search engines see it three times: 1. in the source view. 2. in the 'alt' tag of each gallery's random photo. 3. in the Mouse Hover.
Even if that is not the reason i'm penalized (as another member suggested), search engines don't like duplications (200 similar gallery description on one page) and they hate when something is visible to them and not to a human viewer.
There's no duplication in your point 1, 2 and 3. Source is just everything and mouse-over shows alt tags in most browsers. All is normal here. Also, Mouse-over counts as being visible to human so you need not to worry about hidden content.
I see your point about the 200 descriptions though. I'd rather have a text box that would not transfer as a meta-description myself. Such a long description is not good, duplicated or not. A solution with the current system is to remove it from the galleries and put a link pointing to a single page with the info. It would also make cleaner galleries.
Hi, I'm sorry I hope I wasn't being disrepectful! Dgrin is a community forum and help comes from us and our customers. I'm so sorry if I upset you. I really don't have a better answer right now, to your question. I'm sorry.
Andy, I want to apologize ...and explain.
I come here to Dgrin only after first trying [unsuccessfully] the Support Heroes. As you know, many times i enjoyed receiving smart (at least compared to my stupidity) and knowledgeable responses (including from you). Other times i enjoyed (and appreciated) receiving plain and honest "I don't know" responses. I know that it's hard to find and train good Service IT people, but many times i felt very frustrated with some Heroes' responses.
As for the latest issue, i definitely exaggerated its importance (for me at least) - i want people to arrive to my gallery pages, i don't need them in my Home or Category pages (also, my other two websites send me enough people to there). I'll respond to Erick separately (and i did think a lot before deciding on my long Gallery Descriptions); but i still maintain that my category pages are not SE friendly, take very long to upload, (and at least Google's Chrome cannot handle the long description that pop with Mouse Hover).
Again, it's not a big deal for me and i do respect and appreciate your current response. Hopefully i'll be able to get a more satisfying explanation from a programmer/tech guy.
A New question...!?!
I started working on improving my galleries; among other things i'm inserting a 'random' thumbnail from (and to) each gallery. I'm copying the "img src" from the Source View of my Category pages. BUT, i just realized that the same reason you suggested to wait a bit with using my current galleries' addresses to create links, may apply to the random images addresses. Am i right (will they change soon)?
I know you and other are working very hard on the upcoming changes and cannot delve into the What and When, but these unknowns are a bit Hard on my work for a better website.
There's no duplication in your point 1, 2 and 3. Source is just everything and mouse-over shows alt tags in most browsers. All is normal here. Also, Mouse-over counts as being visible to human so you need not to worry about hidden content.
I see your point about the 200 descriptions though. I'd rather have a text box that would not transfer as a meta-description myself. Such a long description is not good, duplicated or not. A solution with the current system is to remove it from the galleries and put a link pointing to a single page with the info. It would also make cleaner galleries.
Thank you very much Erick,
Please clarify this for me: I thought that if something shows on the source view but not on the actual page, then it's 'bad' according to search engines...
As for my long gallery description, i'm aware of the problems you mentioned and i gave a lot of thoughts to that. I depend on viewers using the 'Map This' feature in order to find aerial photos of their house or of any other location. I felt that i needed to explain that (as well as the steps following). I also do have a link there to SmugMug's Help. I made sure that the first few words (which Google uses on results pages) are meaningful and contain my keywords. Also, SmugMug takes the galleries names and use them as the Meta Title tags - that is almost perfect, the problem is that it adds my 'nickname' and the word "photos" in the beginning! (if it only removes them or even moves them to the end, that will be PERFECT).
Ooops - Spoke to soon. I found such a link on Yahoo today. First, it should not come up as ...smugmug.com/gallery/... When you click on the link via the Yahoo search it takes you to my "Clouds" gallery that is being displayed in a format that I don't want which dosen't have my customizations and preferences (for instance, I don't have the "share" button on my pages). If you go into my website via www.stephenjfrancophotography.com, then you can see the difference between my customizations versus this link via a Yahoo search http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/55228...02572323_dKUzw How can SmugMug get this second link removed and make certain these www.smugmug.com/gallery/... links don't show up???
