im not not sure what that all means, is it good or bad?
a lag of 2 weeks seems a long time and it was downloaded again yesterday?
Its not good or bad. Its just the normal lag of Google doing their indexing and things being out-of-sync. As a system this is designed around having this type of thing happen. Webmaster Tools is just giving you some insight into the inner-workings of what Google is actually doing, but this is okay. Especially if the errors are from 2 weeks ago.
My web no image indexed by Google, but I have all correct parameters in the webtools to see Google in the final line of robots created by smugmug is written: User-agent: *
Disallow: / which means that blocks any search engine robot.
Why is blouqea seekers?, Why in the image search does not show any pictures of my site www.luisjuan.com ?
I have posted questions in the past on here regarding our sitemaps...not had a reply.
Just checked in again to see what else is being said, months later...hmmmmn
I too have the same problem, & am wondering whats wrong with my sitemap that smugmug have submitted to google?
I found smugmugs message in there too...I didn't think that was cute. (I can't work for you guys, I live in NZ)
Anyway!, can I access my sitemap, so I can submit a current sitemap of my website to my google profile please??
Is this possible?
I have posted questions in the past on here regarding our sitemaps...not had a reply.
Just checked in again to see what else is being said, months later...hmmmmn
I too have the same problem, & am wondering whats wrong with my sitemap that smugmug have submitted to google?
I found smugmugs message in there too...I didn't think that was cute. (I can't work for you guys, I live in NZ)
Anyway!, can I access my sitemap, so I can submit a current sitemap of my website to my google profile please??
Is this possible?
Thanks
Tabitha
Sorry that we missed your question. You can access your sitemap here, it was last updated today. http://www.tabithawoodsphotography.com/sitemap-index.xml The sitemap is automatically generated by SmugMug, you needn't do anything. What is google saying about your site map, exactly, and I can hopefully help and answer your question. Thanks!
I'm pretty new to the Google webmaster tools, so forgive my likely elementary questions:
How many I get my crawling statistics? I've searched through Google Help on this, and it wasn't (big surprise) very helpful at all...
Is GWT simply informative, or are there things I can do through it to improve my SEO?
My name is Greg. New to the forum. I have had a site for a few years. "FasterPhotography.com" I have been working on it pretty regularly. It has not been a break even venture so far. Recently, I have been putting a lot more effort into understanding why it is not working. Is it my work, my site, or SmugMug? I have been reading many of the forums and have emailed the help desk many times.
I have done many of the suggestions in the forums. One red flag that I came across in the this Forum, It appeared that a number of people who had multiple sites were saying that they could find there images and content more easily on there personal sites than on SmugMug. In an effort to understand the big picture more accurately, I decided to run some tests on various search engines using an exact keyword in my site. I tried to pick something in the middle. Not too common and not to unique. I used “Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito”. I tried web and image searches. I was looking for my site, but also tried to pay attention to how many SmugMug sites I recognized. Custom web addresses were difficult to recognize, but I did pay attention to”.smugmug.com” addresses. I was trying to understand whether it was something to do with some kind of SmugMug issue, or if it was an individual site owner issue?
I found that if I did not include 'SmugMug" in the search phrase, hits on my site were minimal (page 20'ish, as well as other ".SmugMug.com sites". Same for image searches. Virtually no results unless you Use ".SmugMug" in the search. I did recognize a few Smug Mug sites with custom addresses that were hitting consistently, but had no way to quantify these sites as a whole. The way I see it, if we can not see the issue accurately, we will not know what to change to fix it. I wonder if anyone else has done this kind of research, or would willing too? Any thoughts on the results?
