Image Search - Again...

jachang

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but it seems like things are going in reverse for me. I did all the SEO things suggested, and when I went to a Google Image search for my site (site:www.jeanachang.com) only 8 thumbnail images came up. Then a week later a couple more, so there was a total of 10 images showing up, but they were all thumbnails from each gallery. But at least I thought things were moving in the right direction.

Yesterday I checked, and there were only 6 images.

I just checked now and it's down to only 3.

What's happening? I just don't know what else I an alter on my site.

richpepp

jachang wrote:

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but it seems like things are going in reverse for me. I did all the SEO things suggested, and when I went to a Google Image search for my site (site:www.jeanachang.com) only 8 thumbnail images came up. Then a week later a couple more, so there was a total of 10 images showing up, but they were all thumbnails from each gallery. But at least I thought things were moving in the right direction.

Yesterday I checked, and there were only 6 images.

I just checked now and it's down to only 3.

'Morning Jean

Yes, I saw that on your site. It's not fun is it? Google had one of it's occasional updates of pagerank last week (I think its 4 times a year) and it threw everything out for a bit. Our photo site no longer shows a pagerank at all although it doesn't seem to affect anything. We lost a bunch of images as well but they are starting to come back now.

Wish I could be of more help . Two questions:

1. Did you manage to blog/get external links in and out at all? - these still seem to be horribly important
2. Have you entered a good description of your site in "SEO > Homepage Meta Description" on your control panel/settings?

jachang

richpepp wrote:

'Morning Jean

Yes, I saw that on your site. It's not fun is it? Google had one of it's occasional updates of pagerank last week (I think its 4 times a year) and it threw everything out for a bit. Our photo site no longer shows a pagerank at all although it doesn't seem to affect anything. We lost a bunch of images as well but they are starting to come back now.

Wish I could be of more help . Two questions:

1. Did you manage to blog/get external links in and out at all? - these still seem to be horribly important
2. Have you entered a good description of your site in "SEO > Homepage Meta Description" on your control panel/settings?

Hi Rich,

1. I'm signing up for Blogger, but I haven't thought up anything to put there yet.

2. This is what's in my meta description:

"Photography: Birds, Wildlife, Flowers, Insects, and Art, by Jean Chang, a "Wilmington, Massachusetts Photographer". Photos taken at the wetlands around my New England home."

It covers almost everything, I think. Should I add/subtract anything?

Strange that my images on SmugMug are affected, but those on Flickr all still come up.

Thank you, Rich. You're always very helpful, and I appreciate it.

jachang

I just remembered something else. On Google it's bad, but on Bing, this is crazy. Look at what I get with "site:www.jeanachang.com" on Bing. The web search is great--has all my stuff, but the image search...aarrggghh!
Almost every one of the images they show are from the SmugMug help pages. I don't see that happening with other SM sites. And to add insult to injury, look whose picture is in the middle of the page! No offense, Andy, but I'd really rather it was mine.

If you go farther down, there are 3 or 4 of my images, but again, just like with Google image search, they only show the teeny thumbnails. It seems like the SE's are only seeing the thumbnails and not the regular images. I can't help but think that my site has something in it that's wrong, but I don't know what or how to fix it.

richpepp

jachang wrote:

1. I'm signing up for Blogger, but I haven't thought up anything to put there yet.

Sounds great. I've also heard that WordPress works well but I imagine that both will do nicely.

my meta description: Should I add/subtract anything?

It looks ok to me. AFAIK the meta description from the control panel is only used if there isn't something more suitable available such as the individual gallery description. I had just seen that a lot of the search results for your site had the generic smugmug description in but I think they had been indexed from before you had made the change.

More info on how to write your description here.

Strange that my images on SmugMug are affected, but those on Flickr all still come up.

. No, that is strange and I've seen similar things with PicasaWeb. I don't get it. I hope you are linking from your Flickr images to the relevant pages on your Smugmug site

The good news is that your site really is being indexed, just that the images aren't making it into the image search part for some reason. 'Carolina Wren Branch Looking Down' picks you out easily but 'Carolina Wren Branch' won't as there are just too many other sites with those keywords available so you aren't considered as interesting as the other sites. Maybe that's why the blog thing works. Why not try linking out to sites specific to the Carolina wren to improve the relevance of that page a bit? I don't know if that particular idea will work but you get the general idea - make the content of your site more compelling and interesting in a textual way as search engines have no idea if your pictures are great or not.

Good luck and stick with it

Rich

richpepp

jachang wrote:

I just remembered something else. On Google it's bad, but on Bing, this is crazy.

