SEO - Beauty in the eyes of Google

Armadillo

I see a lot of beautiful, clean, photography sites with a minimalist look and little or no text.
But from what I read about Search Engine Optimisation, Google wants text content. Specifically at least 300 words before Google thinks your page has enough content to show.
So I have to wonder how are those clean minimalist sites getting noticed by Google?
There is "meta data" we can add to photos, galleries, etc, but this is largely ignored by modern search engines. They want content.

I'm doing a minor redesign of my site and I want it to be clean, classy, and Google friendly. Also with as few clicks as resonable between landing page, photos, and cart page.
However having a bunch of unneeded (for the customer) text loaded with keywords is distracting and detracts from the photos.

So, how do you balance page aesthetics and Google's needs?
If you have a clean minimalist site how are you satisfying Google's desire for text content?

Ferguson

My understanding is that links to your site on respected sites has more to do with it than what's in your site.

Though I also have heard what you have about textual content. For a while it was all about "keywords" then it was "it ignores keywords". Whether google keeps moving the target, or people's impression of what google does (but doesn't really explain) changes. But I've noticed more google hits as I've gotten more sites to point to my galleries.

denisegoldberg

Inbound links are very important. I use them extensively in my blog posts. For an example, follow the links in my signature.

I believe that text on your site plays a part here as well.

I always create descriptions for my galleries and keywords for my photos. I sometimes add captions for photos as well; I need to do more of this.

As far as your comment on text taking away from your site, I really don't think that's true. Text can be used in good ways. For example, take a look at leftquark's site, http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Photography/Recent/. He does a really good job of captioning his photos. I think it adds to his site.

--- Denise

Armadillo

Most of the links to my site are links that I planted on other sites and my social media. Always found it difficult getting others to link.
I could probably do a better job of adding descriptions. Thanks for the info!

jerryr

Hi - I always recommend to Smuggers to review this article by SmugMug about SEO :
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/1229846

I have been using SmugMug for 10+ years and always had success with Titles and Captions for the Images.
Here is another good example of a photographer that uses titles and captions : http://www.inspiredbonnie.com/