I have three websites that are mainly pictures. None of them are immensely popular but all are pretty much focused on the same topics (moosonee, ravens, ontario northland trains....).
One thing I noticed is that the smugmug site gets far fewer referrals through search engines than the other ones. The other sites get half of their traffic from search engines, the smugmug site a quarter.
Most of the pictures I post on smugmug have both keywords and captions. When I do searches for specific pictures, the smugmug site comes up high. But for more general stuff, the opposite is true.
Hello PAULLANTZ;
You were a bit ahead of me to post a similar/related issue; i hope to do it tomorrow. I'll bring a proof that Google (vs. Bing) doesn't like my site on SmugMug... You are right, our keywords and captions are invisible to search engines!
The reason i'm responding to you now is for a couple of suggestions i have:
Add all of your websites to your posts on DGrin (as part of your signature); this will automatically increase your links count in the eyes of the search engines (it's not much, but better than none)
Get [free] Google Analytics tool where you will be able to see a wealth of information regarding people entering to ALL your websites.
I reread earlier what Andy brought above; i like and agree with what is being said there (BTW, I started my own first website and SEO learning/frustrations in the mid 90's).
The author of that article claims that "SEO is poisoning the internet"; well, ...SmugMug is engaged in a lot of SEO; it's definitely NOT poisoning anything but i claim that SOMETHING there is hurting my relationship with Google!!! ...And not doing/helping as i could have done on my own, with my overall 'FINDABILITY'!!!
Fortunately i keep my own B]independent[/B website which not only sends my site here (eMixPix.com) more [relevant] traffic than everything else combined, but also, through my Google Analytics i can see, compare and learn everything regarding traffic to ALL of my websites.
I'll start with a few obvious 'problems'/challenges which i'm aware of, and which might be of interest to others:
Captions / file names - Search Engines don't see (or at least, DON'T index and use) my captions and/or file names. I named and captioned all my 20,000 photos, and even re-captioned recently all the first (and more) photos in each of my more than 250 galleries. BUT... my Smugmug images (contrary to my other websites images) don't appear in Google Images and the like.
Keywords - the same applies to my many keywords (and to my Keywords/Find page) ...search engines disregard them!
Site Map - I know that SmugMug knows the significance of the lack of a Site Map (especially for my own site with so many galleries. Is it coming?
Negative (for me) and confusing (for Google) effects of SmugMug's SEO - I appreciate and applaud the excellent job of SEO SmugMug does for its OWN website. BUT, i made my site to work (and hopefully generate my only income) by people finding not me, but what they are looking for, namely, aerial photos of specific locations/ZIP codes. I suspected something was wrong when i realized Google doesn't know me well, but the obvious proof came when i signed for Google AdSence (mostly for that purpose). Here are the ads by Google i found a week ago in my Aerial Photos of Giants Stadium gallery: "Free Satellite Image", "Photo Albums", "online Photo Gallery" and "Virtual Hosting". I have to admit, though, that it's getting better!
I tried today this key phrase (which is part of the name/title of one of my galleries): "aerial photos of southampton ny". I didn't find myself in the first few pages of Google, but i was FIRST on Bing. A few weeks ago i tried something similar, i found myself on the 3rd page of Google, but, on the first page i found FotoSearch.com displaying one of their photographers (he had just a few photographs, while i have a few hundreds all captioned inside a gallery by that name).
While Bing already knows most of My Galleries new NiceNames, Google insists on the old meaningless and unrecognized names.
In my Google Webmaster tools i see Google HTML suggestions and crawl errors which are SmugMug's problems but i'll discuss those later and not here...
Finally, I bring bellow two screen shots of last month's Google Analytics' search engines traffic to my site on Smugmug, as well as, to my independent site. Please note king Google' (which SM claims to have special relations with) usefulness vs. baby Bing in my SmugMug site's chart. Yes, my independent site is about 4 years old, vs. less than a year of my SM site, but it has only 3 pages while my SM site has more than 250 highly optimized pages...
