Keywords: Gallery vs. Photo

tjgrant

Can someone explain to me the difference in gallery keywords and photo keywords when it comes to things like Google search? I often find myself repeating the same keywords on the gallery and the photos with a few more specific ones on the photos. I'd rather not use photo keywords at all because I think they look bad on the page and instead take those "extra" keywords and put them into a caption, which looks better. I'd still have the general keywords at the gallery level. But i'm not sure this is a good idea.

Wendee

If the gallery keywords you're adding are covered within the image keywords inside that gallery, they probably aren't necessary. I would think the image keywords would be more important to add, since those bring up actual image results in Google's search pages.

The gallery title and description would be indexed for searching, the gallery keywords are meant to add more to the title and description. The image keywords are similar, what you have already in the caption would be searchable, so keywords could just be an extension of that if needed. If you aren't concerned with having specific keywords that bring up a group of photos on your site, the caption may be enough for you to locate the images in search results.

There is customization you can add (if you have the Power/Pro account) to hide keywords from view for logged-out viewers... but I have heard that Google doesn't like hidden things, and it may affect the results.

We have more info on keywords and maximizing search results here,
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93291
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/84519

I hope this helps! If you need anything else, please let us know.

Take care,
Wendee
SmugMug Support Hero
http://help.smugmug.com/