I am not proposing that SmugMug have a special relationship with search engines. But from what I have read there are many factors influencing search engine results. I am confident that their are factors on SmugMugs end that are influencing this outcome. When I web search any of the search engines it produces very few SmugMug results unless I include “SmugMug in the search phrase. When searching Images, it does not produce any results without using SmugMug in the search phrase. Not just mine. No SmugMug results in image searches for a common search phrases. Many other photo hosting sites produce many hits in image searches. This seems to reflect a more global issue than just the SEO of my site. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Greg
Search Results:
Google Web: Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
Recognized 1 Smug Mug gallery on page 31. No sites with “.SmugMug.com” in the address. No hits on my site/gallery.
Google Images Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
One .smugmug.com” image on page 20. This was the only.smugmug.com site in 34 pages. No hits on my site/gallery/image.
Google Web: Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
First 5 hits were .SmugMug.com sites. 2 on page 2, Found my Gallery on the bottom of page 3
Google Image: Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
Many .”SmugMug.com” hits. 33 pages no hits on my site.
Yahoo Web- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
No .Smugmug.com hits. My gallery hit on the bottom of page 18
Yahoo Image- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
10 pages no .Smugmug.com sites. Recognized one SmugMug site w/custom web address on the 1st page. No hits on my site. Yahoo to difficult to search images. Only searched 10 pages.
Yahoo Web- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
My gallery hit on top of page 1. One other .Smugmug.com hit on page 1
Yahoo Image- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
One page of results. No .Smugmug.com hits. 5 flickr hits
Bing Web- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
Recognized 1 SmugMug w/custom web address on page 5. My site hit on the top of page 20.
Bing Image- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
Looked through several hundred images. No .Smugmug.com hits.
Bing Image- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
29 results. No .Smugmug.com results. No hits on my site
Meta Crawler Web- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
21 pages. All results. No hits on .SmugMug.com. No hits on site.
Meta Crawler Images- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
23 pages. Recognized one site with custom web name on page 5. No .SmugMug.com hits. No hits on my site.
Meta Crawler Web- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
My web site hit first page. Recognized one site with custom web name on 1st page. Number of .SmugMug.com hits on first page.
Meta Crawler Image- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
4 results. No hits on my site/image. 1 “.SmugMug.com” hit.
AOL Web- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
30 pages. No hits on my site. No.Smugmug.com hits
AOL Image- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
20 pages. No hit on site. 1 .Smugmug.com hit on page 7.
AOL Web- Search Word/Key Word Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
My site hit middle of the 1st page. Several other >Smumug.com hits.
AOL Image- Search Word/Key Word Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
20 pages. No hits on site. Many .SmugMug.com hits on many pages.
Grego, In general I think there are some issues with the way that SmugMug sites are optimized for the web, it could be done more effectively. BUT that said, I find that my SmugMug site typically ranks within the top ten for most of my primary keyword phrases on Google, without including the keyword "smugmug".
Are you assigning keywords to your images and/or galleries? Another feature that I think has really helped my rankings is the inclusion of the Top Keywords widget at the bottom of my home page. These keyword text links help Google decide which specific keywords are most important on a site, as long as they are relevant to the page content that they link to.
One warning... don't try to optimize your site for general keywords... "fishing", "camping", "sunflowers", "babies" etc. You'll never rank well for those. Go as specific as you can with your keywords without getting too too specific (you won't have many searches for keywords that are too specific). I've found that I can rank well using more regionalized keywords (school names, park names, local events, etc.)
Also, you should check out the suggestions on this page... Search Engines and SEO. This has some good advice, also download the PDF that they refer to on this page. Good luck!
When I web search any of the search engines it produces very few SmugMug results unless I include “SmugMug in the search phrase. When searching Images, it does not produce any results without using SmugMug in the search phrase. Not just mine. No SmugMug results in image searches for a common search phrases. Many other photo hosting sites produce many hits in image searches. This seems to reflect a more global issue than just the SEO of my site. Any thoughts?
I appreciate the response. In my research there were a few Smugmug sites with custom addressees that were hitting regularly. I just thought it was very odd not to see smug mug images in image searches?
I have gone into key words in each gallery. In choosing key words I for each Gallery I tried to think of all the words that someone might use to find that subject. So maybe it does not work that way, and I should be much more selective in choosing Key words? So could use some feedback on this?
