Improve SEO with title under each thumbnail

pgman

Hi,

I'm trying to lobby to get the following feature added:

Option display the title of each image under each thumbnail. This will significantly improve Google & Bing SEO.

BTW: Photoshelter does it.

Thanks

jfriend

pgman wrote: »

Hi,

I'm trying to lobby to get the following feature added:

Option display the title of each image under each thumbnail. This will significantly improve Google & Bing SEO.

BTW: Photoshelter does it.

Thanks

The thunbnail view already puts the caption under each thumbnail. The Smugmug view already puts the caption on both the title and alt tags for each thumbnail. I think the info is already there for each search engine to use.

richpepp

jfriend wrote: »

I think the info is already there for each search engine to use.

Yep, jfriend is correct as far as I know and certainly the last time I checked although I think some work has happened in that area since then. Remember that Google (and presumably other search engines) don't 'see' exactly the same as you do. They get a view optimised to give them more info. about each photo. Try Google webmaster tools and 'fetch as Googlebot' to see exactly what they get shown

Andy

jfriend wrote: »

The thunbnail view already puts the caption under each thumbnail. The Smugmug view already puts the caption on both the title and alt tags for each thumbnail. I think the info is already there for each search engine to use.

And Googlebot sees a totally different view of your page than we humans see. The info is there for Googlebot, in an easily digestible form that it likes

Andy

pgman wrote: »

Hi,

I'm trying to lobby to get the following feature added:

Option display the title of each image under each thumbnail. This will significantly improve Google & Bing SEO.

BTW: Photoshelter does it.

Thanks

HI, I also answered you on our feedback site. See my post just above, thanks

pgman

jfriend wrote: »

The thunbnail view already puts the caption under each thumbnail. The Smugmug view already puts the caption on both the title and alt tags for each thumbnail. I think the info is already there for each search engine to use.

Sorry, but where? How do I set that up?

Here's my gallery: http://photos.foto-biz.com/People/Photographers/16543273_ND7Jp#1245608032_frWDG

How do I add the title under each thumbnail? That would be wonderful.

Thanks

jfriend

pgman wrote: »

Sorry, but where? How do I set that up?

Here's my gallery: http://photos.foto-biz.com/People/Photographers/16543273_ND7Jp#1245608032_frWDG

How do I add the title under each thumbnail? That would be wonderful.

Thanks

In gallery settings, set the gallery style to Thumbnail. Unfortunately, this only shows the first part of your caption and most of your captions all look the same at the front. In any case, this info is already in your page for SEO (on the alt tag and title tag).

pgman

Andy wrote: »

And Googlebot sees a totally different view of your page than we humans see. The info is there for Googlebot, in an easily digestible form that it likes

Actually, no it's not. The quality control team at the London Google clinic explained that Google has changed its policy: "It's all about the user experience" and title tag/alt tag brings nothing to the user experience. They are still needed but it's only a suggestion to Google of what I would like.

Fetching as Googlebot doesn't help!

1. Googlebot has nothing to do with the indexing! Googlebot only retrieve the html page of the web page. Googlebot doesn't retrieve any image.
2. After Googlebot has retrieved the page, Google then separates the links from all the other html tags.
3. If Google deems it important enough it will put the text in the index.
4. Googlebot-image will retrieve the images if Google deems it worthwhile.


There may be other tools, but I use Chrome (Google's web browser). Here are the steps to see what Google is doing to my SmugMug gallery (only works with Chrome, as far as I know, unless Firefox has a Google cache plugin):

1. in the address bar enter: http://photos.foto-biz.com/People/Photographers/16543273_ND7Jp#1245608032_frWDG a gallery of photographers
2. in chrome change the address from: http://photos.foto-biz.com/People/Photographers/16543273_ND7Jp#1245608032_frWDG to "cache:http://photos.foto-biz.com/People/Photographers/16543273_ND7Jp#1245608032_frWDG" (add the word "cache:" in front of the http:) see the difference? All the thumbnails are gone. Google recognize only the first photo (kind of, see item 3)
3. At the top right, click on "Text-only version". Now, this is what's in Google's index.

So back to my original question, can we have an enhancement in the pipeline to display the full title under each thumbnail? It will make a huge difference in SEO.

caroline

I'm intrigued by this post - first of all when was the London Google Clinic you are referring to and is there any reference to this online anywhere?

I'm assuming that the points below 1-3 are what Google stated at the Clinic?

Can you reference a photograpy site where the images ARE dealt with in the way you are requesting?

I've tried looking at other sites (not Smugmug) and they all appear the same as our SM sites.

Looking forward to hearing more.
Caroline

pgman wrote: »

Actually, no it's not. The quality control team at the London Google clinic explained that Google has changed its policy: "It's all about the user experience" and title tag/alt tag brings nothing to the user experience. They are still needed but it's only a suggestion to Google of what I would like.