I'd like to add a "+1" to those who've said they aren't necessarily interested in their name being found on Google, but rather specific images. For example, a search on Google Images for "guthrie theater" currently turns up a bunch of nice images - but none of them are mine. I have such an image with exactly those search words in both the keywords and caption on Smugmug, but still no luck.
To illustrate why this can be important, I recently sold two images to an architectural firm. They found the images by searching for the name of a local park, which they had designed. The search turned up my images in Flickr, but not the same images in Smugmug. In this case the client was looking to buy images of a very specific subject, and fortunately found mine on Flickr. As this isn't an isolated case, I'm forced to continue to feed my Flickr account even though I much prefer Smugmug's customizing options. And the friendly help, of course!
I realize this kind of searchability can be a tall order. Flickr is not 100% in this regard either. The "guthrie theater" example above also does not turn up my image from Flickr. Still, I'm hoping for great things with the new SEO work on Smugmug.
I'd like to add a "+1" to those who've said they aren't necessarily interested in their name being found on Google, but rather specific images. For example, a search on Google Images for "guthrie theater" currently turns up a bunch of nice images - but none of them are mine. I have such an image with exactly those search words in both the keywords and caption on Smugmug, but still no luck.
To illustrate why this can be important, I recently sold two images to an architectural firm. They found the images by searching for the name of a local park, which they had designed. The search turned up my images in Flickr, but not the same images in Smugmug. In this case the client was looking to buy images of a very specific subject, and fortunately found mine on Flickr. As this isn't an isolated case, I'm forced to continue to feed my Flickr account even though I much prefer Smugmug's customizing options. And the friendly help, of course!
I realize this kind of searchability can be a tall order. Flickr is not 100% in this regard either. The "guthrie theater" example above also does not turn up my image from Flickr. Still, I'm hoping for great things with the new SEO work on Smugmug.
Andy,
Sorry to bother you again; i know i talk a lot and can be quite obnoxious, but on my last post i did also ask a question (which might be relevant only to me).
A few weeks ago you suggested to me to wait a bit with creating gallery links, since gallery addresses might be changed soon or something, what about images addresses? (i'm holding off with my galleries update where i'm copying the random thumbnails of galleries from my Category page's Source View and pasting them in my galleries).
You know, i forget you are very close to Silicon Valley where secrecy of What and When of new developments (re. Apple) is in the blood...
Forgive my impatience.
Improving search rankings on Google etc
I've been getting more and more confused about why smugmug comes so low down on search results for my photos. If I do for a search in google images for example for someone on my own website it's usually pretty high up, the smug mug gallery (I link to in the webpages) is somewhere on page 50 or so.
I know, images need to be tagged, keywords blah blah... I do all that and still no difference.
This is a bit worrying as I try to raise a bit of income from image sales and if they can't be found they can't be bought.
I've been getting more and more confused about why smugmug comes so low down on search results for my photos. If I do for a search in google images for example for someone on my own website it's usually pretty high up, the smug mug gallery (I link to in the webpages) is somewhere on page 50 or so.
I know, images need to be tagged, keywords blah blah... I do all that and still no difference.
This is a bit worrying as I try to raise a bit of income from image sales and if they can't be found they can't be bought.
More coming, soon, we hope - especially sitemaps, and Google-friendlier image links, too.
Hello Andy,
I'm glad to see things in the Findability direction arriving, and as i wrote in my latest post, Forgive my impatience.
However, unless i didn't understand the new gallery's Title setup, I got a BIGer PROBLEM now!!
Yes the Title is probably the most important thing in Findability and i'm thankful to SmugMug for working in that direction. But, (as i wrote earlier) the order of the words in the Title (and being SHORT and to the POINT) have a tremendous importance!
Before, i had only the words: [emixpix : photos] before the Title. For example:
emixpix : photos : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)...
Now that gallery's title is:
emixpix's photos : Aerial Photos of New York : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)...
So, the important phrase/keywords, that which people put when searching - "Manhattan, NY Aerial Photos" have moved much further to the 'back'!!!
Unless i just didn't find yet the way to remove my nickname and the category name from the front of the Title, i'm in a much worse situation than before the new Changes!
I'm glad to see things in the Findability direction arriving, and as i wrote in my latest post, Forgive my impatience.
