smugmug and search results = sales

Andy

thank you chris, and don, and everyone at smugmug, for doing the "google dance" so well. i'm getting a lot of folks coming into my site by googling for specific stuff, and they're finding it at my smugmug site!

for those of you who are interested in selling your work... i just wanted to take a moment guys, to stress the importance of good captioning of your online images - that is, if you intend to sell them.

i have seen a very substantial increase in sales volume lately, due to the fact that folks are finding individual images via google search. this one just got picked up by a website designer, for a client that they are working with in the financial space:

(sony f828 image)
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/photos/3845284-S.jpg

she found it by googling "tappan zee bridge" for images

so, my advice: caption everything, with an eye towards potential searches

enjoy (getting paid for your) photography,

mercphoto

Captions = sales

andy wrote:

thank you chris, and don, and everyone at smugmug, for doing the "google dance" so well. ...
so, my advice: caption everything, with an eye towards potential searches

This is not the same as the "keywords" line in the "customize gallery" window, correct? Are those keywords only for internal smugmug searches and not for google?

I'm gonna have to caption a lot of photos. :-O

Baldy

mercphoto wrote:

This is not the same as the "keywords" line in the "customize gallery" window, correct? Are those keywords only for internal smugmug searches and not for google?

I'm gonna have to caption a lot of photos. :-O

That's correct. Keywords in customize gallery help our search engine find your albums but don't help Google.

What you place in your cobranding section for page title is critically important. It's what appears on your title bar in your browser and Google assumes those words are critically important to you (it's also the default name for bookmarks).

If you do as Andy did and place Moon River Photography -- Andy Williams there, it will appear that way on every page. So Andy is not the only Andy Williams on the net, nor the only one associated with Moon River (http://www.andywilliams.com), because Andy Williams the singer and his Moon River theater are very popular. And yet when you search for Andy Williams photography, the best man wins.

(Because he has the word photography in his title.)

If you don't specify a page title, we make the name of your gallery the title. So my gallery of Concours d'Elegance Award Winners,

http://cmac.smugmug.com/gallery/18762

comes up #1 in Google when you search for those words, beating the official site, the big automotive mags that cover it, etc.

Also, links to your site are hugely important.

mercphoto

Sales...

Baldy wrote:

What you place in your cobranding section for page title is critically important. It's what appears on your title bar in your browser and Google assumes those words are critically important to you (it's also the default name for bookmarks).

Gotcha. I'm still trying to learn what I need to do to replace the header, for example. I think I have some local help on that.

Also, links to your site are hugely important.

Sounds like networking (the old fashioned kind

tmlphoto

Very Cool
I just googled one of my picture captions and it showed up at the top of the list. Very cool. I better get busy captioning.

lynnesite

Baldy wrote:

That's correct. Keywords in customize gallery help our search engine find your albums but don't help Google.

Also, links to your site are hugely important.

Respectfully, the number one feature I need on Smugmug (besides upgraded aspect ratio discovery/offering for print) is a way to bulk caption (and here's the change) with the FILENAME already in the caption block. So I can title by image number then description. Example: 27275-No Hands Bridge.

It's way too much work for me otherwise to caption, with the number of images I post, especially for event shoots like the recent Tevis event where I posted 618 images (out of 1200 shot).

TIA,
Lynne

timsims

I'm not seeing this work for me. I've had photos up from my Eleuthera vacation for around six weeks. I hadn't captioned them all until today but I did a Google Image search for "Tippy's" which is a unique term that has been in the caption of several of my photos for the entire six weeks and it didn't come up with any of my "Tippy's" photos. I have captioned many others today with keywords that folks might search for images of (specifically Eleuthera), but is there anything else that I need to do?

mercphoto

Search results

timsims wrote:

I'm not seeing this work for me. I've had photos up from my Eleuthera vacation for around six weeks. I hadn't captioned them all until today but I did a Google Image search for "Tippy's" which is a unique term that has been in the caption of several of my photos for the entire six weeks and it didn't come up with any of my "Tippy's" photos. I have captioned many others today with keywords that folks might search for images of (specifically Eleuthera), but is there anything else that I need to do?

I can do a google search on "Mercury Photography Texas", which is my title page, and its the number one hit. But if I do a search on "skusa austin grand prix", which is the caption for about 70 photos, I get no hits at all.

I have noticed that featured galleries get much more hits than normal galleries, though. Nice feature.

gfiebich

In my testing, I haven't gotten the smugmug search tool to return results from keywords that appear in my gallery's comments. Keywords placed in photo captions do appear in the search results, but there seems to be a delay of about 2-5 minutes before the captions are indexed by the smugmug database. Am I just being impatient with the comments indexing, or does the search tool ignore comments?