You come first for "Amagansett Aerial Photo" and "11930 Aerial Photo" and just lower down the page for "11930 Photo" in the text search.
I think your descriptions are too big. Smugmug needs to separate the "description" on page, which is useful for adding text content, from the meta-description.
EDIT: FotoSearch has a PR7! Good luck competing with them!
I get found, not always for the terms I'd like but sometimes I get three images on the first Google page.
but i claim that SOMETHING there is hurting my relationship with Google!!! ...And not doing/helping as i could have done on my own, with my overall 'FINDABILITY'!!!
Based on ... what?
I'll start with a few obvious 'problems'/challenges which i'm aware of, and which might be of interest to others:
Captions / file names - Search Engines don't see (or at least, DON'T index and use) my captions and/or file names. I named and captioned all my 20,000 photos, and even re-captioned recently all the first (and more) photos in each of my more than 250 galleries. BUT... my Smugmug images (contrary to my other websites images) don't appear in Google Images and the like.
[*]Keywords - the same applies to my many keywords (and to my Keywords/Find page) ...search engines disregard them!
based on what evidence?
[*]Site Map - I know that SmugMug knows the significance of the lack of a Site Map (especially for my own site with so many galleries. Is it coming?
Yes, we hope so. We're working on being able to have site maps, without impacting the performance of our site.
[*]Negative (for me) and confusing (for Google) effects of SmugMug's SEO - I appreciate and applaud the excellent job of SEO SmugMug does for its OWN website. BUT, i made my site to work (and hopefully generate my only income) by people finding not me, but what they are looking for, namely, aerial photos of specific locations/ZIP codes. I suspected something was wrong when i realized Google doesn't know me well, but the obvious proof came when i signed for Google AdSence (mostly for that purpose). Here are the ads by Google i found a week ago in my Aerial Photos of Giants Stadium gallery: "Free Satellite Image", "Photo Albums", "online Photo Gallery" and "Virtual Hosting". I have to admit, though, that it's getting better!
[*]I tried today this key phrase (which is part of the name/title of one of my galleries): "aerial photos of southampton ny". I didn't find myself in the first few pages of Google, but i was FIRST on Bing. A few weeks ago i tried something similar, i found myself on the 3rd page of Google, but, on the first page i found FotoSearch.com displaying one of their photographers (he had just a few photographs, while i have a few hundreds all captioned inside a gallery by that name).
[*]While Bing already knows most of My Galleries new NiceNames, Google insists on the old meaningless and unrecognized names.
[*]In my Google Webmaster tools i see Google HTML suggestions and crawl errors which are SmugMug's problems but i'll discuss those later and not here...
[*]Finally, I bring bellow two screen shots of last month's Google Analytics' search engines traffic to my site on Smugmug, as well as, to my independent site. Please note king Google' (which SM claims to have special relations with) usefulness vs. baby Bing in my SmugMug site's chart. Yes, my independent site is about 4 years old, vs. less than a year of my SM site, but it has only 3 pages while my SM site has more than 250 highly optimized pages...
Time.... IMO. You have a ton of zipcodes as keywords, I'm just not sure how effective that is, I have to research that. BTW, why isn't 'aerial photos' 'aerial photographs' part of your keywords?
I have lots of results for keywords that get crawled and indexed on my site, so I have no evidence to support your claim of keywords not helping, Amos, I'm really, really sorry
You asked "based on what?"; didn't you see my two screen shots from my Google Analytics!? How come Bing which only has 10% of the search engine market, brought me 55% of my traffic, while Google (which SmugMug claims to have special relations with) with its 65% of the SE market, brought me only 38% of my traffic in the last 30 days????
I appreciate your efforts and accomplishment with the NiceNames feature, but how is it going to help me if Google is more interested in captions/surrounding text, AND my captions and keywords DON'T work?!!!
You asked "based on what evidence?", I just went to my keywords page and picked and copied 5 different two/four-words keywords - i tried but didn't find myself in Google or Bing (i checked the first 4 pages on each of them).
