How can it not have use if it improves the listing?
Removing "ultimate photo sharing bla bla " would improve listing for every single Smugmug customer.
Let me repeat this for the 50th times... When Google doesn't see a description, it uses text found elsewhere in the page. For exemple...
1- If I don't do anything, SR would look like this for my birds gallery:
Borealphoto : Photos : Birds
the ultimate photo sharing bla bla bla
2- If I add my own description
Borealphoto : Photos : Birds
Picture of birds bla bla
3- With no description at all (neither SM nor mine
Borealphoto : Photos : Birds
Blue jay Artic tern barn swallow
Option 1 is the worse. #2 means more work for me (a lot more since my site is bilingual) and adds text on the page, which adds clutter. I can hide it with CSS but that's even more work and Google doesn't like hidden text. I don't need a description saying it's a bird gallery when the title says birds, the breadcrumb says birds and every single photo is one of a bird. #3 demands the least work and since there's no description at all, Google uses text found in the page. In this case, it shows birds species. Someone searching thinks this site is about content, clicks on the link and I'm happy.
it is so exasperating that there is no acknowledgment from you
This is not true, I've posted numerous times here in this thread, that I've asked folks on our team to look at Google Image Search, keywords, Meta info, page titles. I've also said numerous times that it's important to us to do as much as possible with respect to SEO, and that if we can improve things, we will and would like to.
This is not true, I've posted numerous times here in this thread, that I've asked folks on our team to look at Google Image Search, keywords, Meta info, page titles. I've also said numerous times that it's important to us to do as much as possible with respect to SEO, and that if we can improve things, we will and would like to.
Hi Andy,
I think part of the exasperation is that this issue has been discussed for a very long time (back since 2007) and we know that the folks at Smugmug have been looking at it for a very long time, but we just haven't had any improvements/results/solutions to the problem. And it's also exasperating because having our images found by Google Image Search is such a critical issue, especially for a photo hosting site, and yet it doesn't seem to have been given top priority. Pros pay for their accounts mainly with the intention of selling their photos online, and without a presence on Google Image Search, all the effort spent working on the website towards this really is a waste of time.
This is not true, I've posted numerous times here in this thread, that I've asked folks on our team to look at Google Image Search, keywords, Meta info, page titles. I've also said numerous times that it's important to us to do as much as possible with respect to SEO, and that if we can improve things, we will and would like to.
Hi Andy,
Taking a short quote from my post to reply to doesn't really place it in the right context. However, having read back through the thread until December I don't see an enthusiastic response to the issue of GIS not finding our images. So perhaps my terminology was a little harsh but it wasn't too far off the mark.
There have been some very detailed and coherent posts on the subject by several people which must have taken them a great deal of time and effort but these have often received somewhat dismissive responses IMHO.
I'm just a country bumpkin Andy, I don't have the quick wit and turn of phrase to spar with you, and as I said previously I'm a great supporter of SmugMug. So please take this as a kind of apology but also an indication that this issue is serious enough for me to consider an alternative to SmugMug for my main website. That would be such a shame because when posting here it always feels like I'm going into a room of friends and people I know and like here - very special.
Hi Andy,
Taking a short quote from my post to reply to doesn't really place it in the right context. However, having read back through the thread until December I don't see an enthusiastic response to the issue of GIS not finding our images. So perhaps my terminology was a little harsh but it wasn't too far off the mark.
Exactly. It's just a bit frustrating to hear you say "It's not broken" when, with regard to GIS, it is.
Personally, if I were designing an image sharing website, this would be my priority list for implementing features:
1) Users can upload images
2) Users can view images
3) Search engines like Google Image Search can index images
4) Everything else
Perhaps my priority list is a bit more extreme than other people's lists, but it does seem clear that I'm not the only person who thinks that making images on SmugMug indexable is not only incredibly important, but also a deal-breaker.
Exactly. It's just a bit frustrating to hear you say "It's not broken" when, with regard to GIS, it is.
What about a few posts up when Andy said:
I've asked folks on our team to look at Google Image Search, keywords, Meta info, page titles. I've also said numerous times that it's important to us to do as much as possible with respect to SEO, and that if we can improve things, we will and would like to.
?? I dunno, but I see an awesome team that's growing, has a LOT to do and IS researching what they can do to improve GIS.
