And now this SEO/ RCP thing that affects so many of us exists (& lots of SmugMuggers probably have no clue!) & we get no satisfaction. It feels very rude, in ways that would not have happened at SmugMug even a couple years ago. I feel completely disregarded, actually. Here I have this great option of using RCP in some places where I want to and choose to. And yet the official SmugMug policy currently (evidently) is to not talk about any of its effect on my SEO, something that's important to me. It seems they think these questions will just go away. But they won't. I think about it every day & wonder, & and it's not going away. It makes me so tempted to leave and find a place where honesty and transparency and real concern for the things we care about are still the norm.
I don't know what to say; I had my legacy site which was doing ok in terms of SEO.
In the transition from legacy to NewSM I switched to a new url with a completely different content so it's very hard for me to see the difference as of now .
At the moment I can only record the skepticism of some users on one side, and the reassuring statements of SmuMug staffer (namely bwg) on the other.
I will need some time for the site to be on the internet to understand if newSmugMug SEO is effective or not.
Shortened site name, google seo, & no organic results
I have three symptoms and have tried everything, but so far have not worked. I could use some advice from those more knowledgable of coding. Here are the symptoms I am trying to correct:
1. I have a transferred wordpress.com site (jdnphotos) that now points to smug mug. BUT users who go to jdnphotos.com get a blue unverified WOT circle vs. green that appears if they manually type jdnphotos.smugmug.com. Isn't the whole point of being able to tell someone to go to jdnphotos.com to still have a verified site? When the shortened name was with wordpress.com, it was green both ways (jdnphotos.com and jdnphotos.wordpress.com). A related issue is:
2. I have 0 organic SEO with google. I've tried adding all the keywords, meta information, text and images everywhere, but have not been able to correct this.
3. My site appears not found anywhere on google and not mobile ready if i use jdnphotos.com and not jdnphotos.smumug.com. I added a CNAME to godaddy to help with bing, but nothing is working for google. I think something, some pointer must be missing somewhere. Smug mug says things are "working fine" and wordpress say they did their job properly, but I still have zip for google organic SEO.
In the meantime I keep reading and modifying my setup, but haven't found the solution. Any suggestions? THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.
1. I have a transferred wordpress.com site (jdnphotos) that now points to smug mug. BUT users who go to jdnphotos.com get a blue unverified WOT circle vs. green that appears if they manually type jdnphotos.smugmug.com. Isn't the whole point of being able to tell someone to go to jdnphotos.com to still have a verified site? When the shortened name was with wordpress.com, it was green both ways (jdnphotos.com and jdnphotos.wordpress.com).
When I typed in your url, I see your site. Looks like you had the free version of WordPress and when I type in that url, it says "jdnphotos.wordpress.com is no longer available. The authors have deleted this site."
2. I have 0 organic SEO with google. I've tried adding all the keywords, meta information, text and images everywhere, but have not been able to correct this.
3. My site appears not found anywhere on google and not mobile ready if i use jdnphotos.com and not jdnphotos.smumug.com. I added a CNAME to godaddy to help with bing, but nothing is working for google. I think something, some pointer must be missing somewhere. Smug mug says things are "working fine" and wordpress say they did their job properly, but I still have zip for google organic SEO.
When did you switch? If it was recently, you need to wait.
What keyword/phrases are you trying to rank for?
Looking at your home page, Your <title> element (Janice D Nelson Photography - Architecture, Portrait, and Black and White & Color Fine Art Limited Edition Images for Sale) is WAY too long. I would suggest removing your business name. Nobody is going to search for you.
When I typed in your url, I see your site. Looks like you had the free version of WordPress and when I type in that url, it says "jdnphotos.wordpress.com is no longer available. The authors have deleted this site."
When did you switch? If it was recently, you need to wait.
What keyword/phrases are you trying to rank for?