I know time and patience are the essence in SEO but i know that something is wrong. That was why i thought a Site Map may help search engines reach missed pages like the Keywords page. In the Findability Help you rightly stressed the importance of KEYWORDS; i followed your advice and also worked (endlesly) on my file names and captions - how much longer should i wait to see a sign that it is working?
Now, it is very possible that i did something wrong with my SmugMug's site, or, more likely it's SmugMug' problem (like a problem with a keyword search which SM quickly corrected); but i'm here not to funnel my self pity, i'm here requesting help.
A clue that something is wrong i find (besides the Google-Bing analysis) in my Google Webmasters Tools - there are 4 Crawl errors ('not followed') detected by Google on October 15 and 16.
There are 48 'Duplicate meta descriptions' in only 7 of my 250 galleries (and it's related to some image sizes ???).
There is 1 'Long Meta description', again, in one out of 250 galleries (and it's no longer than the rest).
There are 29 'Duplicate title tags' in only four galleries and again it's something with image sizes (Small, Medium and Large ???).
I'll be happy to show more specifics.
Thanks again Andy; i'm here to learn and better myself and my website; i'm awaiting your response.
Search engines and real engines
On my smugmug site, http://paullantz.smugmug.com, when I search for "Polar Bear Express" 307 images are returned. Understandable, I live in Moosonee where the train goes and I take a lot of pictures of it.
When I search in google, the smugmug site does not show up. If i search for images, my other two sites end up with pictures on the first page of the google image listing.
I know that my smugmug site gets searched, if I had very specific stuff, the pictures will show. It is more that for a general inquiry such as "polar bear express", google seems to take no account of the amount of content I have on this topic. So, I am guessing, number of images you have on a topic is not a factor.
For specific searches, google picks up stuff very well. For example, if I search on google for "2202 gp40-2" (looking for locomotive model gp40-2 number 2202) an image from smugmug tops the google search results in web search but not in image search. However, I think image search has a long way to go.
Overall, it is frustrating to have a collection of images on a specialized topic (e.g. "Polar Bear Express") that tends not to turn up when searches are done.
Open to suggestions.
Photography is a hobby for me so this does not really affect me financially but I can imagine it would be very frustrating for people for whom it is a profession.
Paul
Title, Link Names, and Links are Most Important
Hi Amos,
1. Any company's relationship with Google has no effect on their ability to rank. But as of yesterday, Google still has 65% market share.
2. If you are trying to rank for a term like "Aerial Photos of New York" then that term better be in your site or page title, and it better be in the text of the links that point back to your site. Can't blame SmugMug when your site title is eMixPix's Stock and your forum signature links spell out your domain names. (Notice you rank #1 for "eMixPix's Stock")
3. Check out my book and blog for more help, like how to phrase your title, homepage text, and link building ideas for getting more links to your site (the most important factor in ranking)
1. Any company's relationship with Google has no effect on their ability to rank. But as of yesterday, Google still has 65% market share.
2. If you are trying to rank for a term like "Aerial Photos of New York" then that term better be in your site or page title, and it better be in the text of the links that point back to your site. Can't blame SmugMug when your site title is eMixPix's Stock and your forum signature links spell out your domain names. (Notice you rank #1 for "eMixPix's Stock")
3. Check out my book and blog for more help, like how to phrase your title, homepage text, and link building ideas for getting more links to your site (the most important factor in ranking)
Thanks Zach for your attention,
Yes, Google has 65% while Bing has about 10% (and that is about what i get to my independent website which i fully control and did the SEO). However, to my site on Smugmug i get more traffic from Bing than from Google!
I don't try to get traffic to my home page, i want people to find what they look for, namely, aerial photo in a specific location. And that is how i constructed my website - with individual pages (with keywords) and titles.
Thanks for your offer to read your book, but i cannot afford to read more SEO things (i started my first website about 15 years ago and already spent a zillion hours on studying and practicing SEO).
I still claim that there are faults with the the way Smugmug lets search engines (especially Google in my case) see and index my website. I don't see a way you can help so i'll not waste your time with proofs and examples
Thanks for your offer to read your book, but i cannot afford to read more SEO things (i started my first website about 15 years ago and already spent a zillion hours on studying and practicing SEO).