However, unless i didn't understand the new gallery's Title setup, I got a BIGer PROBLEM now!!
Yes the Title is probably the most important thing in Findability and i'm thankful to SmugMug for working in that direction. But, (as i wrote earlier) the order of the words in the Title (and being SHORT and to the POINT) have a tremendous importance!
Before, i had only the words: [emixpix : photos] before the Title. For example:
emixpix : photos : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)...
Now that gallery's title is:
emixpix's photos : Aerial Photos of New York : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)...
So, the important phrase/keywords, that which people put when searching - "Manhattan, NY Aerial Photos" have moved much further to the 'back'!!!
Unless i just didn't find yet the way to remove my nickname and the category name from the front of the Title, i'm in a much worse situation than before the new Changes!
Please tell me i'm wrong.
I think you're making the title unnecessarily long yourself by repeating terms, which can actually lead to penalty, not higher ranking.
emixpix's photos : Aerial Photos of New York : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)
should be
emixpix's photos : Aerial Photos of New York : Manhattan (Gallery 1 of 4)
If you want to further shorten it, you can remove the emixpix's photos from the title completely (of every page) in the easy customizer browser section (just enter a dash or something) -or change to just your name since, again, photos is being repeated
I think the gallery title tags are great now, now they just need to change to reflect the title of each image rather than staying the same as the gallery title for every image. And of course, meta descriptions are still the same for every page, a problem that hopefully is being fixed soon.
Many thanks to the Smugmug team for a major improvement in SEO with the new "nice name" URL. I'm sure this was the most difficult of the suggestions to implement.
A few notes on important next steps which I hope are in the works. I see that Page Titles have inherited the nice name URL, which is much better than what we previously had. However, it would be even better if we could actually name the page instead of it being a reflection of the URL. Page titles are considered THE most important SEO item!
The home page, and also categories (even custom categories) still have the default smugmug meta keywords. Please give us the option to use our own meta keywords! This might cause a "duplicate content" penalty from Google and other search engines.
Also, people that have a custom navbar on their sites should verify if the URL paths are still correct. One of mine had changed. It still worked somehow, but I fixed mine to be accurate with the new hyphenated URL system.
Good practices for page title tags
• Accurately describe the page's content - Choose a title that effectively communicates the
topic of the page's content.
Avoid:
• choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page
• using default or vague titles like "Untitled" or "New Page 1"
• Create unique title tags for each page - Each of your pages should ideally have a unique
title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.
Avoid:
• using a single title tag across all of your site's pages or a large group of pages
• Use brief, but descriptive titles - Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.
Avoid:
• using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users
• stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags
Most results are from "family card" or "death valley" galleries.
Are these page titles short and informative? Do these page titles accurately describe the page's content? Will Google users prefer your page titles when they are searching for "death valley" or "family cards"?
Andy and Smugmug, please consider giving us full control of the page titles or - at least - reverse the order of the page title elements.
I'm glad to see things in the Findability direction arriving, and as i wrote in my latest post, Forgive my impatience.
However, unless i didn't understand the new gallery's Title setup, I got a BIGer PROBLEM now!!
Yes the Title is probably the most important thing in Findability and i'm thankful to SmugMug for working in that direction. But, (as i wrote earlier) the order of the words in the Title (and being SHORT and to the POINT) have a tremendous importance!
Before, i had only the words: [emixpix : photos] before the Title. For example:
emixpix : photos : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)...
Now that gallery's title is:
emixpix's photos : Aerial Photos of New York : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)...
So, the important phrase/keywords, that which people put when searching - "Manhattan, NY Aerial Photos" have moved much further to the 'back'!!!
Unless i just didn't find yet the way to remove my nickname and the category name from the front of the Title, i'm in a much worse situation than before the new Changes!
I agree with Amos. When it comes to page titles, I'm in a worse situation than before the new Changes.
The most important keywords (Gallery description or nickname) should be the first part of the title - Just as described in Google's webmaster starter guide.
So, I will repeat my wish.
Andy and Smugmug, please consider giving us full control of the page titles or - at least - reverse the order of the page title elements.
I'm really hoping that this new thing helps. I've just been checking google (I know it will hopefully change following the upgrade) for random things in my galleries and also included the tag (keyword) smugmug to see if that brought the images forward. Nope.