?? I dunno, but I see an awesome team that's growing, has a LOT to do and IS researching what they can do to improve GIS.
I know, and I appreciate the fact that they are looking into it. The frustrating part is the previous part, where there was much confusion as to whether SmugMug saw this as a real issue and gave non-committal answers to people.
I know, and I appreciate the fact that they are looking into it. The frustrating part is the previous part, where there was much confusion as to whether SmugMug saw this as a real issue and gave non-committal answers to people.
If we can improve GIS results, we'll do it. Thanks!
Some of you may see a press release out there today regarding Tampa Bay Search (Dgrinner Tampa-Photogaphy) and SmugMug.
We did not and do not endorse Tampa Bay Search, we don't know them at all. I can't say anything at all about Tampa Bay's services or reputation. Yes, Tampa Bay became a click-through sales affiliate of SmugMug, but heck, anyone can do that.
I haven't done this often, but in defense of Smugmug , I'm not sure how they improve GIS only. They can certainly make sites more friendly to search engine though and that should help GIS as well. Don't dismiss text seach since many people don't use GIS and add (or don't) "photos" or "pictures" in their search string. Another thing, if you have a custom domain name, it's hard to compare your site to something like flickr or pbase and even smugmug.com.
I'm doing relatively well with GIS. I routinely find my images on first page, sometimes multiple images on first page, and surprisingly often, in first spot! Some of them were never posted in blogs or forums. I benefit from a 7.5 year old site with a page rank of 4, which is not bad for a personnal site. I tried the marketing test posted earlier and scored a 81.
I've always done white-hat SEO and believe Google about making sites for visitors and not for SE. That doesn't mean to forget SE though. It's all about common sense, sometimes so simple it's silly.
1- The most important is the page title and SM is lacking here, that's why it's my biggest beef. It defines the page. It's what shows in big blue letters in the SERP. There's a reason why it's at the very top left of your browser AND still viewable when the window is reduced (well, it'a not a reason but it shows how important it is)
2- Description is good for a short resume of the page but if the page content is obvious, it's unnecessary, hence my second beef with SM because we cannot-not-have a description otherwise SM adds it's completly irrevelent description about photo sharing.
Think about it... make your site for visitors. In many sites, the meta-description is unseen by visitors and it's only purpose is to have something below the title in the SERP. Unseen by visitors = unimportant. If there's none, Google will pick up text elsewehere in the page. Here's a place where Smugmug actually hurts us.
3- Page keywords (gallery, NOT photo) weigh little because it's been used for spamming. It's also unseen by visitors = umimportant. They don't really hurt unless you spam and are easy enough to fill.
4a- Captions are the most important for your images. They're like the page title for your images. Smugmug automatically transforms captions into alt tags (mouse-over text) and that is a good thing.
4b- How you write your captions is important. Put as much info in as little as possible. "cardinal" is not enough, "northen cardinal" isn't either, write "female northen cardinal" instead. "Female northen Cardinal at feeder" is good, "beautiful female northen cardinal sitting on branch" is too much. Undescriptive, poetic (cheezy, IMO) captions don't so well with SE.
4c- I just found out that order is important as well. I have an image added last fall captionned "bald eagle (immature)". Searching for "bald eagle immature", I found it on first page, which is good for such a common subject, but the image is nowhere to be found when searching for "immature bald eagle". I checked which one brought the most results and both were almost the same (40 000) so I left it like that. This one is tricky because when people speak, they say "I saw an immature bald eagle" and not "I saw a bald eagle immature", so what do they write when searching the net? I don't know. I know that I don't always enter search phrases the way I speak.
4d- If you have several images of the same subject, make some variations in the wording, use synonyms, etc. Think about what visitors might search for and use your best caption for your best image. Use synonyms for others.
4e- I have no proof, but I think too long a caption may hurt. That could be because they're also used as alt tags and SE may not like long alt tags. This is a problem for journal style, I use it for text page and it makes for mighty long alt tags. One thing for sure is my text pages are not found at all in SERP when they were king before I joined SM. I wish SM did something about this because I used to made a buck with advertising on text pages and now I make zilch.
5- Image keyword... I'm not convinced about those. They are indexed but they don't seem to help much. All the images I've found were because of the caption but I rarely see some keywords alongside. I think they would make an awesome navigation tool if we had more control over how the keyword galleries are presented. Following the same "make site for visitors", I think they're only useful if you make them public. In fact, before I made mine public, I found some of my images via keywords in Google but they were pointing to smugmug.com/keyword instead of my own site!