Yes, I did try to choose words that were specific to the subject, whether that was a place, event, location. Like you said, not too common, and not to unique.
Thanks for the feedback and extensive testing. I'm not a search engine expert and can't give you any specific inside into the workings of Google & co. I just want to point out some observations. For the above mentioned search for Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito there are about 1,500,000 results according to Google web search. That's a huge pile of results and lots of the first results seem to be all about the places which probably have tons of relevant information and other pages linking to them.
Checking on your site, you have about 180 photos that have both keywords: http://www.fasterphotography.com/keyword/golden%20gate%20bridge-Sausalito#1479746201_SZ3g2b3
It looks like so far you only added keywords to your photos. You should try to add meaningful and relevant captions as well.
In addition, it's very important to have other relevant sites link to your site / photos. A good starting point would be a blog where you can highlight certain photos.
From what I heard, Google Image doesn't index everything like Google Web does - I'm guessing it's a more select process of where they mainly index well ranked sites. All in all I'd say, it's easy to get added to the bulk of Google web search, but getting anywhere near the first pages or on Google Image search takes a lot more effort (in working together with other relevant sites on having them link to you etc.).
As Chip mentioned, check out our SEO guide and help page for additional suggestions.
Grego, it kind of works that way, but search rankings are (as you've mentioned) based on so many other things. Much of what is going on in search today is based on personalized search results, the location of the searcher (based on their IP address), and what their previous searched have been (if they are logged in to a Google account).
For example, if you're in Sausalito, and you search for a broad term like "BBQ Ribs", the search results will be slanted toward "BBQ ribs" in Sausalito. If you've recently searched for restaurants, then the search results will me more specific toward restaurants who offer BBQ Ribs. The important part to remember is that keyword rankings will differ based on search history and what the serachers location is.
But, when it comes to selecting keyword phrases, what I do (if I'm not sure) is to use the Google Keyword Tool. This provides some insight in terms of which keywords are more popular than others. I wouldn't take the search volume numbers too seriously, just use them to compare the popularity of one keyword phrase to another based on an "Exact Match" (not a phrase or broad match).
I have gone into key words in each gallery. In choosing key words I for each Gallery I tried to think of all the words that someone might use to find that subject. So maybe it does not work that way, and I should be much more selective in choosing Key words? So could use some feedback on this?
Thanks for your input Sebastian. By adding descriptions you are referring to gallery descriptions? Does it affect search engines algorithms, or the way rank sites to have descriptions in galleries?
Thanks for the feedback and extensive testing. I'm not a search engine expert and can't give you any specific inside into the workings of Google & co. I just want to point out some observations. For the above mentioned search for Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito there are about 1,500,000 results according to Google web search. That's a huge pile of results and lots of the first results seem to be all about the places which probably have tons of relevant information and other pages linking to them.
Checking on your site, you have about 180 photos that have both keywords: http://www.fasterphotography.com/keyword/golden%20gate%20bridge-Sausalito#1479746201_SZ3g2b3
It looks like so far you only added keywords to your photos. You should try to add meaningful and relevant captions as well.
In addition, it's very important to have other relevant sites link to your site / photos. A good starting point would be a blog where you can highlight certain photos.
From what I heard, Google Image doesn't index everything like Google Web does - I'm guessing it's a more select process of where they mainly index well ranked sites. All in all I'd say, it's easy to get added to the bulk of Google web search, but getting anywhere near the first pages or on Google Image search takes a lot more effort (in working together with other relevant sites on having them link to you etc.).
As Chip mentioned, check out our SEO guide and help page for additional suggestions.
Thanks Chip, The keyword tool is useful. I can see some mistakes I am making. I should not have combined different subjects. It looks like more smaller more specific galleries would get better results? One gallery for Golden Gate Bridge, and one for Sausalito.