If I put in say a studio name that I've shot I come right at the top of image results with my own website. I can't find any on smugmug (indexed) with or without the smugmug keyword. It's kind of like google doesn't want to index them.
I've double checked all of the things to do and nothing seems amis, eg, hello world is checked etc etc etc.
Fingers crossed but I'm slightly starting to feel uneasy about how google is seeing smugmug photos....
To be clear, I'm not moving, I love Smugmug but it has increasingly become a worry that images that have been there plenty long enough to be indexed aren't being seen / picked up.
I am wondering if I should re-name images prior to uploading. Eg, joe-blogs-guitar-player1010226735etc.jpg?
How can you possibly be worse off? Of course, I can be wrong, please show me / us how so - we'll surely try to fix. But worse off? :nah
Google recommend a short and informative title that clearly describes the content of the page.
The most informative title that clearly describes the content of a gallery page is the gallery title (or gallery nickname).
In Google search result you can only see the first 64 or so characters.
As Amos clearly pointed out – the gallery title is now further back and more likely to be cut off in search results.
How can moving your most important keyword further back be an improvement?
An improvement would be to use your most important keywords (Gallery title) as the page title.
This would be a short and informative title that clearly describes the content of the page – Just as Google recommend. And this will be the most visible part of search results.
(The second best would be to put your gallery title to the front of your page title and strip it beyond 64 characters.)
Andy, I would love to have a 64 character long home page title just as you do, but just on my home page.
I don’t want it in front of my gallery titles or photo titles causing all my gallery titles and photo titles being stripped of in Google’s result pages.
Why don’t you believe in the SEO guidelines from Google and why don’t you believe in me and the many other Smugmug users here at Dgrin trying to tell you the same thing?
I repeat my statement and wish:
When it comes to page titles, I'm in a worse situation than before the new Changes.
Andy and Smugmug, please consider giving us full control of the page titles or - at least - reverse the order of the page title elements.
Google recommend a short and informative title that clearly describes the content of the page.
The most informative title that clearly describes the content of a gallery page is the gallery title (or gallery nickname).
In Google search result you can only see the first 64 or so characters.
As Amos clearly pointed out – the gallery title is now further back and more likely to be cut off in search results.
How can moving your most important keyword further back be an improvement?
An improvement would be to use your most important keywords (Gallery title) as the page title.
This would be a short and informative title that clearly describes the content of the page – Just as Google recommend. And this will be the most visible part of search results.
(The second best would be to put your gallery title to the front of your page title and strip it beyond 64 characters.)
Andy, I would love to have a 64 character long home page title just as you do, but just on my home page.
I don’t want it in front of my gallery titles or photo titles causing all my gallery titles and photo titles being stripped of in Google’s result pages.
Why don’t you believe in the SEO guidelines from Google and why don’t you believe in me and the many other Smugmug users here at Dgrin trying to tell you the same thing?
I repeat my statement and wish:
When it comes to page titles, I'm in a worse situation than before the new Changes.
Andy and Smugmug, please consider giving us full control of the page titles or - at least - reverse the order of the page title elements.
I'll pass this to the team, of course, thanks.
I don't 'not believe' you or Google. But you say you're worse off now than before, that's just wrong.
I thank you very, very much for the clarification, now I'll ask the team. Thanks!
Comments
There's no duplication in your point 1, 2 and 3. Source is just everything and mouse-over shows alt tags in most browsers. All is normal here. Also, Mouse-over counts as being visible to human so you need not to worry about hidden content.
I see your point about the 200 descriptions though. I'd rather have a text box that would not transfer as a meta-description myself. Such a long description is not good, duplicated or not. A solution with the current system is to remove it from the galleries and put a link pointing to a single page with the info. It would also make cleaner galleries.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
I come here to Dgrin only after first trying [unsuccessfully] the Support Heroes. As you know, many times i enjoyed receiving smart (at least compared to my stupidity) and knowledgeable responses (including from you). Other times i enjoyed (and appreciated) receiving plain and honest "I don't know" responses. I know that it's hard to find and train good Service IT people, but many times i felt very frustrated with some Heroes' responses.