6- There's the whole H1, H2, bold, etc. These tags indicates relative importance of text in the page. More important in text than galleries containing short captions.
7a- Incoming links. This a big subject. The more the better but don't use tricks. Even better is quality links from You want "organic" links, basically links that you didn't ask for. A good way is to post in forums and such. Don't spam forums or you'll be ignored or banned. Find forums you're actually interested in and post as if you didn't have anything to promote and include your site in the signature and post an image along your message if it's relevent. You don't have to post an actual image. You can post a text message and add links to images here and there. It's easier to read and less spammy. Unlike what I just did, use relevent anchor text (text used as link) and use alt tags. Not sure the alt tags are important in those cases but it can't hurt. The anchor text is VERY important.
BTW, when posting picture, I suggest using thumbnails or small images with a link to a larger image. That way, you can put many more images without being spammy and you won't mess the forum format with a huge picture. Those on 56k will thank you as well. Think about the viewer! I also believe linking to an image in an empty browser page instead of the full SM page is more ethical. It loads faster and people won't be put off by "buy" buttons.
7b- Directories are just there for taking. They weigh little but they don't hurt. It'a more quantity than quality here. It is a bit tedious work though. Some directories ask for a return link. I don't bother with those. Some sitesthat aren't directories have link page where you can submit your site. I like those. You can also ask a webmaster to add your link but I don't like to be asked so I don't ask myself.
8- Outgoing links. Yes, linking out may help!. This is more for text pages though. Linking to relevent sites says your site is serious about delivering content and that you "play the web game", which is all about links.
Erick, thanks for a very interesting post, much appreciated :-)
Could you possibly give some examples of GIS results and the actual terms used to return the results please ? I tried using 'bald eagle immature' but this didn't give me any results for you.
First, I forgot to say that some images I posted in a forum are found in GIS, except they point to that forum even though it says "borealphoto.com" under the thumbnail in the SERP. I know this particular webmaster does pretty agressive SEO.
I tried "bald eagle immature" in google.ca, google.com, connected and disconnected from my Google account and my pic still shows in 14th place. Google personnalizes the results but I don't know to what extent. What follows is all using images.google.com and being disconnected from my Google account:
"becosse" (french for outhouse ) brings me a 1st and 8th spot.
"mont lac des cygnes" (a popular hiking trail) gives me a 1st and 14th spot.
"bike cabot trail" = 1st, 2nd and 12th. Same for "cycling cabot trail". Nothing for just "cabot trail" and "bike touring cabot trail". I'll take that as a challenge.
"skyline trail" - 13th place. Surprised by that one. there must be hundreds of "skyline trails" on this planet.
"parc Mauricie" - 9th place. I'm doing extremely well with any places within that park. Often wuth three photos on first page. 1st, 2nd and 3rd for "sentier deux-criques".
"lac wapizagonke" - 2nd, 3rd and 13th. 1st, 2nd and 12th for "lake wapizagonke"
3rd page for "maligne lake" (jasper)
1st page for "anticosti deAr"... second page for "anticosti deEr". Reminds me to caption some great grey owl photos with "grEy" and some with "grAy". I'm on 4th page for "great gray owl". I use to be on 1st.
18th for "cirrostratus halo". Same image shows in 25th place. 1st place if I add "22" (as in 22° degree halo)
I have the advantage of having a french site with photos coming mostly from Quebec so I compete against fewer sites. I'm surprised to be so high for that "bald eagle immature", "skyline trail" and "bike cabot trail". I looked for popular locations in Banff and Jasper park and it's a tougher nut to crack but I'm there somewhere.
Not sure if that's what you were asking.
To Smugmug, some results point to a single image view even though I don't this style at all. I'll gladly take the traffic but that style shows an option for the original sized image, which shold not be available. When I click on it, I see the large image, as if the original is only 800px wide (600px high for verticals). Any way to fix that? Here's an example: http://www.borealphoto.com/gallery/5701404_cnBDn/13/378848157_a9jtE/Original
Jives with what I know, that GIS excels in finding images that are linked in other webpages like blogs and forums - and I have lots of such results.
