex · February 18, 2010

Several different posts wtih people saying different things

I first wanted to get all my other stuff done, but now I'm ready to start inserting all my keywords..

I want my site to be as recognized as it can be, such as in web searches though google, etc.

So were exactly should i put keywords? In my gallaries?

let me know, thanks in advance!

richpepp · February 19, 2010

marchex wrote:

Several different posts wtih people saying different things

That's because there was more that one question in your post really and we were trying to answer the different question. It sounds like the most important one is this:

I want my site to be as recognized as it can be, such as in web searches though google, etc.

Unfortunately there is no single easy thing you can do here, you have to do lots of stuff. Everyone wants their site to be at the top of Google searches and some people spend a lot of time making sure that happens. Smugmug already has a bunch of hints here and you need to read all of it including the links. But basically Google cares about relevance which means good captions relevant to each picture, keywords that are relevant to the picture and not too many, good gallery titles and gallery descriptions. The more work you do trying to identify and group your stuff together, the happier Google will be (apparently).

You then also need to increase your site rate by good relevant links in and out.

Good luck, you need to work at it and it doesn't happen instantly but you can get there.

Edit - Here's a link from Andy that just appeared on another thread and that contains good stuff
Maximise Search Engine Findability

Andy · February 19, 2010

richpepp wrote:

Edit - Here's a link from Andy that just appeared on another thread and that contains good stuff
Maximise Search Engine Findability

Rich, that wiki page is a year old.

We use this now:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/search-engines

marchex · February 27, 2010

A new problem arrised has arrised for me... just have a question.

I was just searching my name in google, and on page 2 I came across this link:
http://www.mlech.com/keyword/007#786485605_mJwm8

All my pictures are named for example IMG_5626, 2166, 002... just random numbering... and i realized that when i upload my pictures and was lookig at my "keywords" it was just mostly all numbers.

So why is it that that picture posted above is shown in google? I mean that page has problems and isn't right.

So how can I fix this problem? how can i delete all my keywords (all the pointless random numbers) and can i just in my gallary settings add some keywords which represent my gallary in general.... or just somewhere add keywords in my settings that represent my site if possible?

would like some help with this, thanks.

richpepp · March 1, 2010

I might be able to help with part of this but not all of it.

marchex wrote:

I was just searching my name in google, and on page 2 I came across this link:
http://www.mlech.com/keyword/007#786485605_mJwm8

I have no idea why Google picks up these links but it sometime does.

All my pictures are named for example IMG_5626, 2166, 002... just random numbering... and i realized that when i upload my pictures and was lookig at my "keywords" it was just mostly all numbers.

You probably have Smugmug still set to add keywords from your filenames. You can turn this off by logging in to your site, go to the control panel, then the "Settings" tab. Near the bottom under 'Site Wide Features' you will see a 'Filename Keywording' selection. Set this to disable

how can i delete all my keywords (all the pointless random numbers)

There isn't any quick way to do this in bulk that I know of unfortunately. Maybe someone else knows better. You can delete one keyword at a time by
a. log in
b. go to http://www.mlech.com/keyword/xxx where xxx is the keyword you want such as '007'. This will list all pictures with that keyword
c. Under the Tools menu you can set keywords for multiple pictures. Just use that to delete all xxx keyword (007 in this case). the process will be painful as you have a lot of such keywords.

and can i just in my gallary settings add some keywords which represent my gallary in general

Yes. Under 'Gallery Settings' for each gallery there is an 'Extras' section. In that section you can add keywords for each gallery. While you are there add a good description as well if you don't already have one.

Hopefully that helps. Maybe some other folks have a better way of clearing unused keywords

Rich

marchex · March 2, 2010

thanks for the help, but there is no way I have the time or will be able to do that, I literally have hundreds of numbers... that would take days.

I just simply want to delete all my random keywords (numbers), and I will input some new ones that are actually reltaed to my pictures...

if anyone knows let me know, thanks in advance.

marchex · March 3, 2010

bump, any help will do.

richpepp · March 4, 2010

marchex wrote:

bump, any help will do.

I'm sorry, I can't be of any more help here and I really don't know of a generic way of removing numeric keywords. I estimate that you can do about 3 a minute if you start from http://www.mlech.com/keyword/ and just click on each of the keywords in turn. A couple of hundred would take two hours and it may be easier just to put the radio on, settle down and start clicking :cry

I wish there was a better solution but I suspect that may be the quickest

marchex · March 4, 2010

I think i figured it out actually. If i go into a gallary with all my pictures and click many photos > caption/description tab they all will pop up and I can just scroll through and delete them... after that just add tags to them all...

I think this is the best way.

marchex · March 9, 2010

just a quick question.

I'm adding keywords that represent each photo I'm almost done that.

But in gallary settings there is an option in the extras section "gallary keywords"... if I add words there are those effective or just pointless.

richpepp · March 10, 2010

marchex wrote:

But in gallary settings there is an option in the extras section "gallary keywords"... if I add words there are those effective or just pointless.

I find them quite useful. If you have a whole gallery dedicated to a particular subject and you keyword it appropriately then when people search on your site for that keyword they will find that particular gallery listed first, then the individual photos that have that keyword.

marchex · March 11, 2010

last question regarding keywords, I'm just trying to figure this out exactly right.

I don't want seperate links to images, I've found a few in google for example and the page has CSS problems as I'm using a custom background and all that stuff just for pages with the gallaries not for a few pictures.

Can i just add keywords in the gallary description and no keywords at all for the caption/description part.

thx

richpepp · March 12, 2010

marchex wrote:

I don't want seperate links to images, I've found a few in google for example...

As far as I know you can't control that. Each image has it's own link and if visitors can see the photo then Google (and other engines) will also be able to see the photo and the link unless you are blocking search engines all together for that gallery. My guess is you need to try and track down why the page appears broken. If you post a link to your site that you have found in Google then maybe someone here can help identify why it doesn't work.

Can i just add keywords in the gallary description and no keywords at all for the caption/description part.

You could do but I don't think it will help. Individual photos will still be indexed by search engines but maybe not as well, as the individual photos won't have as much information to identify them.

It will make a difference to how Smugmug finds your images if someone types a keyword into the search box on your site - then only galleries will show. By the same token if the link you have found in Google is a link to a keyword search result for an individual image (the link will have 'keyword' in it somewhere) then yes not keywording photos will help but it will take a couple of months for the old links to disappear and you may find that less of your images appear in internet search engines.

Rich

How exactly do keywords work?

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