As for the latest issue, i definitely exaggerated its importance (for me at least) - i want people to arrive to my gallery pages, i don't need them in my Home or Category pages (also, my other two websites send me enough people to there). I'll respond to Erick separately (and i did think a lot before deciding on my long Gallery Descriptions); but i still maintain that my category pages are not SE friendly, take very long to upload, (and at least Google's Chrome cannot handle the long description that pop with Mouse Hover).
Again, it's not a big deal for me and i do respect and appreciate your current response. Hopefully i'll be able to get a more satisfying explanation from a programmer/tech guy.
A New question...!?!
I started working on improving my galleries; among other things i'm inserting a 'random' thumbnail from (and to) each gallery. I'm copying the "img src" from the Source View of my Category pages. BUT, i just realized that the same reason you suggested to wait a bit with using my current galleries' addresses to create links, may apply to the random images addresses. Am i right (will they change soon)?
I know you and other are working very hard on the upcoming changes and cannot delve into the What and When, but these unknowns are a bit Hard on my work for a better website.
Thanks Andy for your time and help.
http://www.eMixPix.com - Stock Aerial Photos of NYC Metro area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut)
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-York - NY Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-Jersey - NJ Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/Connecticut - CT Aerial Photos
http://www.BestAerialPhotos.com - Aerial Photography service in the NYC Metro area
Please clarify this for me: I thought that if something shows on the source view but not on the actual page, then it's 'bad' according to search engines...
As for my long gallery description, i'm aware of the problems you mentioned and i gave a lot of thoughts to that. I depend on viewers using the 'Map This' feature in order to find aerial photos of their house or of any other location. I felt that i needed to explain that (as well as the steps following). I also do have a link there to SmugMug's Help. I made sure that the first few words (which Google uses on results pages) are meaningful and contain my keywords. Also, SmugMug takes the galleries names and use them as the Meta Title tags - that is almost perfect, the problem is that it adds my 'nickname' and the word "photos" in the beginning! (if it only removes them or even moves them to the end, that will be PERFECT).
Thanks again Erick for your time and help.
http://www.eMixPix.com - Stock Aerial Photos of NYC Metro area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut)
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-York - NY Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-Jersey - NJ Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/Connecticut - CT Aerial Photos
http://www.BestAerialPhotos.com - Aerial Photography service in the NYC Metro area
Update 2009-08-23
This issue appears to be fixed with release: http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/2009/08/21/introducing-nicenames-august-13th-2009/
The “Hide owner” (www smugmug com/gallery/xxxxx-xxxx) link are not found in Smugmug search pages og recent category pages anymore.
Thanks a lot for fixing this.
<TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=4 width="100%"><TBODY><TR><TD style="BORDER-BOTTOM: 1px inset; BORDER-LEFT: 1px inset; BORDER-TOP: 1px inset; BORDER-RIGHT: 1px inset" class=alt2>Originally Posted by Franco
Ooops - Spoke to soon. I found such a link on Yahoo today. First, it should not come up as ...smugmug.com/gallery/... When you click on the link via the Yahoo search it takes you to my "Clouds" gallery that is being displayed in a format that I don't want which dosen't have my customizations and preferences (for instance, I don't have the "share" button on my pages). If you go into my website via www.stephenjfrancophotography.com, then you can see the difference between my customizations versus this link via a Yahoo search http://www.smugmug.com/gallery/55228...02572323_dKUzw How can SmugMug get this second link removed and make certain these www.smugmug.com/gallery/... links don't show up???
Thanks for the help.
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Please follow the following lines:
Take a look at this result from a Google text search : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=1R2ADBF_en&q=%22find+stuff+:+%22+%22searchType%3Dglobal%22+site:smugmug.com&start=10&sa=N
1000’s of these type of Smugmug search result pages are indexed and cached by Google:
Click on the cached version of any of the results.
View the page source.
All gallery links are a “Hide owner” (www smugmug com/gallery/xxxxx-xxxx) type of link.
Search engine robots are instructed to index and follow all links.
( meta name="robots" content="all, index, follow")
There might be other type of Smugmug pages constructed the same way – like recent category galleries (example http://www.smugmug.com/browse/Landscapes) and recent community galleries (like http://www.smugmug.com/community/DigitalGrin) etc.
I hope this can help to solve the mystery to “how or why they get the hide owner link”.