The problem is I click on the image in GIS, it brings me to the forum instead of my site. It only happens with forum though and I know the webmaster is pretty smart, if not agressive regarding SEO. What really sucks is that I joined this forum before I sold images through Smugmug. When he found out my images were available for sale, I got kicked out the forum and he changed my username. All my posts are intact with images and all. Maybe I should replace them with porn.
The problem is I click on the image in GIS, it brings me to the forum instead of my site. It only happens with forum though and I know the webmaster is pretty smart, if not agressive regarding SEO. What really sucks is that I joined this forum before I sold images through Smugmug. When he found out my images were available for sale, I got kicked out the forum and he changed my username. All my posts are intact with images and all. Maybe I should replace them with porn.
I have some results from www.moonriverphotography.com, some form Dgrin, Dpreview, my blog, other blogs, etc etc.
You don't need a mole at Google. The issue isn't that complicated.
Eric, the reason that GIS only returns links to your forum posts, blogs, etc. is because to GIS, SmugMug has no photos. Sure, regular Google can index things fine, but not GIS. As far as GIS is concerned, SmugMug is an image black hole.
Why? It's pretty simple. Go to a photo in your gallery. View the page source. Look for links to JPG files in the source. There are none. Google can't find what it can't see, and since there are no links to JPGs in the page source, Google can't find the images.
Within the past week or so, I've noticed that when I do a GIS search for my SmugMug site, it now returns the gallery thumbnails when it didn't return anything before. I checked, and sure enough, there are links to JPG files in the source code. Since there are links to actual image files, GIS can find them (but they are just links to tiny thumbnails, so not terribly useful).
If gallery pages have links to JPG files with alt texts and keywords nearby, GIS will find them.
Still,we want to improve the way GIS sees and finds SmugMug images, if we can!
I understand that sometimes, somehow, for a very small percentage of images, GIS finds them on SmugMug. Do we know why? No.
I do know, however, that if a site has a hard link to a JPG, GIS will be able to find it pretty consistently.
The other thing I noticed too when I recreated your search on GIS, sometimes images that were supposedly on williams.smugmug.com were not actually there, but a blog or forum post. So those results can be a bit deceiving.
It's only THAT forum where the search result leads to the forum. Everything else goes to my site. I have yet to find an image pointing towards another site except that particular forum. Also, not every image found in GIS have external links pointing towards them so you necessarily need backlinks to your image but backlinks to the site probably helps as it helps the site's ranking . I also find images of all sizes. I can't say Smugmug has problem being indexed. When I really want to find my images, I do find them. Getting to the top is the issue and that isn't easy for anyone. As far as I can tell, borealphoto.smugmug.com doesn't exist for Google so it's borealphoto.com against flickr and pbase. That part is not supposed to be easy.
Another exemple of how the wording in captions influences results. My site is bilingual and to Google, my Maligne canyon caption looks like:
Canyon Maligne, parc national de Jasper
Maligne canyon, Jasper national park
Searching for "Maligne canyon", I still haven't found my photo at page 12 because I'm competing against every other English site. Searching for "canyon Maligne" (French), it's on first page.
This gets more interesting (I refuse to admit confusing) - I have tried using several of the terms in Erick's post and most of them do not return any results for me, but not all, and not in the same positions. However from Erick and Andy's examples there are results. It seems that the images are all CAPTIONED with text which includes the search terms ?
A Test - I have a gallery called Kagemusha Taiko, with 80 images which are all keywords and captioned thus :-
"kagemusha taiko" "sidmouth folk festival 2007"
GIS returns absolute zero when using the keyword terms.
I changed the captions to the same as the keywords this morning so lets see if there is any change in a few days.
First, it lists 176 images, which I'm assuming is far less than the number of images he has up on williams.smugmug.com. Second, if you take a look, most of those images are pulled from this very forum. So a small percentage of his images, less than 10% if I am being generous, is indexed by GIS without having first been posted in a forum.
I could go through finding more examples. However, this much is clear: GIS finds a tiny fraction of images in galleries, and when it does, it almost always is as a result of the image being posted to a blog or forum.
First, it lists 176 images, which I'm assuming is far less than the number of images he has up on williams.smugmug.com. Second, if you take a look, most of those images are pulled from this very forum. So a small percentage of his images, less than 10% if I am being generous, is indexed by GIS without having first been posted in a forum.