Also as i review the content in the gallery, I see a lot of redundant generic images. With as little time as people spend on sites, I think fewer high quality, and /or unique images would be more effective?
Grego, it kind of works that way, but search rankings are (as you've mentioned) based on so many other things. Much of what is going on in search today is based on personalized search results, the location of the searcher (based on their IP address), and what their previous searched have been (if they are logged in to a Google account).
For example, if you're in Sausalito, and you search for a broad term like "BBQ Ribs", the search results will be slanted toward "BBQ ribs" in Sausalito. If you've recently searched for restaurants, then the search results will me more specific toward restaurants who offer BBQ Ribs. The important part to remember is that keyword rankings will differ based on search history and what the serachers location is.
But, when it comes to selecting keyword phrases, what I do (if I'm not sure) is to use the Google Keyword Tool. This provides some insight in terms of which keywords are more popular than others. I wouldn't take the search volume numbers too seriously, just use them to compare the popularity of one keyword phrase to another based on an "Exact Match" (not a phrase or broad match).
Thanks for your input Sebastian. By adding descriptions you are referring to gallery descriptions? Does it affect search engines algorithms, or the way rank sites to have descriptions in galleries?
I referred to captions for individual photos, but gallery descriptions can help, too. I don't think you can make a general statement that pages with captions and descriptions are ranked higher. It gives search engines more information to use and it may also depend on what content you add.
Don't forget about relevant external sites linking to you. Blogs are a good way to help with that. That's what one of the key elements of Google's page was when they started out.
Greg, this is a bit more subjective. Personally I believe in the "less is more" approach, and whenever I add new images to my galleries, I'm always removing the photos that I feel are the weakest of the grouping. It's hard to do because sometimes my likes and dislikes do not match those of my viewers, but if you have very similar images (same subject, angle, cropping), I personally would remove all but one to give it more importance and value.
Also as i review the content in the gallery, I see a lot of redundant generic images. With as little time as people spend on sites, I think fewer high quality, and /or unique images would be more effective?
Greg
Thanks Chip, The keyword tool is useful. I can see some mistakes I am making. I should not have combined different subjects. It looks like more smaller more specific galleries would get better results? One gallery for Golden Gate Bridge, and one for Sausalito.
Also as i review the content in the gallery, I see a lot of redundant generic images. With as little time as people spend on sites, I think fewer high quality, and /or unique images would be more effective?
Thanks,
Greg
You could have more specific galleries perhaps, but instead of always approaching it from a geographical specificity, you could think of other categories for your galleries. For instance, you could have a gallery of "Bridges" or "Coastal Sunsets" or "West Coast Rock Formations" or "Architecture of the ___ Valley", or "Plants of ____ " In other words, that gives you more flexibility in cross-referencing various interest areas someone may be searching on. Now that we can have Smart Galleries or Collected Photos, there's a lot more capability to do this kind of thing easily on our sites. So a particular photo may be in your "Sausolito" gallery. But you could have a select gallery of some type of architecture & in that one, include a few of your best "Sausolito" photos. I do a lot of this in my travel, architecture, art, and nature galleries & now also have a "Portfolio" category to show some of my best overall work. Two of my favorite galleries are collected photos of "Doors", and another one of "Windows". Those photos are from all over the world, but the captions on each one usually tells you where it's from.
The other thing that I would certainly think would help a lot on your site, not only with search results but also with general attraction & understanding of what one is viewing, is along the lines of what Sebastian said. You have no captions, no gallery descriptions, and from what I can tell, not even gallery titles when you're inside the gallery! (except in the URL) That gives a search engine much less to go on. And when I was inside your galleries, I didn't even know what it was I was looking at. I don't look at keywords to find stuff on other people's sites. I look for the gallery title, gallery description, and captions. It's odd, because I see your gallery titles on the sub-category pages, but then I get in the gallery & they're not there. I have to go back to remember what it is I'm looking at. So yeah, I'd start there so that people who find your stuff through a search engine will immediately see captions / titles /descriptions & know they've found what they're looking for. I find un-captioned photos to be a real frustration when doing Image search, because I see the image, but have no way to know for sure if what I'm seeing is what I'd been looking for. I don't trust the search engine if I don't see the words in front of me.