Looking at your home page, Your <title> element (Janice D Nelson Photography - Architecture, Portrait, and Black and White & Color Fine Art Limited Edition Images for Sale) is WAY too long. I would suggest removing your business name. Nobody is going to search for you.
The first problem is that WOT thinks jdnphotos.com is unverified. I have to tell people to go to jdnphotos.smugmug.com to have them visit a site that appears as verified and validated.
The second issue is SEO. Organic SEO. I have none. I do have hits per my account stats, but per other reports and checks, no organic seo. Are you saying that removing my name will improve the remainder of my title? That the problem is it is too long for google to use to produce search results for?
The first problem is that WOT thinks jdnphotos.com is unverified. I have to tell people to go to jdnphotos.smugmug.com to have them visit a site that appears as verified and validated.
The second issue is SEO. Organic SEO. I have none. I do have hits per my account stats, but per other reports and checks, no organic seo. Are you saying that removing my name will improve the remainder of my title? That the problem is it is too long for google to use to produce search results for?
Like I said before, NOBODY is going to Google YOUR NAME. You need to use a <title> with around 70 characters or less.
The first problem is that WOT thinks jdnphotos.com is unverified. I have to tell people to go to jdnphotos.smugmug.com to have them visit a site that appears as verified and validated.
The second issue is SEO. Organic SEO. I have none. I do have hits per my account stats, but per other reports and checks, no organic seo. Are you saying that removing my name will improve the remainder of my title? That the problem is it is too long for google to use to produce search results for?
I had never heard of WOT so I just did a search for it. Is this what you are referencing - https://www.mywot.com/en/wordpress-plugin? That implies that it is a rating for wordpress blogs - and your smugmug site does not fall into that category.
This plugin hasn't been updated in over 2 years. It may no longer be maintained or supported and may have compatibility issues when used with more recent versions of WordPress.
As far as SEO goes, do you have inbound links from other sites to your smug site? I see you have some blog entries on your smugmug site. That's good because the entries provide text on your photo site - but they don't generate inbound links to your site since they are on your smug site.
I looked at your keyword page - http://www.jdnphotos.com/keyword. You do have a lot of keywords but I see a lot of overlap which I suspect doesn't help. For example, based on clicking on a single keyword I was presented with a page showing a single photo with a lot of essentially repeating keywords (attached below). I don't believe the level of repetition you have used helps. Why not use the following simple set of keywords for that photo:
"black and white", "fine art", "long exposure", "landscape"
I also don't understand why your name and site name are used as keywords.
I had never heard of WOT so I just did a search for it. Is this what you are referencing - https://www.mywot.com/en/wordpress-plugin? That implies that it is a rating for wordpress blogs - and your smugmug site does not fall into that category.
After I posted my comment, I Googled it too. It isn't just a WordPress thing. WOT is a rating for any website, SmugMug included. You need to download their tool bar via one of the modern browsers.
To the OP.....don't concern yourself with that WOT stuff. I would concern yourself with updating your SEO though.
After I posted my comment, I Googled it too. It isn't just a WordPress thing. WOT is a rating for any website, SmugMug included. You need to download their tool bar via one of the modern browsers.
Thanks Mike - that helps!
Frankly I can't imagine relying on a rating "powered by a global community of millions of users who rate websites based on their personal experiences". That implies that if someone doesn't like your site they can simply rate it down. And what happens if your site isn't widely viewed? Is the assumption made that the website is acceptable?
to the OP:
Mike's right, you need to concentrate on the SEO that you can control; as I noted in my previous post I think there are some positive changes that you can make.
I just moved to the new site design (kicking and screaming) and am totally lost on SEO for it. I've submitted a site map but can't seem to get in the top 10 pages of google and yahoo searches for "senior portraits" and "wedding photographer" for Tucson.
Can you provide any specific help to this tech dummy? My site is: www.aspect-photo.com
I just moved to the new site design (kicking and screaming) and am totally lost on SEO for it. I've submitted a site map but can't seem to get in the top 10 pages of google and yahoo searches for "senior portraits" and "wedding photographer" for Tucson.