Thanks for that analysis doctorgonzo. The other interesting thing is that not only are most of the photos from GIS on Andy's site results from Dgrin, but also with the images that are from Andy's website, if you click on them, many either take you to the homepage slideshow, or to a gallery where the main featured photo is not actually the photo which you clicked on, which means that even when results are delivered in these instances, they are actually irrelevant. For someone searching for an image in GIS, the last thing they want when they find a thumbnail of an image that they are looking for, is to be taken to an irrelevant webpage where it is unclear where exactly the photo is situated.
You're right doctorgonzo, I have about 1400 photos on my site and of the 5 photos that GIS finds, 1 was actually from a post by Andy in Dgrin, and the remaining 4 when clicked on, takes you to my homepage instead of any of the actual photos in a gallery. So essentially, ALL of the photos that GIS finds on my site are irrelevant and useless search results.
Comments
Removing "ultimate photo sharing bla bla " would improve listing for every single Smugmug customer.
Let me repeat this for the 50th times... When Google doesn't see a description, it uses text found elsewhere in the page. For exemple...
1- If I don't do anything, SR would look like this for my birds gallery:
Borealphoto : Photos : Birds
the ultimate photo sharing bla bla bla
2- If I add my own description
Borealphoto : Photos : Birds
Picture of birds bla bla
3- With no description at all (neither SM nor mine
Borealphoto : Photos : Birds
Blue jay Artic tern barn swallow
Option 1 is the worse. #2 means more work for me (a lot more since my site is bilingual) and adds text on the page, which adds clutter. I can hide it with CSS but that's even more work and Google doesn't like hidden text. I don't need a description saying it's a bird gallery when the title says birds, the breadcrumb says birds and every single photo is one of a bird. #3 demands the least work and since there's no description at all, Google uses text found in the page. In this case, it shows birds species. Someone searching thinks this site is about content, clicks on the link and I'm happy.
But I'm not happy now!
borealphoto.smugmug.com
We'll see if we can improve on that, Erick.
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Does this mean we will have to pay even more for the SEO title features in this seemingly new SmugMugPro site?
Historically, we've not rolled this way
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Woohoo, you rock (of course I will not hold you to that as you did say historically but oooh I say stick with tradition *grins* )
Stuart
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Hi Andy,
I think part of the exasperation is that this issue has been discussed for a very long time (back since 2007) and we know that the folks at Smugmug have been looking at it for a very long time, but we just haven't had any improvements/results/solutions to the problem. And it's also exasperating because having our images found by Google Image Search is such a critical issue, especially for a photo hosting site, and yet it doesn't seem to have been given top priority. Pros pay for their accounts mainly with the intention of selling their photos online, and without a presence on Google Image Search, all the effort spent working on the website towards this really is a waste of time.
Website: www.lookingglassphotography.com.au
Blog: http://lookingglassphotography.posterous.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LookingGlassPho
Hi Andy,
Taking a short quote from my post to reply to doesn't really place it in the right context. However, having read back through the thread until December I don't see an enthusiastic response to the issue of GIS not finding our images. So perhaps my terminology was a little harsh
There have been some very detailed and coherent posts on the subject by several people which must have taken them a great deal of time and effort but these have often received somewhat dismissive responses IMHO.
I'm just a country bumpkin Andy, I don't have the quick wit and turn of phrase to spar with you, and as I said previously I'm a great supporter of SmugMug. So please take this as a kind of apology but also an indication that this issue is serious enough for me to consider an alternative to SmugMug for my main website. That would be such a shame because when posting here it always feels like I'm going into a room of friends and people I know and like here - very special.
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
Exactly. It's just a bit frustrating to hear you say "It's not broken" when, with regard to GIS, it is.
Personally, if I were designing an image sharing website, this would be my priority list for implementing features:
1) Users can upload images
2) Users can view images
3) Search engines like Google Image Search can index images
4) Everything else
Perhaps my priority list is a bit more extreme than other people's lists, but it does seem clear that I'm not the only person who thinks that making images on SmugMug indexable is not only incredibly important, but also a deal-breaker.
What about a few posts up when Andy said:
??
I know, and I appreciate the fact that they are looking into it. The frustrating part is the previous part, where there was much confusion as to whether SmugMug saw this as a real issue and gave non-committal answers to people.
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We did not and do not endorse Tampa Bay Search, we don't know them at all. I can't say anything at all about Tampa Bay's services or reputation. Yes, Tampa Bay became a click-through sales affiliate of SmugMug, but heck, anyone can do that.