Hi Amos, I've mentioned to you in prior emails that we're getting pro after pro writing us and giving us the complete opposite to your story. IMO, what you did 15 years ago, while valuable, isn't as important as what we and guys like Zach are doing and perfecting right now.
I think you are being stubborn, and I'm sorry about that Best of luck to you, Amos - I wish I could do more for you right now, I really do!
Hi Amos, I've mentioned to you in prior emails that we're getting pro after pro writing us and giving us the complete opposite to your story. IMO, what you did 15 years ago, while valuable, isn't as important as what we and guys like Zach are doing and perfecting right now.
I think you are being stubborn, and I'm sorry about that Best of luck to you, Amos - I wish I could do more for you right now, I really do!
Maybe or maybe not, i'm stubborn, Andy, but more likely i'm a cheap guy (and lazy) for not going to PhotoShelter.com where i can communicate with someone who is responsive and is really trying to understand my problems.
...In the previous page there is a very interesting post (#608) by Paul Lantz which was left unanswered for more than a month. You may want to check it out ...and maybe respond to it. (i have similar problems).
I didn't have to do much SEO when i built my first site 15 years. The SEO stuff i read and learned was in the last few years when i built another few websites. Interestingly enough i have problems only with the one website i cannot fully control - the one with SM.
My 15 years old SEO, as you called it, brings my galleries search terms to FIRST place in Bing (and yes, a couple of galleries in Google search). My problem is with Google (and SM?) regarding the rest of my galleries keywords/terms
If Google can see and index my pages clearly as you claim, how come it doesn't understand (and doesn't display in searches) most of my galleries? And how come in one of my aerial photos galleries, for example (named and SEO for, "Irvington, NY 10533"), the four Goggle adsense i found 3 days ago were: "Ceiling Air Conditioner", "Heat Exchanger", "Chiller Cleaning", and "Clean Compressor"?
Bing sees and uses my new galleries Nicenames and title, while Google, somehow, finds and sees the old stuff... I just saw a Google's cached page from Dec 3rd with the old stuff, why do you still have it on the server?
That was enough for me for tonight, i hope i didn't said too many stupid things.
Maybe or maybe not, i'm stubborn, Andy, but more likely i'm a cheap guy (and lazy) for not going to PhotoShelter.com where i can communicate with someone who is responsive and is really trying to understand my problems.
Hi Amos! I've answered everyone of your messages, timely, here and at the help desk. I've even gotten industry experts to try and assist.
[*]...In the previous page there is a very interesting post (#608) by Paul Lantz which was left unanswered for more than a month. You may want to check it out ...and maybe respond to it. (i have similar problems).
[*]I didn't have to do much SEO when i built my first site 15 years. The SEO stuff i read and learned was in the last few years when i built another few websites. Interestingly enough i have problems only with the one website i cannot fully control - the one with SM.
[*]My 15 years old SEO, as you called it, brings my galleries search terms to FIRST place in Bing (and yes, a couple of galleries in Google search). My problem is with Google (and SM?) regarding the rest of my galleries keywords/terms
[*]If Google can see and index my pages clearly as you claim, how come it doesn't understand (and doesn't display in searches) most of my galleries? And how come in one of my aerial photos galleries, for example (named and SEO for, "Irvington, NY 10533"), the four Goggle adsense i found 3 days ago were: "Ceiling Air Conditioner", "Heat Exchanger", "Chiller Cleaning", and "Clean Compressor"?
[*]Bing sees and uses my new galleries Nicenames and title, while Google, somehow, finds and sees the old stuff... I just saw a Google's cached page from Dec 3rd with the old stuff, why do you still have it on the server?
[*]That was enough for me for tonight, i hope i didn't said too many stupid things.
I'm really sorry this is frustrating you so much, and that you are really upset with us. We've tried, numerous times, to help and assist. I've answered these other questions by email to you from the help desk yesterday so I won't repeat here. We really do want to help, Amos - but I can't do much more than what is working for me (I'm a working pro, too) and many, many of our pros - that being the same stuff I've suggested to you over and over again.