Can you provide any specific help to this tech dummy? My site is: www.aspect-photo.com
Thank you!
David
Aspect Photography
Your <title> element on your home page is WAY too long. It should be no longer than 70 characters. You also have NO text on your home page. Search engines like text.
Seriously, thanks for the advice. Most of the keywords and long words are holdovers from years past. Good advice, I can do all that. Any specific advice to title and descriptions?
Do I need to add "content blocks" such as HTML and CSS on my pages? What kind of "inbound links"? I have all the usual social media but with the no-follow, I don't think that's what you mean....
Don't worry about about your "keywords", those are not going to help you rank. You need to fix your element like I mentioned already and having text on your pages will help too. I agree with Denise about inbound links though.
Don't worry about about your "keywords", those are not going to help you rank. You need to fix your <title> element like I mentioned already and having text on your pages will help too. I agree with Denise about inbound links though.
Seriously, thanks for the advice. Most of the keywords and long words are holdovers from years past. Good advice, I can do all that. Any specific advice to title and descriptions?
Do I need to add "content blocks" such as HTML and CSS on my pages? What kind of "inbound links"? I have all the usual social media but with the no-follow, I don't think that's what you mean....
Sorry, sometimes I'm a bit blunt!
For inbound links - do you post to social media or to forums, and do your posts link to your photos on your site? Do you have a blog? If you have a blog, does it present photos from your site, and do those photos drive the viewer back to your photo galleries? You can see an example of that on my blog, link in signature below.
HTML and CSS content blocks won't help - text will. Add gallery descriptions, use varied titles and captions - do not use the same entry on every photo in a gallery.
Look at your site on a phone, and as Hikin' Mike says, rethink your site name. When I looked at your site on a phone in portrait orientation your header uses 1/2 of the vertical space. If you want to see what your site looks like on different devices, try http://quirktools.com/screenfly/.
I do have a blog, listed below but I don't have any traffic to it. I do link back to my site but I have been reading lately about using the nofollow tag to avoid negating the back and forth links.... Need to research that further!
I appreciate the link that's awesome! I'm not sure how I satisfy all options though.... To optimize on a big monitor is horrible on an iPhone. That said, the mobile customer isn't usually my target but I don't want to eliminate any opportunity.
As far as your suggestion to using different file names in each section, I'm not sure how you're doing that if you're publishing hundreds of images per folder. I am exporting them from Lightroom with titles reflecting my website but to diversify that further seems incredibly time consuming unless you're only doing it for a few files.
Thanks again for your time, it truly is appreciated and will be reciprocated as I can.
For inbound links - do you post to social media or to forums, and do your posts link to your photos on your site? Do you have a blog? If you have a blog, does it present photos from your site, and do those photos drive the viewer back to your photo galleries? You can see an example of that on my blog, link in signature below.
HTML and CSS content blocks won't help - text will. Add gallery descriptions, use varied titles and captions - do not use the same entry on every photo in a gallery.
Look at your site on a phone, and as Hikin' Mike says, rethink your site name. When I looked at your site on a phone in portrait orientation your header uses 1/2 of the vertical space. If you want to see what your site looks like on different devices, try http://quirktools.com/screenfly/.
I do have a blog, listed below but I don't have any traffic to it. I do link back to my site but I have been reading lately about using the nofollow tag to avoid negating the back and forth links.... Need to research that further!
I appreciate the link that's awesome! I'm not sure how I satisfy all options though.... To optimize on a big monitor is horrible on an iPhone. That said, the mobile customer isn't usually my target but I don't want to eliminate any opportunity.
As far as your suggestion to using different file names in each section, I'm not sure how you're doing that if you're publishing hundreds of images per folder. I am exporting them from Lightroom with titles reflecting my website but to diversify that further seems incredibly time consuming unless you're only doing it for a few files.