Having Google indexing these “Hide owner” URL’s are also bad for SEO (See the document "Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide" found on Google's SEO Starter Guide page: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html )
I’m very pleased to hear in this thread http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=140175 that: That is very good news. Thanks a lot Andy and Smugmug.
Panoramio: Spectacular photos on Google Earth
Google: Allan Hansen - fotograf og IT-nørd
Blogs: Photo and SEO news by LichtenHansen, Allan Hansen foto nyheder, Antarctica Travel
Homepage: Fotograf Allan Hansen, Unusual wildlife photos
To illustrate why this can be important, I recently sold two images to an architectural firm. They found the images by searching for the name of a local park, which they had designed. The search turned up my images in Flickr, but not the same images in Smugmug. In this case the client was looking to buy images of a very specific subject, and fortunately found mine on Flickr. As this isn't an isolated case, I'm forced to continue to feed my Flickr account even though I much prefer Smugmug's customizing options. And the friendly help, of course!
I realize this kind of searchability can be a tall order. Flickr is not 100% in this regard either. The "guthrie theater" example above also does not turn up my image from Flickr. Still, I'm hoping for great things with the new SEO work on Smugmug.
Nikon D700 and some fun glass.
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Sorry to bother you again; i know i talk a lot and can be quite obnoxious, but on my last post i did also ask a question (which might be relevant only to me).
A few weeks ago you suggested to me to wait a bit with creating gallery links, since gallery addresses might be changed soon or something, what about images addresses? (i'm holding off with my galleries update where i'm copying the random thumbnails of galleries from my Category page's Source View and pasting them in my galleries).
You know, i forget you are very close to Silicon Valley where secrecy of What and When of new developments (re. Apple) is in the blood...
Forgive my impatience.
http://www.eMixPix.com - Stock Aerial Photos of NYC Metro area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut)
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-York - NY Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-Jersey - NJ Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/Connecticut - CT Aerial Photos
http://www.BestAerialPhotos.com - Aerial Photography service in the NYC Metro area
I've been getting more and more confused about why smugmug comes so low down on search results for my photos. If I do for a search in google images for example for someone on my own website it's usually pretty high up, the smug mug gallery (I link to in the webpages) is somewhere on page 50 or so.
I know, images need to be tagged, keywords blah blah... I do all that and still no difference.
This is a bit worrying as I try to raise a bit of income from image sales and if they can't be found they can't be bought.
What am I doing wrong????
Cheers!
Mike
http://recordproduction.smugmug.com
Canon 5DmkII, Canon 35L, Canon 85L, Canon 16-35L, Canon 200L,Canon 24-105L, Sigma 12-24mm etc.. Interfit lights, Canon ST-E2, Metz 58 AF-1, Manfrotto 190pro. Computers by Apple, hair by Shirley.
http://wiki.smugmug.net/display/SmugMug/Maximize+Search+Engine+Findability
and we're taking steps to work with Google on GIS in a better way.
And, some new SEO Stuff will be on the site live, very soon!
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Thanks Andy!
:-)
http://recordproduction.smugmug.com
Canon 5DmkII, Canon 35L, Canon 85L, Canon 16-35L, Canon 200L,Canon 24-105L, Sigma 12-24mm etc.. Interfit lights, Canon ST-E2, Metz 58 AF-1, Manfrotto 190pro. Computers by Apple, hair by Shirley.
First of some pretty major SEO enhancements.. notice the page titles, and the new Gallery URLs (NiceNames)!
http://smugmug.com/help/search-engines
So instead of http://yournickname.smugmug.com/gallery/XXXXX-yyyy as your Utah Parks landscapes, Use words like "Fine Art Photos of Utah's Parks" as your gallery title, which will result in a very tasty URL like this: http://yournickname.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Fine-Art-Photos-of-Utahs-Parks
More in the release note and help page.
More coming, soon, we hope - especially sitemaps, and Google-friendlier image links, too.
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This is a great release for SEO enhancements, nice work!!
Wow! This is just the sort of thing that I've been hoping for
http://recordproduction.smugmug.com
Canon 5DmkII, Canon 35L, Canon 85L, Canon 16-35L, Canon 200L,Canon 24-105L, Sigma 12-24mm etc.. Interfit lights, Canon ST-E2, Metz 58 AF-1, Manfrotto 190pro. Computers by Apple, hair by Shirley.