I'm really sorry, Amos - I really do want to help but I'm at a loss as to how to proceed with you. I'm all ears if you've got some ideas.
On my smugmug site, http://paullantz.smugmug.com, when I search for "Polar Bear Express" 307 images are returned. Understandable, I live in Moosonee where the train goes and I take a lot of pictures of it.
When I search in google, the smugmug site does not show up. If i search for images, my other two sites end up with pictures on the first page of the google image listing.
I know that my smugmug site gets searched, if I had very specific stuff, the pictures will show. It is more that for a general inquiry such as "polar bear express", google seems to take no account of the amount of content I have on this topic. So, I am guessing, number of images you have on a topic is not a factor.
For specific searches, google picks up stuff very well. For example, if I search on google for "2202 gp40-2" (looking for locomotive model gp40-2 number 2202) an image from smugmug tops the google search results in web search but not in image search. However, I think image search has a long way to go.
Overall, it is frustrating to have a collection of images on a specialized topic (e.g. "Polar Bear Express") that tends not to turn up when searches are done.
Open to suggestions.
Photography is a hobby for me so this does not really affect me financially but I can imagine it would be very frustrating for people for whom it is a profession.
Paul
Google Image search will pick up images - best is to have descriptive filenames - that's new on SmugMug in the past few months (indexing for example, a picture called glacier-national-park-amtrak.jpg would have this filename that has loads of google food:
Hi Amos! I've answered everyone of your messages, timely, here and at the help desk. I've even gotten industry experts to try and assist.
I'm really sorry this is frustrating you so much, and that you are really upset with us. We've tried, numerous times, to help and assist. I've answered these other questions by email to you from the help desk yesterday so I won't repeat here. We really do want to help, Amos - but I can't do much more than what is working for me (I'm a working pro, too) and many, many of our pros - that being the same stuff I've suggested to you over and over again.
I'm really sorry, Amos - I really do want to help but I'm at a loss as to how to proceed with you. I'm all ears if you've got some ideas.
Andy/Smugmug; finally (after not getting any help/will to understand, from you) i found major major problems (when i did, as Google suggested, a site search... site:emixpix.com and site:emixpix.smugmug.com). It will take me some time to make screen shots and to describe what i see as wrong; i don't think is will interest anybody here so i'll email smugmug. Since it's technical stuff and not your expertize, tell me please who to address my email. (in the mean time, you may want to ask one of your technical stuff to do the two 'site search' i did; he/she should recognize some of the problems right away).
There are other issues that might interest others and i'll bring it here later after i deal with my individual issues, but i want to mention again the issue of Google's Site Map. I read your answer about the "challenge" smugmug faces in implementing Site Map in the best possible way, but i want to remind you that Google is not stupid and there is a reason Google encourages (even insists) inserting a Site Map. I more than suspect that a Site Map would eliminate most of my problems. Any hope for a near future implementation?
The main reason for my frustration with you and Smugmug, is your inability (as i see it) to even consider the possibility that you might be wrong or don't know. I read here similar claims from others and i also remember our argument around the gallery Titles' issue...
I very much appreciate your time, energy and trying to help (in your own way, of course). As i wrote then, i love Smugmug but its arrogance (as i see it) drives me crazy.
Send it ATTN: Andy, I'll get the rright people involved here.
Amos, I'm not saying we might not be wrong (we have been before and we alwyas try to fix stuff if we're wrong or it can be done better). But I continue to get report after report of SmugMug customers who have SEO that is soaring.
Please write me with your details.
Amos, why is there script stuff at the end of all your posts? Some sort of 'input gwProxy' stuff.
Send it ATTN: Andy, I'll get the rright people involved here.
Amos, I'm not saying we might not be wrong (we have been before and we alwyas try to fix stuff if we're wrong or it can be done better). But I continue to get report after report of SmugMug customers who have SEO that is soaring.
Please write me with your details.