Thanks again for your time, it truly is appreciated and will be reciprocated as I can.
I see you have not changed your site's <title> element: 'Creative wedding, maternity, family portrait and senior portrait photographer serving Tucson, Phoenix, and all points in between.' The <title> element is one of the most important aspects in SEO. That title is WAY TOO LONG. I suggest changing it to something like I suggested earlier.
I see you have not changed your site's <title> element: 'Creative wedding, maternity, family portrait and senior portrait photographer serving Tucson, Phoenix, and all points in between.' The <title> element is one of the most important aspects in SEO. That title is WAY TOO LONG. I suggest changing it to something like I suggested earlier.
Comments
I don't know what to say; I had my legacy site which was doing ok in terms of SEO.
In the transition from legacy to NewSM I switched to a new url with a completely different content so it's very hard for me to see the difference as of now
At the moment I can only record the skepticism of some users on one side, and the reassuring statements of SmuMug staffer (namely bwg) on the other.
I will need some time for the site to be on the internet to understand if newSmugMug SEO is effective or not.
Venice PhotoBlog
I have three symptoms and have tried everything, but so far have not worked. I could use some advice from those more knowledgable of coding. Here are the symptoms I am trying to correct:
1. I have a transferred wordpress.com site (jdnphotos) that now points to smug mug. BUT users who go to jdnphotos.com get a blue unverified WOT circle vs. green that appears if they manually type jdnphotos.smugmug.com. Isn't the whole point of being able to tell someone to go to jdnphotos.com to still have a verified site? When the shortened name was with wordpress.com, it was green both ways (jdnphotos.com and jdnphotos.wordpress.com). A related issue is:
2. I have 0 organic SEO with google. I've tried adding all the keywords, meta information, text and images everywhere, but have not been able to correct this.
3. My site appears not found anywhere on google and not mobile ready if i use jdnphotos.com and not jdnphotos.smumug.com. I added a CNAME to godaddy to help with bing, but nothing is working for google. I think something, some pointer must be missing somewhere. Smug mug says things are "working fine" and wordpress say they did their job properly, but I still have zip for google organic SEO.
In the meantime I keep reading and modifying my setup, but haven't found the solution. Any suggestions? THANK YOU IN ADVANCE.
When I typed in your url, I see your site. Looks like you had the free version of WordPress and when I type in that url, it says "jdnphotos.wordpress.com is no longer available. The authors have deleted this site."
When did you switch? If it was recently, you need to wait.
What keyword/phrases are you trying to rank for?
Looking at your home page, Your <title> element (Janice D Nelson Photography - Architecture, Portrait, and Black and White & Color Fine Art Limited Edition Images for Sale) is WAY too long. I would suggest removing your business name. Nobody is going to search for you.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
The first problem is that WOT thinks jdnphotos.com is unverified. I have to tell people to go to jdnphotos.smugmug.com to have them visit a site that appears as verified and validated.
The second issue is SEO. Organic SEO. I have none. I do have hits per my account stats, but per other reports and checks, no organic seo. Are you saying that removing my name will improve the remainder of my title? That the problem is it is too long for google to use to produce search results for?
I don't follow. What is WOT? I don't see that when I visit your site nor when I search for your name. <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >
Like I said before, NOBODY is going to Google YOUR NAME. You need to use a <title> with around 70 characters or less.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
I also found a reference to it at https://wordpress.org/plugins/wot-for-blogs/. This page shows the warning:
As far as SEO goes, do you have inbound links from other sites to your smug site? I see you have some blog entries on your smugmug site. That's good because the entries provide text on your photo site - but they don't generate inbound links to your site since they are on your smug site.