This is important to me because I would like to invite my race participants to self-identify their photos by placing their bib numbers in the comments field. Our event results system links each person's finish time directly to the smugmug search tool with their bib number in the URL string. If you're not following me, go here and click on the little camera icon next to the first result.

Baldy

gfiebich wrote:

In my testing, I haven't gotten the smugmug search tool to return results from keywords that appear in my gallery's comments.

It's true, we don't search words in comments currently. We'll have to talk about this and see if we can do something.

Thanks,
Baldy

mercphoto

Searching and Captions

mercphoto wrote:

I can do a google search on "Mercury Photography Texas", which is my title page, and its the number one hit. But if I do a search on "skusa austin grand prix", which is the caption for about 70 photos, I get no hits at all.

Still no hits today. Strangely, this forum thread does hit. But my galleries don't.

arthousephotography

not getting any response in google

mercphoto wrote:

Still no hits today. Strangely, this forum thread does hit. But my galleries don't.

Have tried various searches in google, title, captions etc and nowt. Not sure what I am doing wrong....
www.arthousephotography.smugmug.com

flyingpylon

Just a little info for everyone.... it can take anywhere from a few days to a few months for your content to be indexed by Google, and then even more time for it to show up in search results. It really pays to be patient.

Also, if it makes you feel better you can go to Google and submit your URL. But that doesn't guarantee that your pages will be indexed any sooner.

arthousephotography

thanks

flyingpylon wrote:

Just a little info for everyone.... it can take anywhere from a few days to a few months for your content to be indexed by Google, and then even more time for it to show up in search results. It really pays to be patient.

Also, if it makes you feel better you can go to Google and submit your URL. But that doesn't guarantee that your pages will be indexed any sooner.

Will just have to be patient....thanks for your advice.

onethumb

arthousephotography wrote:

Will just have to be patient....thanks for your advice.

The "Google Dance" usually takes a minimum of 30 days for content to show up. But content can only show up if it can easily be found somehow.

So the trick is to get some links somewhere else that point to your galleries. Then Google will both find them more easily and rank them more highly.

Easiest way is to add a link to your sig in any forums (like this one) on which you post. If you have another website, or blog, or anything like that, adding a link is a big help too.

Otherwise, you're stuck hoping Google manages to find you this month among smugmug's thousands of customers. Google's good, but not perfect.

Don

Baldy

Another consideration is how common are the words you use. Art. House. Photography. They're all very common so they get lost in a sea of contenders.

It's nice when your words are more like Andy Williams photography.

rainforest1155

Just in case you don't know: When you type your website in google in the following way, google will show you all entries, which it collected from there and you can even search for specific keywords on your page:

site:rainforest1155.smugmug.com

This gives you the possibility to see what is already searchable in google.
More advanced search features are described here: http://www.google.com/features.html

Have a nice day,
Sebastian

zacker

re
So, how does this work? I caption ALL my Images and google will find them? I have read and reread this thread and i cant figure it out.. (i am a tad slow) Do i cap. all my images with key words? or do i somehow do something with my domain name? Remember, I know NOTHING about this stuff.
Thanks for all the help.. Please clear this up for me if you can,
-zacker-

Andy

zacker wrote:

So, how does this work? I caption ALL my Images and google will find them? I have read and reread this thread and i cant figure it out.. (i am a tad slow) Do i cap. all my images with key words? or do i somehow do something with my domain name? Remember, I know NOTHING about this stuff.
Thanks for all the help.. Please clear this up for me if you can,
-zacker-

Hi zacker,

Caption them. Put in good words in the gallery descriptions. Use gallery keywords (in customize gallery). And most important, use photo keywords!

Try googling for

westchester senior portrait

and see what comes up

holler if we can help more!

rainforest1155

zacker wrote:

So, how does this work? I caption ALL my Images and google will find them? I have read and reread this thread and i cant figure it out.. (i am a tad slow) Do i cap. all my images with key words? or do i somehow do something with my domain name? Remember, I know NOTHING about this stuff.

You just write captions for your images and add relevant keywords to the pictures. The search engines will come by and pick them up. Also you can some summarising keywords to the gallery itself in the gallery customizations.

While captions generally contain sentences to be read by your visitors, search engines also use them for indexing your site in addition to the keywords you assign to images.
I try to keep the image keywords on a level on what's visible in the picture and where it is taken or to group a certain set of images together consciously. I don't add my name to every image or whatever to every picture, but there are probably people doing this and having success with it.