We're on the same journey - I saw that as well . For what it's worth I'm not sure that the 'site:' operator works in the same way in Bing, at least I couldn't find it documented that way

Oops, just remembered as well. You should change your signature here (and anywhere else) so that instead of 'Jean Chang' and 'www.jeanachang.com' it is a single link, something like Jean Chang wildlife photography. This not only tells search engines that your site exists but gives them a little bit more info. about what you site is about and every little helps

denisegoldberg

jachang wrote:

1. I'm signing up for Blogger, but I haven't thought up anything to put there yet.

Don't take time to think up what to put there - just start writing, and post photos that link back to your smug site. If you take a look at my blog, some posts are writing, some are just a photo, some are a combination. The important thing is to write, and write fairly often. You don't need to write every day, but set some kind of goal for yourself. Even once a week works. What doesn't work is starting a blog and never posting in it. I will check blogs on sites and if there are never any updates I stop looking - which won't help your SEO any.

See HOW TO match your blog to your smug site (blogger-specific).

If you don't want to customize the blog right now, at least take a look at Adding photos to your blog.

--- Denise

jachang

richpepp wrote:

We're on the same journey - I saw that as well . For what it's worth I'm not sure that the 'site:' operator works in the same way in Bing, at least I couldn't find it documented that way



Oops, just remembered as well. You should change your signature here (and anywhere else) so that instead of 'Jean Chang' and 'www.jeanachang.com' it is a single link, something like Jean Chang wildlife photography. This not only tells search engines that your site exists but gives them a little bit more info. about what you site is about and every little helps

But doesn't that show that something is messed up with my site? Put anyone else's site in Bing Image search with "site:www.sitename.com" and their images come up. On mine the help pages come up. SOMETHING must be messed up.

richpepp

jachang wrote:

But doesn't that show that something is messed up with my site? Put anyone else's site in Bing Image search with "site:www.sitename.com" and their images come up. On mine the help pages come up. SOMETHING must be messed up.

Is that true just for SmugMug sites? I know that for our site (site : photos.miseast.org) we get some help pages too. Borealphoto does well but a lot of his images are from his blog . Moonriver photography has some help page links in there are well. I don't think it means that your site is messed up in particular.

...and Denise's post - awesome. Wish I could be that concise

edit: I see you've changed you sig but the upper of the two links doesn't work as it links to 'http://www.dgrin.com/www.jeanachang.com'. The Jean Chang Photography link is correct

jachang

richpepp wrote:

Is that true just for SmugMug sites? I know that for our site (site : photos.miseast.org) we get some help pages too. Borealphoto does well but a lot of his images are from his blog . Moonriver photography has some help page links in there are well. I don't think it means that your site is messed up in particular.

...and Denise's post - awesome. Wish I could be that concise

edit: I see you've changed you sig but the upper of the two links doesn't work as it links to 'http://www.dgrin.com/www.jeanachang.com'. The Jean Chang Photography link is correct

Hi Rich,

That's strange about my link. I didn't do anything to change that one. I just "re-entered" it, so I hope it will now work correctly.

Thanks again for your help.

jachang

denisegoldberg wrote:

Don't take time to think up what to put there - just start writing, and post photos that link back to your smug site. If you take a look at my blog, some posts are writing, some are just a photo, some are a combination. The important thing is to write, and write fairly often. You don't need to write every day, but set some kind of goal for yourself. Even once a week works. What doesn't work is starting a blog and never posting in it. I will check blogs on sites and if there are never any updates I stop looking - which won't help your SEO any.

See HOW TO match your blog to your smug site (blogger-specific).

If you don't want to customize the blog right now, at least take a look at Adding photos to your blog.

--- Denise

Hi Denise,

Thanks so much for such a helpful post! Okay, I threw together a very fast blog here: http://jeanachang.blogspot.com/
Am I on the right track?

Thanks again,

richpepp

Looking good but I think you missed the stuff about adding photos to your blog. You want to get the photo linked back to your site as well I think

edit: You're almost there. You are pulling in the correct image in but the link is to a different photo (the robin). I think you need you use the same URL for both img and href

edit: Done. And for the final last squidgen of love from Google (apparently), move the picture up above between the text 'It's springtime, and the warblers...' and the title. Again in another google vid they said that they prefer it that if someone clicks through in a search that they can see the image that they clicked on immediately without having to scroll down at all. Right now what you have is ok on most screens but not on slightly smaller ones (I'm Scottish and every penny counts ). As always, I've seen lots of examples where this isn't done but Google say they like it so....