Hello Andy,
I'm glad to see things in the Findability direction arriving, and as i wrote in my latest post, Forgive my impatience.
However, unless i didn't understand the new gallery's Title setup, I got a BIGer PROBLEM now!!
Yes the Title is probably the most important thing in Findability and i'm thankful to SmugMug for working in that direction. But, (as i wrote earlier) the order of the words in the Title (and being SHORT and to the POINT) have a tremendous importance!
Before, i had only the words: [emixpix : photos] before the Title. For example:
- emixpix : photos : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)...
Now that gallery's title is:- emixpix's photos : Aerial Photos of New York : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)...
So, the important phrase/keywords, that which people put when searching - "Manhattan, NY Aerial Photos" have moved much further to the 'back'!!!Unless i just didn't find yet the way to remove my nickname and the category name from the front of the Title, i'm in a much worse situation than before the new Changes!
Please tell me i'm wrong.
http://www.eMixPix.com - Stock Aerial Photos of NYC Metro area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut)
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-York - NY Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-Jersey - NJ Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/Connecticut - CT Aerial Photos
http://www.BestAerialPhotos.com - Aerial Photography service in the NYC Metro area
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You mean there is a way to put my gallery name to be first on the Title?
Or you mean that the very basic SEO-Title fact i wrote about (which i didn't invent), is wrong?
http://www.eMixPix.com - Stock Aerial Photos of NYC Metro area (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut)
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-York - NY Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/New-Jersey - NJ Aerial Photos
--- http://www.emixpix.com/Connecticut - CT Aerial Photos
http://www.BestAerialPhotos.com - Aerial Photography service in the NYC Metro area
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I think you're making the title unnecessarily long yourself by repeating terms, which can actually lead to penalty, not higher ranking.
emixpix's photos : Aerial Photos of New York : Manhattan, NY - Aerial Photos & Views (Gallery 1 of 4)
should be
emixpix's photos : Aerial Photos of New York : Manhattan (Gallery 1 of 4)
If you want to further shorten it, you can remove the emixpix's photos from the title completely (of every page) in the easy customizer browser section (just enter a dash or something) -or change to just your name since, again, photos is being repeated
I think the gallery title tags are great now, now they just need to change to reflect the title of each image rather than staying the same as the gallery title for every image. And of course, meta descriptions are still the same for every page, a problem that hopefully is being fixed soon.
A few notes on important next steps which I hope are in the works. I see that Page Titles have inherited the nice name URL, which is much better than what we previously had. However, it would be even better if we could actually name the page instead of it being a reflection of the URL. Page titles are considered THE most important SEO item!
The home page, and also categories (even custom categories) still have the default smugmug meta keywords. Please give us the option to use our own meta keywords! This might cause a "duplicate content" penalty from Google and other search engines.
Also, people that have a custom navbar on their sites should verify if the URL paths are still correct. One of mine had changed. It still worked somehow, but I fixed mine to be accurate with the new hyphenated URL system.
Cheers,
Joel
http://www.joelfletcher.com
Andy, please look at the recommandations from "Google's Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide" found on Google's SEO Starter Guide page:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/11/googles-seo-starter-guide.html
Now compare these guidelines with the following result from your pages recently indexed by google:
http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Awww.moonriverphotography.com&hl=en&rlz=1R2ADBF_en&output=search&tbs=rcnt:1&tbo=1
Most results are from "family card" or "death valley" galleries.
Are these page titles short and informative?
Do these page titles accurately describe the page's content?
Will Google users prefer your page titles when they are searching for "death valley" or "family cards"?
Andy and Smugmug, please consider giving us full control of the page titles or - at least - reverse the order of the page title elements.
Panoramio: Spectacular photos on Google Earth
Google: Allan Hansen - fotograf og IT-nørd
Blogs: Photo and SEO news by LichtenHansen, Allan Hansen foto nyheder, Antarctica Travel
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We just changed the page titles on SmugMug yesterday, with NiceNames & SEO. Can ou give it some time for Google to catch up?
http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/2009/08/21/introducing-nicenames-august-13th-2009/
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I'm sorry, but the Google result shows pages indexed AFTER the change.