Amos, why is there script stuff at the end of all your posts? Some sort of 'input gwProxy' stuff.
Thanks Andy for your quick response.
Anything in regard to what i wrote about Google's Site Maps?
If you have the time you may want to try the two site searched i did (site:emixpix.com and site:emixpix.com.smugmug.com). You'll notice immediately the differences (which shouldn't be, as i was told by smugmug), and... i have 286 published aerial photos galleries, check how many indexed pages Google returns (and many are not even galleries)...
I don't know what you were talking about regarding which is seen at the end of my posts - i don't see a thing. Don't tell me i got another computer's problem...
[*]I don't know what you were talking about regarding which is seen at the end of my posts - i don't see a thing. Don't tell me i got another computer's problem...[/LIST]
you've got a virus or something I think, all your posts have this in them
[*]Anything in regard to what i wrote about Google's Site Maps?
Hi Amos, I've said it before, sitemaps are in the plans, but we have to make sure we don't crash the site by implementing them. Once we deal with performance issues, I hope we can have sitemaps implemented.
Matt Cutts, Google's resident SEO expert and a good friend of mine, just posted a video and some slides from a talk he gave about two years ago. It's mostly geared towards bloggers, but there are some important gems in there that's relative to this discussion. The two most important ones are:
1. Keywords in the URL are the most important. He spends quite a bit of time on this. This is exactly what NiceNames just did.
2. You need to "Get noticed, then get traffic from Google" *not* "Get traffic from Google, then get noticed". It just doesn't happen the other way around. If you're not actively advertising, marketing, and promoting your site - having the very best SEO on your pages in the world won't get you anywhere. It'll result in well-crawled pages (which is what you have today) that Google thinks no-one likes or cares about.
Here's the blog post with both video and slides he posted this morning: SEO tips.
so do nicenames affect the google searches in password protected galleries or even unlisted galleries.?
Thought i read somewhere that they didn't but am unable to find that info.
so do nicenames affect the google searches in password protected galleries or even unlisted galleries.?
Thought i read somewhere that they didn't but am unable to find that info.
Google shouldn't find password-protected and unlisted galleries.
Matt Cutts, Google's resident SEO expert and a good friend of mine, just posted a video and some slides from a talk he gave about two years ago. It's mostly geared towards bloggers, but there are some important gems in there that's relative to this discussion. The two most important ones are:
1. Keywords in the URL are the most important. He spends quite a bit of time on this. This is exactly what NiceNames just did.
He just says the URL is another place to put keywords. I find the second video more interesting, and his tips are the same stuff I learned years ago. SEO has not changed that much.
I find the second video more interesting, and his tips are the same stuff I learned years ago. SEO has not changed that much.
Hello Erick,
I was very happy to find you here, a familiar and knowledgeable face, who has helped me a lot in the past.
I don't want to bother you much but i'm so confused, frustrated and feel helpless and brushed off by Smugmug, that even a clue or pointing to the right direction (before i try Smumug's help again) will be greatly appreciated.
I claim that there is something wrong in the way Google (not Bing or Yahoo) sees, indexes and displays my pages in search results. It's not a matter of SEO - i built my own four websites (two in the last few years) and studied a lot of SEO. I still fully control two and am happy with their 'findability'.
I thought initially that my lack of Findability was due to my site being new (Jan 09) or faults in my SEO.
But i then noticed in my Google Analytics that i get much more hits via Bing (which has only about 10% of the market) than from Google! Through my Google analytics, BTW, i saw first that Bing was seeing my galleries' niceNames while Google was not!
I made a test today and searched "aerial photos of great neck ny" (the name of one of my 286 galleries); in Bing i was First (while the Second place was my independent website where i inserted links to all my galleries here). I couldn't find myself in Google (while my other website with the link to my site with SM was Seventh place).
I tried site:emixpix.com and site:emixpix.smugmug.com (my nick name site) with both Google and Bing (who didn't find the nickname site) and got totally confused - Google sees very few of my galleries while it sees individual keywords (with the general Smugmug's Description) and individual images.