Hi Chip,
Yes, I agree, I have experienced people choosing images that did not mean anything to me. But I have come to realize that my galleries are too big and redundant. I have to get them down to a core of strong images as you are describing?
Greg, this is a bit more subjective. Personally I believe in the "less is more" approach, and whenever I add new images to my galleries, I'm always removing the photos that I feel are the weakest of the grouping. It's hard to do because sometimes my likes and dislikes do not match those of my viewers, but if you have very similar images (same subject, angle, cropping), I personally would remove all but one to give it more importance and value.
vegaguy, what kind of info are looking for? If you just want to see what they look like, you can go to these URL's:
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-index.xml
(This is an index sitemap that tells the search bots where all of the sitemaps for your site are located)
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-base.xml.gz
(This is the actual sitemap that tells the search bots what your pages and keyword URLs are)
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-galleryimages.xml.gz
(This is the image sitemap that provides the search bots with more information about your images, size, urls, etc..)
You'll need to unzip the last two types of sitemaps (those that end with .gz) in order to view them. If you really want to see more information about how your sitemaps are performing, you'll need to setup a Google Webmaster account. There's a good overview for doing this at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=8465
vegaguy, what kind of info are looking for? If you just want to see what they look like, you can go to these URL's:
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-index.xml
(This is an index sitemap that tells the search bots where all of the sitemaps for your site are located)
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-base.xml.gz
(This is the actual sitemap that tells the search bots what your pages and keyword URLs are)
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-galleryimages.xml.gz
(This is the image sitemap that provides the search bots with more information about your images, size, urls, etc..)
You'll need to unzip the last two types of sitemaps (those that end with .gz) in order to view them. If you really want to see more information about how your sitemaps are performing, you'll need to setup a Google Webmaster account. There's a good overview for doing this at: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=8465
right on chipj! thanks!!! Any ideas on Blogger sitemaps???
stay tuned Jean while we make changes to sitemaps. These errors will go away.
Andy, Still receiving errors on /sitemap-galleries.xml.gz and /sitemap-images.xml.gz. /sitemap-base.xml.gz & /sitemap-index.xml are working fine.
Thoughts on how to fix these? www.Shofoto.com
________________________________________________________________________________
“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, and the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited." - Edward Steichen
Andy, Still receiving errors on /sitemap-galleries.xml.gz and /sitemap-images.xml.gz. /sitemap-base.xml.gz & /sitemap-index.xml are working fine.
Thoughts on how to fix these? www.Shofoto.com
Exactly and precisely, what errors? Screengrabs help us help you.
Exactly and precisely, what errors? Screengrabs help us help you.
Here is the screenshot.
The errors are 404 errors:
General HTTP error: 404 not found
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.
________________________________________________________________________________
“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, and the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited." - Edward Steichen
Here is the screenshot.
The errors are 404 errors:
General HTTP error: 404 not found
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.
I suspect some sort of communications glitch, it's showing up here just fine http://www.shofoto.com/sitemap-index.xml
give Google some time to fetch it again. Or you can resubmit if you like.
In post number 162 of this thread back in May there was reference made to a 403 error involving the /include tag.
My 503 error has left, but the 403 still remains. Is this still being looked at?
Do I still have to be patient in hopes that it will one day go away?
I assumed it would be gone by now.
I believe it causes the http error.
YOu can ignore it, there's absolutely nothing in /include that google needs to know about. Thanks.
Comments
a lag of 2 weeks seems a long time and it was downloaded again yesterday?
Its not good or bad. Its just the normal lag of Google doing their indexing and things being out-of-sync. As a system this is designed around having this type of thing happen. Webmaster Tools is just giving you some insight into the inner-workings of what Google is actually doing, but this is okay. Especially if the errors are from 2 weeks ago.