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I'm doing relatively well with GIS. I routinely find my images on first page, sometimes multiple images on first page, and surprisingly often, in first spot! Some of them were never posted in blogs or forums. I benefit from a 7.5 year old site with a page rank of 4, which is not bad for a personnal site. I tried the marketing test posted earlier and scored a 81.
I've always done white-hat SEO and believe Google about making sites for visitors and not for SE. That doesn't mean to forget SE though. It's all about common sense, sometimes so simple it's silly.
1- The most important is the page title and SM is lacking here, that's why it's my biggest beef. It defines the page. It's what shows in big blue letters in the SERP. There's a reason why it's at the very top left of your browser AND still viewable when the window is reduced (well, it'a not a reason but it shows how important it is)
2- Description is good for a short resume of the page but if the page content is obvious, it's unnecessary, hence my second beef with SM because we cannot-not-have a description otherwise SM adds it's completly irrevelent description about photo sharing.
Think about it... make your site for visitors. In many sites, the meta-description is unseen by visitors and it's only purpose is to have something below the title in the SERP. Unseen by visitors = unimportant. If there's none, Google will pick up text elsewehere in the page. Here's a place where Smugmug actually hurts us.
3- Page keywords (gallery, NOT photo) weigh little because it's been used for spamming. It's also unseen by visitors = umimportant. They don't really hurt unless you spam and are easy enough to fill.
4a- Captions are the most important for your images. They're like the page title for your images. Smugmug automatically transforms captions into alt tags (mouse-over text) and that is a good thing.
4b- How you write your captions is important. Put as much info in as little as possible. "cardinal" is not enough, "northen cardinal" isn't either, write "female northen cardinal" instead. "Female northen Cardinal at feeder" is good, "beautiful female northen cardinal sitting on branch" is too much. Undescriptive, poetic (cheezy, IMO) captions don't so well with SE.
4c- I just found out that order is important as well. I have an image added last fall captionned "bald eagle (immature)". Searching for "bald eagle immature", I found it on first page, which is good for such a common subject, but the image is nowhere to be found when searching for "immature bald eagle". I checked which one brought the most results and both were almost the same (40 000) so I left it like that. This one is tricky because when people speak, they say "I saw an immature bald eagle" and not "I saw a bald eagle immature", so what do they write when searching the net? I don't know. I know that I don't always enter search phrases the way I speak.
4d- If you have several images of the same subject, make some variations in the wording, use synonyms, etc. Think about what visitors might search for and use your best caption for your best image. Use synonyms for others.
4e- I have no proof, but I think too long a caption may hurt. That could be because they're also used as alt tags and SE may not like long alt tags. This is a problem for journal style, I use it for text page and it makes for mighty long alt tags. One thing for sure is my text pages are not found at all in SERP when they were king before I joined SM. I wish SM did something about this because I used to made a buck with advertising on text pages and now I make zilch.
5- Image keyword... I'm not convinced about those. They are indexed but they don't seem to help much. All the images I've found were because of the caption but I rarely see some keywords alongside. I think they would make an awesome navigation tool if we had more control over how the keyword galleries are presented. Following the same "make site for visitors", I think they're only useful if you make them public. In fact, before I made mine public, I found some of my images via keywords in Google but they were pointing to smugmug.com/keyword instead of my own site!
6- There's the whole H1, H2, bold, etc. These tags indicates relative importance of text in the page. More important in text than galleries containing short captions.
7a- Incoming links. This a big subject. The more the better but don't use tricks. Even better is quality links from You want "organic" links, basically links that you didn't ask for. A good way is to post in forums and such. Don't spam forums or you'll be ignored or banned. Find forums you're actually interested in and post as if you didn't have anything to promote and include your site in the signature and post an image along your message if it's relevent. You don't have to post an actual image. You can post a text message and add links to images here and there. It's easier to read and less spammy. Unlike what I just did, use relevent anchor text (text used as link) and use alt tags. Not sure the alt tags are important in those cases but it can't hurt. The anchor text is VERY important.
BTW, when posting picture, I suggest using thumbnails or small images with a link to a larger image. That way, you can put many more images without being spammy and you won't mess the forum format with a huge picture. Those on 56k will thank you as well. Think about the viewer! I also believe linking to an image in an empty browser page instead of the full SM page is more ethical. It loads faster and people won't be put off by "buy" buttons.