I looked at your keyword page - http://www.jdnphotos.com/keyword. You do have a lot of keywords but I see a lot of overlap which I suspect doesn't help. For example, based on clicking on a single keyword I was presented with a page showing a single photo with a lot of essentially repeating keywords (attached below). I don't believe the level of repetition you have used helps. Why not use the following simple set of keywords for that photo: I also don't understand why your name and site name are used as keywords.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
After I posted my comment, I Googled it too. It isn't just a WordPress thing. WOT is a rating for any website, SmugMug included. You need to download their tool bar via one of the modern browsers.
To the OP.....don't concern yourself with that WOT stuff. I would concern yourself with updating your SEO though.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
Frankly I can't imagine relying on a rating "powered by a global community of millions of users who rate websites based on their personal experiences". That implies that if someone doesn't like your site they can simply rate it down. And what happens if your site isn't widely viewed? Is the assumption made that the website is acceptable?
to the OP:
Mike's right, you need to concentrate on the SEO that you can control; as I noted in my previous post I think there are some positive changes that you can make.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
All,
I just moved to the new site design (kicking and screaming) and am totally lost on SEO for it. I've submitted a site map but can't seem to get in the top 10 pages of google and yahoo searches for "senior portraits" and "wedding photographer" for Tucson.
Can you provide any specific help to this tech dummy? My site is: www.aspect-photo.com
Thank you!
David
Aspect Photography
Your <title> element on your home page is WAY too long. It should be no longer than 70 characters. You also have NO text on your home page. Search engines like text.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
I don't believe that using the same text as title and description on every photo is helping you.
Do you have inbound links to your site?
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Seriously, thanks for the advice. Most of the keywords and long words are holdovers from years past. Good advice, I can do all that. Any specific advice to title and descriptions?
Do I need to add "content blocks" such as HTML and CSS on my pages? What kind of "inbound links"? I have all the usual social media but with the no-follow, I don't think that's what you mean....
Again, thank you!
David
Good luck.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
Do you have any suggestions for the <title> that might help?
I'll figure out how to get the text implemented, thanks, you all rock!!!
David
www.aspect-photo.com
Something like "Tuscon Wedding & Senior Portrait Photographer"
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
For inbound links - do you post to social media or to forums, and do your posts link to your photos on your site? Do you have a blog? If you have a blog, does it present photos from your site, and do those photos drive the viewer back to your photo galleries? You can see an example of that on my blog, link in signature below.
HTML and CSS content blocks won't help - text will. Add gallery descriptions, use varied titles and captions - do not use the same entry on every photo in a gallery.
Look at your site on a phone, and as Hikin' Mike says, rethink your site name. When I looked at your site on a phone in portrait orientation your header uses 1/2 of the vertical space. If you want to see what your site looks like on different devices, try http://quirktools.com/screenfly/.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
I do have a blog, listed below but I don't have any traffic to it. I do link back to my site but I have been reading lately about using the nofollow tag to avoid negating the back and forth links.... Need to research that further!
I appreciate the link that's awesome! I'm not sure how I satisfy all options though.... To optimize on a big monitor is horrible on an iPhone. That said, the mobile customer isn't usually my target but I don't want to eliminate any opportunity.
As far as your suggestion to using different file names in each section, I'm not sure how you're doing that if you're publishing hundreds of images per folder. I am exporting them from Lightroom with titles reflecting my website but to diversify that further seems incredibly time consuming unless you're only doing it for a few files.
Thanks again for your time, it truly is appreciated and will be reciprocated as I can.
David
**************
www.aspect-photo.com
http://aspect-photo.blogspot.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Aspect-Photography-217177280778/
I see you have not changed your site's <title> element: 'Creative wedding, maternity, family portrait and senior portrait photographer serving Tucson, Phoenix, and all points in between.' The <title> element is one of the most important aspects in SEO. That title is WAY TOO LONG. I suggest changing it to something like I suggested earlier.
Read my 'SEO for the Photographer' in my sig.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
Thanks,
David
www.aspect-photo.com
It's hard to find you in Tucson
Venice PhotoBlog