- Greg
No.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Disallow: / which means that blocks any search engine robot.
Why is blouqea seekers?, Why in the image search does not show any pictures of my site www.luisjuan.com ?
I have posted questions in the past on here regarding our sitemaps...not had a reply.
Just checked in again to see what else is being said, months later...hmmmmn
I too have the same problem, & am wondering whats wrong with my sitemap that smugmug have submitted to google?
I found smugmugs message in there too...I didn't think that was cute. (I can't work for you guys, I live in NZ)
Anyway!, can I access my sitemap, so I can submit a current sitemap of my website to my google profile please??
Is this possible?
Thanks
Tabitha
Sorry that we missed your question. You can access your sitemap here, it was last updated today. http://www.tabithawoodsphotography.com/sitemap-index.xml The sitemap is automatically generated by SmugMug, you needn't do anything. What is google saying about your site map, exactly, and I can hopefully help and answer your question. Thanks!
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Hello :-)
I am getting an error showing on the bottom sitemap in google (403 not found)
Which is the correct site map of these two for Smugmug?
/sitemap-base.xml.gz
/sitemap-index.xml
http://www.business-photography.biz/keyword
It is saying that google cannot follow it.
Is that important, considering it is the keyword link?
How many I get my crawling statistics? I've searched through Google Help on this, and it wasn't (big surprise) very helpful at all...
Is GWT simply informative, or are there things I can do through it to improve my SEO?
Thanks in advance for the help!
Proofing: clients.captured-photos.com
Facebook: Like Me || Twitter: Follow Me
Gear: Lots of Nikon bodies & glass, an office full of tools and toys
I have done many of the suggestions in the forums. One red flag that I came across in the this Forum, It appeared that a number of people who had multiple sites were saying that they could find there images and content more easily on there personal sites than on SmugMug. In an effort to understand the big picture more accurately, I decided to run some tests on various search engines using an exact keyword in my site. I tried to pick something in the middle. Not too common and not to unique. I used “Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito”. I tried web and image searches. I was looking for my site, but also tried to pay attention to how many SmugMug sites I recognized. Custom web addresses were difficult to recognize, but I did pay attention to”.smugmug.com” addresses. I was trying to understand whether it was something to do with some kind of SmugMug issue, or if it was an individual site owner issue?
I found that if I did not include 'SmugMug" in the search phrase, hits on my site were minimal (page 20'ish, as well as other ".SmugMug.com sites". Same for image searches. Virtually no results unless you Use ".SmugMug" in the search. I did recognize a few Smug Mug sites with custom addresses that were hitting consistently, but had no way to quantify these sites as a whole. The way I see it, if we can not see the issue accurately, we will not know what to change to fix it. I wonder if anyone else has done this kind of research, or would willing too? Any thoughts on the results?
I am not proposing that SmugMug have a special relationship with search engines. But from what I have read there are many factors influencing search engine results. I am confident that their are factors on SmugMugs end that are influencing this outcome. When I web search any of the search engines it produces very few SmugMug results unless I include “SmugMug in the search phrase. When searching Images, it does not produce any results without using SmugMug in the search phrase. Not just mine. No SmugMug results in image searches for a common search phrases. Many other photo hosting sites produce many hits in image searches. This seems to reflect a more global issue than just the SEO of my site. Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Greg
Search Results:
Google Web: Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
Recognized 1 Smug Mug gallery on page 31. No sites with “.SmugMug.com” in the address. No hits on my site/gallery.
Google Images Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
One .smugmug.com” image on page 20. This was the only.smugmug.com site in 34 pages. No hits on my site/gallery/image.
Google Web: Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
First 5 hits were .SmugMug.com sites. 2 on page 2, Found my Gallery on the bottom of page 3
Google Image: Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
Many .”SmugMug.com” hits. 33 pages no hits on my site.