I don't want to bother you with more and i hope you got the picture. It might be partly my fault by choosing a nickname similar to my domain name, Smugmug lack of Google's Site map, or other things which i'm not aware of.
Any clue?
Thank you (even if you don't have the time for me) <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
I don't want to bother you much but i'm so confused, frustrated and feel helpless and brushed off by Smugmug,
I've answered dozens of your emails and posts, Amos. I'm sorry you feel brushed off. You don't like my answers, but it's not for us trying. Really, really hard.
The mails we're getting are overwhelmingly positive in terms of improvements to customer search results. I'm sorry you aren't getting the same, and I'm sorry you're angry.
I think that Bing and others like your site better than Google, for unknown reasons - but it's not anything we did, I can tell you that.
I see you've finally filled in your site meta info, that's good.
Your keywords are fairly un-unique and maybe google has trouble with all the zipcodes. I really don't know
Google Image search will pick up images - best is to have descriptive filenames - that's new on SmugMug in the past few months (indexing for example, a picture called glacier-national-park-amtrak.jpg would have this filename that has loads of google food:
I just uploaded that file tonight - not sure how long it will take but we'll find out together
I found your image in the text search but not in image search, even searching for your site only. Meanwhile, I uploaded an image of Montmorency Falls at night on january 4th without a descriptive filename but a caption and I found it today at the very top of both text and image search.
SM used to emphasize keywords, now it's filename. I keep saying captions are where it's at.
BTW, notice the link to my image and the anchor text. It's not so innocent. Normally, I would have linked directly to the image but I wonder if that could cause Google to find my image on Dgrin instead of my site.
Following the instructions of smugmug totorials I was able to pretty much customize my smugmug site that it fits to my main website. I still use it for photos hosting but now also as an entrance site to my website. The entrance site is through the smugmug homepage which looks like this:
As according to the tutorilas I inserted a flash slideshow, put a description in the biotext and the I customized it so the biotext is not shown, but google can pick it up. As far as I understood in this case it is no problem to hide the text.
Now I got an idea to make the site even more findable by google with different keywords. So I created a gallery page customized it that it looks pretty much like the homepage and also links to my main website:
But now the description in the "bio text" is different so google finds me with different keywords. Now theoretically I can do a whole lot of entrance sites for my main website with different descriptions in the hidden biotext.
My question is, would that be something google does not like, since so many sites with similar seen content is pointing to one website?
Will my seo ranking go down because of having this multiple entrance sites?
As according to the tutorilas I inserted a flash slideshow, put a description in the biotext and the I customized it so the biotext is not shown, but google can pick it up. As far as I understood in this case it is no problem to hide the text.
Remove this and use the Homepage Meta information box in your control panel, settings tab. Announced last October. You'll want to subscribe to our Release Notes blog, so that you don't miss a single update from SmugMug http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/ at the bottom, there's a link for Entries (RSS) - put that in your favorite feed reader.
Remove this and use the Homepage Meta information box in your control panel, settings tab. Announced last October. You'll want to subscribe to our Release Notes blog, so that you don't miss a single update from SmugMug http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/ at the bottom, there's a link for Entries (RSS) - put that in your favorite feed reader.
Luv Mug but I missed this change too (my fault, I was away and didn't read the small print). Question: is the bio now needed or does the meta replace it?
graham http://www.grahamwaiting.com
Remove this and use the Homepage Meta information box in your control panel, settings tab. Announced last October. You'll want to subscribe to our Release Notes blog, so that you don't miss a single update from SmugMug http://blogs.smugmug.com/release-notes/ at the bottom, there's a link for Entries (RSS) - put that in your favorite feed reader.
Thanks Andy! I read the release, but somehow missed that info.
Luv Mug but I missed this change too (my fault, I was away and didn't read the small print). Question: is the bio now needed or does the meta replace it?
graham http://www.grahamwaiting.com
The meta box trumps description info in the bio, as far as Google is concerned
Comments
You were a bit ahead of me to post a similar/related issue; i hope to do it tomorrow. I'll bring a proof that Google (vs. Bing) doesn't like my site on SmugMug... You are right, our keywords and captions are invisible to search engines!