7b- Directories are just there for taking. They weigh little but they don't hurt. It'a more quantity than quality here. It is a bit tedious work though. Some directories ask for a return link. I don't bother with those. Some sitesthat aren't directories have link page where you can submit your site. I like those. You can also ask a webmaster to add your link but I don't like to be asked so I don't ask myself.
8- Outgoing links. Yes, linking out may help!. This is more for text pages though. Linking to relevent sites says your site is serious about delivering content and that you "play the web game", which is all about links.
That's about al I can think of now.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
Could you possibly give some examples of GIS results and the actual terms used to return the results please ? I tried using 'bald eagle immature' but this didn't give me any results for you.
Many thanks,
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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I tried "bald eagle immature" in google.ca, google.com, connected and disconnected from my Google account and my pic still shows in 14th place. Google personnalizes the results but I don't know to what extent. What follows is all using images.google.com and being disconnected from my Google account:
"becosse" (french for outhouse
"mont lac des cygnes" (a popular hiking trail) gives me a 1st and 14th spot.
"bike cabot trail" = 1st, 2nd and 12th. Same for "cycling cabot trail". Nothing for just "cabot trail" and "bike touring cabot trail". I'll take that as a challenge.
"skyline trail" - 13th place. Surprised by that one. there must be hundreds of "skyline trails" on this planet.
"parc Mauricie" - 9th place. I'm doing extremely well with any places within that park. Often wuth three photos on first page. 1st, 2nd and 3rd for "sentier deux-criques".
"lac wapizagonke" - 2nd, 3rd and 13th. 1st, 2nd and 12th for "lake wapizagonke"
3rd page for "maligne lake" (jasper)
1st page for "anticosti deAr"... second page for "anticosti deEr". Reminds me to caption some great grey owl photos with "grEy" and some with "grAy". I'm on 4th page for "great gray owl". I use to be on 1st.
18th for "cirrostratus halo". Same image shows in 25th place. 1st place if I add "22" (as in 22° degree halo)
I have the advantage of having a french site with photos coming mostly from Quebec so I compete against fewer sites. I'm surprised to be so high for that "bald eagle immature", "skyline trail" and "bike cabot trail". I looked for popular locations in Banff and Jasper park and it's a tougher nut to crack but I'm there somewhere.
Not sure if that's what you were asking.
To Smugmug, some results point to a single image view even though I don't this style at all. I'll gladly take the traffic but that style shows an option for the original sized image, which shold not be available. When I click on it, I see the large image, as if the original is only 800px wide (600px high for verticals). Any way to fix that? Here's an example: http://www.borealphoto.com/gallery/5701404_cnBDn/13/378848157_a9jtE/Original
borealphoto.smugmug.com
Jives with what I know, that GIS excels in finding images that are linked in other webpages like blogs and forums - and I have lots of such results.
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Thanks Erick, great post
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The problem is I click on the image in GIS, it brings me to the forum instead of my site. It only happens with forum though and I know the webmaster is pretty smart, if not agressive regarding SEO. What really sucks is that I joined this forum before I sold images through Smugmug. When he found out my images were available for sale, I got kicked out the forum and he changed my username. All my posts are intact with images and all. Maybe I should replace them with porn.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
We need a mole at Google
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You don't need a mole at Google. The issue isn't that complicated.
Eric, the reason that GIS only returns links to your forum posts, blogs, etc. is because to GIS, SmugMug has no photos. Sure, regular Google can index things fine, but not GIS. As far as GIS is concerned, SmugMug is an image black hole.
Why? It's pretty simple. Go to a photo in your gallery. View the page source. Look for links to JPG files in the source. There are none. Google can't find what it can't see, and since there are no links to JPGs in the page source, Google can't find the images.
Within the past week or so, I've noticed that when I do a GIS search for my SmugMug site, it now returns the gallery thumbnails when it didn't return anything before. I checked, and sure enough, there are links to JPG files in the source code. Since there are links to actual image files, GIS can find them (but they are just links to tiny thumbnails, so not terribly useful).
If gallery pages have links to JPG files with alt texts and keywords nearby, GIS will find them.
:nah
I could go on.
Still,we want to improve the way GIS sees and finds SmugMug images, if we can!
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so far.