Yahoo Web- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
No .Smugmug.com hits. My gallery hit on the bottom of page 18
Yahoo Image- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
10 pages no .Smugmug.com sites. Recognized one SmugMug site w/custom web address on the 1st page. No hits on my site. Yahoo to difficult to search images. Only searched 10 pages.
Yahoo Web- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
My gallery hit on top of page 1. One other .Smugmug.com hit on page 1
Yahoo Image- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
One page of results. No .Smugmug.com hits. 5 flickr hits
Bing Web- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
Recognized 1 SmugMug w/custom web address on page 5. My site hit on the top of page 20.
Bing Image- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
Looked through several hundred images. No .Smugmug.com hits.
Bing Web- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
Bing Image- Search Word/Key Word: Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
29 results. No .Smugmug.com results. No hits on my site
Meta Crawler Web- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
21 pages. All results. No hits on .SmugMug.com. No hits on site.
Meta Crawler Images- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
23 pages. Recognized one site with custom web name on page 5. No .SmugMug.com hits. No hits on my site.
Meta Crawler Web- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
My web site hit first page. Recognized one site with custom web name on 1st page. Number of .SmugMug.com hits on first page.
Meta Crawler Image- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
4 results. No hits on my site/image. 1 “.SmugMug.com” hit.
AOL Web- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
30 pages. No hits on my site. No.Smugmug.com hits
AOL Image- Search Word/Key Word Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito
20 pages. No hit on site. 1 .Smugmug.com hit on page 7.
AOL Web- Search Word/Key Word Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
My site hit middle of the 1st page. Several other >Smumug.com hits.
AOL Image- Search Word/Key Word Gate Bridge & Sausalito SmugMug
20 pages. No hits on site. Many .SmugMug.com hits on many pages.
Are you assigning keywords to your images and/or galleries? Another feature that I think has really helped my rankings is the inclusion of the Top Keywords widget at the bottom of my home page. These keyword text links help Google decide which specific keywords are most important on a site, as long as they are relevant to the page content that they link to.
One warning... don't try to optimize your site for general keywords... "fishing", "camping", "sunflowers", "babies" etc. You'll never rank well for those. Go as specific as you can with your keywords without getting too too specific (you won't have many searches for keywords that are too specific). I've found that I can rank well using more regionalized keywords (school names, park names, local events, etc.)
Also, you should check out the suggestions on this page... Search Engines and SEO. This has some good advice, also download the PDF that they refer to on this page. Good luck!
I have gone into key words in each gallery. In choosing key words I for each Gallery I tried to think of all the words that someone might use to find that subject. So maybe it does not work that way, and I should be much more selective in choosing Key words? So could use some feedback on this?
Yes, I did try to choose words that were specific to the subject, whether that was a place, event, location. Like you said, not too common, and not to unique.
Greg
Thanks for the feedback and extensive testing. I'm not a search engine expert and can't give you any specific inside into the workings of Google & co. I just want to point out some observations. For the above mentioned search for Golden Gate Bridge & Sausalito there are about 1,500,000 results according to Google web search. That's a huge pile of results and lots of the first results seem to be all about the places which probably have tons of relevant information and other pages linking to them.
Checking on your site, you have about 180 photos that have both keywords:
http://www.fasterphotography.com/keyword/golden%20gate%20bridge-Sausalito#1479746201_SZ3g2b3
It looks like so far you only added keywords to your photos. You should try to add meaningful and relevant captions as well.
In addition, it's very important to have other relevant sites link to your site / photos. A good starting point would be a blog where you can highlight certain photos.
From what I heard, Google Image doesn't index everything like Google Web does - I'm guessing it's a more select process of where they mainly index well ranked sites. All in all I'd say, it's easy to get added to the bulk of Google web search, but getting anywhere near the first pages or on Google Image search takes a lot more effort (in working together with other relevant sites on having them link to you etc.).
As Chip mentioned, check out our SEO guide and help page for additional suggestions.
