Content on Smugmug for SEO?
theprincereturns
Registered Users Posts: 132 Major grins
So I am sure everyone is aware of all the Google SEO changes that happened recently (particularly at the begining of the year) so i won't get into to many details other than to say that Google is ranking "content" and "recent updates" much higher these days.
I understand the link references, and am working on getting my stuff out there. That said i am having trouble figureing out an easy way to get "content" on my smugmug page. My site is http://www.lucassmithphoto.com/ for reference.
1) Area 1 - Site Layout & Text
So, the best looking websites I have seen are mostly flash or images (not text) which poses a problem for SEO. I am not the best web designer by any means, but I had trouble getting my smugmug site looking at all close to what i wanted with having much of any text visible on my site. I ended up with image layout for my pages, and almost no text. I know I can change image names, and stuff, but having captions for each image on a gallery page doesn't look good in my opinion. I wanted to keep most customer photoshoots private and protected, so that blows the idea of adding much content to them either. I did some click through galleries for pricing where i have the "text version" as a background page, but I don't like that much either. Any ideas for this one?
2) Area 2 - Blogging
A blog option would be great for adding content on a regular basis, however Journal Galleries are not easy to use for constant publishing, and I have a blog with blogger that is easy to use and publish too. This blog is is linked in my nav bar and I have cross links back from the blogger site to my smugmug page. I know I know I can pull in my blogger site as a frame to a gallery in smugmug, but that is one of the things that Google is now Penalizing (duplicate content). So I don't want to do that either. Hosting my own blog service on another site and adding it to a smugmug gallery sounds painfull, but I guess i could look into it. Any suggestions here?
3) Area 3 - Complete site reorg?
So looking at the top ranking sites in my area (http://www.liquidlightimages.com/ for example) most of them are structured reverse of my site. They have a main page hosted somewhere, with a blog as a subfolder to the main page, and then a link to their portfolio (smugmug, zenfolio, etc). I guess I could aways do that as well, but that would require a good bit more work and an additional host. Any suggestions on this one?
I know this is a buisiness and I need to put work into my visibility and reputation. However I would prefer not to spend all my time working on my website :-p. Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.
I understand the link references, and am working on getting my stuff out there. That said i am having trouble figureing out an easy way to get "content" on my smugmug page. My site is http://www.lucassmithphoto.com/ for reference.
1) Area 1 - Site Layout & Text
So, the best looking websites I have seen are mostly flash or images (not text) which poses a problem for SEO. I am not the best web designer by any means, but I had trouble getting my smugmug site looking at all close to what i wanted with having much of any text visible on my site. I ended up with image layout for my pages, and almost no text. I know I can change image names, and stuff, but having captions for each image on a gallery page doesn't look good in my opinion. I wanted to keep most customer photoshoots private and protected, so that blows the idea of adding much content to them either. I did some click through galleries for pricing where i have the "text version" as a background page, but I don't like that much either. Any ideas for this one?
2) Area 2 - Blogging
A blog option would be great for adding content on a regular basis, however Journal Galleries are not easy to use for constant publishing, and I have a blog with blogger that is easy to use and publish too. This blog is is linked in my nav bar and I have cross links back from the blogger site to my smugmug page. I know I know I can pull in my blogger site as a frame to a gallery in smugmug, but that is one of the things that Google is now Penalizing (duplicate content). So I don't want to do that either. Hosting my own blog service on another site and adding it to a smugmug gallery sounds painfull, but I guess i could look into it. Any suggestions here?
3) Area 3 - Complete site reorg?
So looking at the top ranking sites in my area (http://www.liquidlightimages.com/ for example) most of them are structured reverse of my site. They have a main page hosted somewhere, with a blog as a subfolder to the main page, and then a link to their portfolio (smugmug, zenfolio, etc). I guess I could aways do that as well, but that would require a good bit more work and an additional host. Any suggestions on this one?
I know this is a buisiness and I need to put work into my visibility and reputation. However I would prefer not to spend all my time working on my website :-p. Any suggestions would be appreciated, thanks.
0