Amos described the problem very precisely:
I agree with Amos. When it comes to page titles, I'm in a worse situation than before the new Changes.
The most important keywords (Gallery description or nickname) should be the first part of the title - Just as described in Google's webmaster starter guide.
So, I will repeat my wish.
Andy and Smugmug, please consider giving us full control of the page titles or - at least - reverse the order of the page title elements.
Panoramio: Spectacular photos on Google Earth
Google: Allan Hansen - fotograf og IT-nørd
Blogs: Photo and SEO news by LichtenHansen, Allan Hansen foto nyheder, Antarctica Travel
Homepage: Fotograf Allan Hansen, Unusual wildlife photos
Hi, I have a custom page title. I'll be changing that, perhaps, I don't know yet.
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I strongly disagree with this statement. Each gallery, each category, heck, even a single image view like this: http://www.moonriverphotography.com/Galleries/Bryce-and-Zion/1482997_yhAM9/1/70949209_NNmx6/Large all have different, unique page titles.
How can you possibly be worse off?
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If I put in say a studio name that I've shot I come right at the top of image results with my own website. I can't find any on smugmug (indexed) with or without the smugmug keyword. It's kind of like google doesn't want to index them.
I've double checked all of the things to do and nothing seems amis, eg, hello world is checked etc etc etc.
Fingers crossed but I'm slightly starting to feel uneasy about how google is seeing smugmug photos....
Hmm.
http://recordproduction.smugmug.com
Canon 5DmkII, Canon 35L, Canon 85L, Canon 16-35L, Canon 200L,Canon 24-105L, Sigma 12-24mm etc.. Interfit lights, Canon ST-E2, Metz 58 AF-1, Manfrotto 190pro. Computers by Apple, hair by Shirley.
In google search results? I'm not following you.
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Sorry Andy. I mean in Google Image Search.
To be clear, I'm not moving, I love Smugmug but it has increasingly become a worry that images that have been there plenty long enough to be indexed aren't being seen / picked up.
I am wondering if I should re-name images prior to uploading. Eg, joe-blogs-guitar-player1010226735etc.jpg?
http://recordproduction.smugmug.com
Canon 5DmkII, Canon 35L, Canon 85L, Canon 16-35L, Canon 200L,Canon 24-105L, Sigma 12-24mm etc.. Interfit lights, Canon ST-E2, Metz 58 AF-1, Manfrotto 190pro. Computers by Apple, hair by Shirley.
Google recommend a short and informative title that clearly describes the content of the page.
The most informative title that clearly describes the content of a gallery page is the gallery title (or gallery nickname).
In Google search result you can only see the first 64 or so characters.
As Amos clearly pointed out – the gallery title is now further back and more likely to be cut off in search results.
How can moving your most important keyword further back be an improvement?
An improvement would be to use your most important keywords (Gallery title) as the page title.
This would be a short and informative title that clearly describes the content of the page – Just as Google recommend. And this will be the most visible part of search results.
(The second best would be to put your gallery title to the front of your page title and strip it beyond 64 characters.)
Andy, I would love to have a 64 character long home page title just as you do, but just on my home page.
I don’t want it in front of my gallery titles or photo titles causing all my gallery titles and photo titles being stripped of in Google’s result pages.
Why don’t you believe in the SEO guidelines from Google and why don’t you believe in me and the many other Smugmug users here at Dgrin trying to tell you the same thing?
I repeat my statement and wish:
When it comes to page titles, I'm in a worse situation than before the new Changes.
Andy and Smugmug, please consider giving us full control of the page titles or - at least - reverse the order of the page title elements.
Panoramio: Spectacular photos on Google Earth
Google: Allan Hansen - fotograf og IT-nørd
Blogs: Photo and SEO news by LichtenHansen, Allan Hansen foto nyheder, Antarctica Travel
Homepage: Fotograf Allan Hansen, Unusual wildlife photos
I don't 'not believe' you or Google. But you say you're worse off now than before, that's just wrong.
I thank you very, very much for the clarification, now I'll ask the team. Thanks!
If we can make it configurable, we'll see!
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We hope to do more in this regard, soon. Stay tuned for hopefully, some more SEO improvements!
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