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For example, if you're in Sausalito, and you search for a broad term like "BBQ Ribs", the search results will be slanted toward "BBQ ribs" in Sausalito. If you've recently searched for restaurants, then the search results will me more specific toward restaurants who offer BBQ Ribs. The important part to remember is that keyword rankings will differ based on search history and what the serachers location is.
But, when it comes to selecting keyword phrases, what I do (if I'm not sure) is to use the Google Keyword Tool. This provides some insight in terms of which keywords are more popular than others. I wouldn't take the search volume numbers too seriously, just use them to compare the popularity of one keyword phrase to another based on an "Exact Match" (not a phrase or broad match).
Thanks,
Greg
Also as i review the content in the gallery, I see a lot of redundant generic images. With as little time as people spend on sites, I think fewer high quality, and /or unique images would be more effective?
Thanks,
Greg
Don't forget about relevant external sites linking to you. Blogs are a good way to help with that. That's what one of the key elements of Google's page was when they started out.
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The other thing that I would certainly think would help a lot on your site, not only with search results but also with general attraction & understanding of what one is viewing, is along the lines of what Sebastian said. You have no captions, no gallery descriptions, and from what I can tell, not even gallery titles when you're inside the gallery! (except in the URL) That gives a search engine much less to go on. And when I was inside your galleries, I didn't even know what it was I was looking at. I don't look at keywords to find stuff on other people's sites. I look for the gallery title, gallery description, and captions. It's odd, because I see your gallery titles on the sub-category pages, but then I get in the gallery & they're not there. I have to go back to remember what it is I'm looking at. So yeah, I'd start there so that people who find your stuff through a search engine will immediately see captions / titles /descriptions & know they've found what they're looking for. I find un-captioned photos to be a real frustration when doing Image search, because I see the image, but have no way to know for sure if what I'm seeing is what I'd been looking for. I don't trust the search engine if I don't see the words in front of me.
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Yes, I agree, I have experienced people choosing images that did not mean anything to me. But I have come to realize that my galleries are too big and redundant. I have to get them down to a core of strong images as you are describing?
Greg
http://www.johnparliphotography.com/
http://www.johnparliphotography.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joliet-IL/John-Parli-Photography/235669552864
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnparliphotography-joliet_photographer/
https://twitter.com/johnparliphoto
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-index.xml
(This is an index sitemap that tells the search bots where all of the sitemaps for your site are located)
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-base.xml.gz
(This is the actual sitemap that tells the search bots what your pages and keyword URLs are)
http://www.[your site]/sitemap-galleryimages.xml.gz
(This is the image sitemap that provides the search bots with more information about your images, size, urls, etc..)
You'll need to unzip the last two types of sitemaps (those that end with .gz) in order to view them. If you really want to see more information about how your sitemaps are performing, you'll need to setup a Google Webmaster account. There's a good overview for doing this at:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=8465
right on chipj! thanks!!! Any ideas on Blogger sitemaps???
http://www.johnparliphotography.com/
http://www.johnparliphotography.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joliet-IL/John-Parli-Photography/235669552864
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnparliphotography-joliet_photographer/
https://twitter.com/johnparliphoto
http://www.google.com/search?q=blogger+sitemaps+2011
Andy, Still receiving errors on /sitemap-galleries.xml.gz and /sitemap-images.xml.gz. /sitemap-base.xml.gz & /sitemap-index.xml are working fine.
Thoughts on how to fix these?
www.Shofoto.com
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Exactly and precisely, what errors? Screengrabs help us help you.
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The errors are 404 errors:
General HTTP error: 404 not found
We encountered an error while trying to access your Sitemap. Please ensure your Sitemap follows our guidelines and can be accessed at the location you provided and then resubmit.
“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, and the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited." - Edward Steichen
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http://www.shofoto.com/sitemap-index.xml
give Google some time to fetch it again. Or you can resubmit if you like.
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YOu can ignore it, there's absolutely nothing in /include that google needs to know about. Thanks.
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