I hope this helps a bit,
Sebastian

dogwood

love this stuff

rainforest1155 wrote:

Just in case you don't know: When you type your website in google in the following way, google will show you all entries, which it collected from there and you can even search for specific keywords on your page:

site:rainforest1155.smugmug.com

This gives you the possibility to see what is already searchable in google.
More advanced search features are described here: http://www.google.com/features.html

Have a nice day,
Sebastian

Sebastian and Andy:

Great stuff. This kind of info is very useful -- I'd love to see more tips and info like this as it applies to smugmug sites. I actually had no idea captioning photos was this important.

smhs.images

yippee
I just sold a photo for the cover of a book!!! I asked the art director and she advised me they found the photo by doing a google search of Biograph Theater photos. So yes caption and keywords do work. My photo comes up 4 in the search on google. That was the easiest money I have ever made

Thanks Smugmug

Cammo

Andy wrote:

thank you chris, and don, and everyone at smugmug, for doing the "google dance" so well. i'm getting a lot of folks coming into my site by googling for specific stuff, and they're finding it at my smugmug site!

for those of you who are interested in selling your work... i just wanted to take a moment guys, to stress the importance of good captioning of your online images - that is, if you intend to sell them.

i have seen a very substantial increase in sales volume lately, due to the fact that folks are finding individual images via google search. this one just got picked up by a website designer, for a client that they are working with in the financial space:

(sony f828 image)
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/photos/3845284-S.jpg

she found it by googling "tappan zee bridge" for images

so, my advice: caption everything, with an eye towards potential searches

enjoy (getting paid for your) photography,

If you do a google 'image' search for either your 'tappan zee bridge' or my 'johnathan thurston' no smugmug images are returned.

Why wouldn't google image search index these?

rainforest1155

dogwood wrote:

Sebastian and Andy:

Great stuff. This kind of info is very useful -- I'd love to see more tips and info like this as it applies to smugmug sites. I actually had no idea captioning photos was this important.

Google seems to really dig captions. I see a lot people coming from google searching for word I would never have thought of me having a good ranking for in google, because they're so common. As I try to caption my pictures now in three languages chances are even higher of getting yet another hit.
But don't overestimate the importance search engine hits! Most of the time they just view the one picture that brought them to my site and then leave, but there are also times when a visitor really sucks in everything you throw at him.

If you're interested in what kind of searches bring people to your site be sure to install statcounter or a similar tool. That way you see where your traffic comes from and also for what people searched. You can then simply click on the search and look at what rank you got in the results page.

Sebastian

zacker

re
Thanks Sebastian.... So I need to clcik "add caption" on each pic and add a caption like "Passion Flower, Canon Powershot pro1" and then google will find Passion Flower, or Canon, or Powershot Pro1 ??? that is cool.. so heres another one for you guys. how do I make it so i can type "broken fence photography" into a search engin and have it find my site? or just "
broken fence"?

Is this possible with a smugmug site?
-zacker-

Andy

zacker wrote:

Thanks Sebastian.... So I need to clcik "add caption" on each pic and add a caption like "Passion Flower, Canon Powershot pro1" and then google will find Passion Flower, or Canon, or Powershot Pro1 ??? that is cool.. so heres another one for you guys. how do I make it so i can type "broken fence photography" into a search engin and have it find my site? or just "
broken fence"?

Is this possible with a smugmug site?
-zacker-

Have your business name as your footer, that helps, too.

zacker

re

Andy wrote:

Have your business name as your footer, that helps, too.

yeah, i was looking today and couldnt find how to get into my headr and edit that.. and the footer? How do i access the page I had when i signed up.. the one where i edited my header..i was looking at the control panel but cant remember how i did it.
-zacker-

rainforest1155

zacker wrote:

yeah, i was looking today and couldnt find how to get into my headr and edit that.. and the footer? How do i access the page I had when i signed up.. the one where i edited my header..i was looking at the control panel but cant remember how i did it.
-zacker-

It's the following link:
Customize: everything from changing colors to completely replacing smugmugs look & feel! | Help

in the organize & customize section

Hope this helps,
Sebastian

zacker

rainforest1155 wrote:

It's the following link:
Customize: everything from changing colors to completely replacing smugmugs look & feel! | Help

in the organize & customize section

Hope this helps,
Sebastian

Thanks again Sebastian!
-zacker-

Cammo

Cammo wrote:

If you do a google 'image' search for either your 'tappan zee bridge' or my 'johnathan thurston' no smugmug images are returned.

Why wouldn't google image search index these?

bump..

Andy

Cammo wrote:

If you do a google 'image' search for either your 'tappan zee bridge' or my 'johnathan thurston' no smugmug images are returned.

Why wouldn't google image search index these?

I can't speak for image search but do a google on Tappan Zee Bridge and I'm on page one