Fetching as Googlebot doesn't help!

1. Googlebot has nothing to do with the indexing! Googlebot only retrieve the html page of the web page. Googlebot doesn't retrieve any image.
2. After Googlebot has retrieved the page, Google then separates the links from all the other html tags.
3. If Google deems it important enough it will put the text in the index.
4. Googlebot-image will retrieve the images if Google deems it worthwhile.


There may be other tools, but I use Chrome (Google's web browser). Here are the steps to see what Google is doing to my SmugMug gallery (only works with Chrome, as far as I know, unless Firefox has a Google cache plugin):

1. in the address bar enter: http://photos.foto-biz.com/People/Photographers/16543273_ND7Jp#1245608032_frWDG a gallery of photographers
2. in chrome change the address from: http://photos.foto-biz.com/People/Photographers/16543273_ND7Jp#1245608032_frWDG to "cache:http://photos.foto-biz.com/People/Photographers/16543273_ND7Jp#1245608032_frWDG" (add the word "cache:" in front of the http:) see the difference? All the thumbnails are gone. Google recognize only the first photo (kind of, see item 3)
3. At the top right, click on "Text-only version". Now, this is what's in Google's index.

So back to my original question, can we have an enhancement in the pipeline to display the full title under each thumbnail? It will make a huge difference in SEO.

pgman

caroline wrote: »

I'm intrigued by this post - first of all when was the London Google Clinic you are referring to and is there any reference to this online anywhere?

I'm assuming that the points below 1-3 are what Google stated at the Clinic?

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/sharing-advice-from-our-london-site.html

caroline wrote: »

Can you reference a photograpy site where the images ARE dealt with in the way you are requesting?

Here is an example: http://kenkaminesky.photoshelter.com/gallery/Barcelona-Spain-Travel-Photography-Stock-Photos/G0000.VXNolEGt3E/ Actually, it's almost what I'd like, I'd like to display the current image on the right.

caroline wrote: »

I've tried looking at other sites (not Smugmug) and they all appear the same as our SM sites.

Not Photoshelter.

SM almost does what I need, which is, display a photo on my site, and when people click on the photo, they arrive at the gallery. The big problem are the sitemaps that are not accepted by Google. (Not exactly true, but since the sitemaps are wrong, they are not in the regular queue for Googlebot but in the "who knows how far in the not so immediate future").

BTW, do you work for SM?

Thanks

Andy

pgman wrote: »

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/sharing-advice-from-our-london-site.html



Here is an example: http://kenkaminesky.photoshelter.com/gallery/Barcelona-Spain-Travel-Photography-Stock-Photos/G0000.VXNolEGt3E/ Actually, it's almost what I'd like, I'd like to display the current image on the right.



Not Photoshelter.

SM almost does what I need, which is, display a photo on my site, and when people click on the photo, they arrive at the gallery. The big problem are the sitemaps that are not accepted by Google. (Not exactly true, but since the sitemaps are wrong, they are not in the regular queue for Googlebot but in the "who knows how far in the not so immediate future").

BTW, do you work for SM?

Thanks

Have you checked your sitemaps lately? Take a look at /sitemap-galleryimages.xml

Caroline does not work for SmugMug.

pgman

Andy wrote: »

Have you checked your sitemaps lately? Take a look at /sitemap-galleryimages.xml

Yes but that's not what I submitted to Google. I submitted:

sitemap-index.xml.gz

which then points to

1. si​tem​ap-​bas​e.x​ml.​gz
2. si​tem​ap-​gal​ler​yim​age​s.x​ml.​gz

Did I submit the "right" map? Or did I miss something?

Thanks

caroline

Andy wrote: »

Have you checked your sitemaps lately? Take a look at /sitemap-galleryimages.xml

Caroline does not work for SmugMug.

Hi Andy - is there a problem with my questions in this thread? Apolgies if I'm out of order

I'm totally baffled by the talk of site maps - if there is something I need to check are the instructions for this in one place somewhere?

I checked webmaster tools and I just see a big red cross against the site map file???

Caroline

pgman

Sorry to butt in

caroline wrote: »

I checked webmaster tools and I just see a big red cross against the site map file???

To see what's causing it, click on the left on the sitemap listing, it will take you to another page. Then it will tell you what's causing it and in the right hand-side column when did the problem occur. According to status.smugmug.com they say:

Crawlers
Under heavy load, we occasionally need to block crawlers from search engines like Google temporarily to keep the site online and fast. Note: All times listed on the left are Local, all times in Messages are in Pacific Time.

But I haven't figured a way of seeing more than 6 days back with status.smugmug.com and they do not record everything. Today is 1-May-2011 and Google's webmaster tools reported an error on the 28-Apr-2011 as not available, and I had to resubmit. status.smugmug.com shows green/OK for the 28-Apr-2011.