I understand that sometimes, somehow, for a very small percentage of images, GIS finds them on SmugMug. Do we know why? No.
I do know, however, that if a site has a hard link to a JPG, GIS will be able to find it pretty consistently.
The other thing I noticed too when I recreated your search on GIS, sometimes images that were supposedly on williams.smugmug.com were not actually there, but a blog or forum post. So those results can be a bit deceiving.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
Canyon Maligne, parc national de Jasper
Maligne canyon, Jasper national park
Searching for "Maligne canyon", I still haven't found my photo at page 12 because I'm competing against every other English site. Searching for "canyon Maligne" (French), it's on first page.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
A Test - I have a gallery called Kagemusha Taiko, with 80 images which are all keywords and captioned thus :-
"kagemusha taiko" "sidmouth folk festival 2007"
Performance at Sidmouth Folk Festival 2007 in the Market Place ©Caroline Shipsey
GIS returns absolute zero when using the keyword terms.
I changed the captions to the same as the keywords this morning so lets see if there is any change in a few days.
EDIT:- I've added 6 images of Kagemusha Taiko to Flickr here http://www.flickr.com/photos/carolineshipsey/3305321533/
I dont use Flickr and have no wish to but it will be intersting to see what happens :-)
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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borealphoto.smugmug.com
I can't tell how many pictures Andy has on http://williams.smugmug.com. Here is a GIS search for his site: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=site%3Awilliams.smugmug.com&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
First, it lists 176 images, which I'm assuming is far less than the number of images he has up on williams.smugmug.com. Second, if you take a look, most of those images are pulled from this very forum. So a small percentage of his images, less than 10% if I am being generous, is indexed by GIS without having first been posted in a forum.
CatsPawPhotos: again, I have no idea how many images are on www.catspawphotos.com. However, GIS finds two: http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&q=site%3Awww.catspawphotos.com&btnG=Search+Images&gbv=2
BorealPhoto: GIS finds about 560 photos for www.borealphoto.com here: http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&safe=active&q=site%3Awww.borealphoto.com&btnG=Search+Images . If you click through, though, you'll find that many of those images are either posted on a blog (borealphoto.blogspot.com) or a forum (voyageforum.com).
Interestingly, some of his photos on SmugMug are index by GIS, for example this one: http://www.borealphoto.com/gallery/3762258_rtoVm/1/265769929_VmSkZ/Large . Honestly, that's a display mode of SmugMug that I've never seen before. It's not the typical gallery display that I am used to (such as this: http://www.borealphoto.com/gallery/3762258_rtoVm#394073450_cDbox). The image that was indexed by GIS had a link to the JPG file itself in the page source. I'm not sure how to get my galleries to look like that, however.
Caroline Shipsey's photos: It looks like there are a fair number of photos on this site (http://www.carolineshipsey.co.uk/galleries) based on the keywords. GIS finds 17 images (http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&safe=active&q=site%3Awww.carolineshipsey.co.uk&btnG=Search+Images), of which a few are posted on blogs, and the others are thumbnail galleries.
Looking Glass Photography: this site has well over a thousand photos (www.lookingglassphotography.com.au). GIS finds five: http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&safe=active&q=site%3Awww.lookingglassphotography.com.au&btnG=Search+Images
I could go through finding more examples. However, this much is clear: GIS finds a tiny fraction of images in galleries, and when it does, it almost always is as a result of the image being posted to a blog or forum.
Thanks for that analysis doctorgonzo. The other interesting thing is that not only are most of the photos from GIS on Andy's site results from Dgrin, but also with the images that are from Andy's website, if you click on them, many either take you to the homepage slideshow, or to a gallery where the main featured photo is not actually the photo which you clicked on, which means that even when results are delivered in these instances, they are actually irrelevant. For someone searching for an image in GIS, the last thing they want when they find a thumbnail of an image that they are looking for, is to be taken to an irrelevant webpage where it is unclear where exactly the photo is situated.
You're right doctorgonzo, I have about 1400 photos on my site and of the 5 photos that GIS finds, 1 was actually from a post by Andy in Dgrin, and the remaining 4 when clicked on, takes you to my homepage instead of any of the actual photos in a gallery. So essentially, ALL of the photos that GIS finds on my site are irrelevant and useless search results.
Website: www.lookingglassphotography.com.au
Blog: http://lookingglassphotography.posterous.com/
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LookingGlassPho