The reason i'm responding to you now is for a couple of suggestions i have:
- Add all of your websites to your posts on DGrin (as part of your signature); this will automatically increase your links count in the eyes of the search engines (it's not much, but better than none)
- Get [free] Google Analytics tool where you will be able to see a wealth of information regarding people entering to ALL your websites.
Good Night,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 reread earlier what Andy brought above; i like and agree with what is being said there (BTW, I started my own first website and SEO learning/frustrations in the mid 90's).
The author of that article claims that "SEO is poisoning the internet"; well, ...SmugMug is engaged in a lot of SEO; it's definitely NOT poisoning anything but i claim that SOMETHING there is hurting my relationship with Google!!! ...And not doing/helping as i could have done on my own, with my overall 'FINDABILITY'!!!
Fortunately i keep my own B]independent[/B website which not only sends my site here (eMixPix.com) more [relevant] traffic than everything else combined, but also, through my Google Analytics i can see, compare and learn everything regarding traffic to ALL of my websites.
I'll start with a few obvious 'problems'/challenges which i'm aware of, and which might be of interest to others:
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 think your descriptions are too big. Smugmug needs to separate the "description" on page, which is useful for adding text content, from the meta-description.
EDIT: FotoSearch has a PR7! Good luck competing with them!
I get found, not always for the terms I'd like but sometimes I get three images on the first Google page.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
I have lots of results for keywords that get crawled and indexed on my site, so I have no evidence to support your claim of keywords not helping, Amos, I'm really, really sorry
Standing by...
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You asked "based on what?"; didn't you see my two screen shots from my Google Analytics!? How come Bing which only has 10% of the search engine market, brought me 55% of my traffic, while Google (which SmugMug claims to have special relations with) with its 65% of the SE market, brought me only 38% of my traffic in the last 30 days????
I appreciate your efforts and accomplishment with the NiceNames feature, but how is it going to help me if Google is more interested in captions/surrounding text, AND my captions and keywords DON'T work?!!!
You asked "based on what evidence?", I just went to my keywords page and picked and copied 5 different two/four-words keywords - i tried but didn't find myself in Google or Bing (i checked the first 4 pages on each of them).
I know time and patience are the essence in SEO but i know that something is wrong. That was why i thought a Site Map may help search engines reach missed pages like the Keywords page. In the Findability Help you rightly stressed the importance of KEYWORDS; i followed your advice and also worked (endlesly) on my file names and captions - how much longer should i wait to see a sign that it is working?
Now, it is very possible that i did something wrong with my SmugMug's site, or, more likely it's SmugMug' problem (like a problem with a keyword search which SM quickly corrected); but i'm here not to funnel my self pity, i'm here requesting help.
A clue that something is wrong i find (besides the Google-Bing analysis) in my Google Webmasters Tools - there are 4 Crawl errors ('not followed') detected by Google on October 15 and 16.
There are 48 'Duplicate meta descriptions' in only 7 of my 250 galleries (and it's related to some image sizes ???).
There is 1 'Long Meta description', again, in one out of 250 galleries (and it's no longer than the rest).
There are 29 'Duplicate title tags' in only four galleries and again it's something with image sizes (Small, Medium and Large ???).
I'll be happy to show more specifics.
Thanks again Andy; i'm here to learn and better myself and my website; i'm awaiting your response.
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'm still sketchy on those zipcodes. I'd focus more on community names and other more unique things. Just my .02
BTW, We don't have a special relationship with Google -they do know us, and we them - but we're not treated special...
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On my smugmug site, http://paullantz.smugmug.com, when I search for "Polar Bear Express" 307 images are returned. Understandable, I live in Moosonee where the train goes and I take a lot of pictures of it.
When I search in google, the smugmug site does not show up. If i search for images, my other two sites end up with pictures on the first page of the google image listing.
I know that my smugmug site gets searched, if I had very specific stuff, the pictures will show. It is more that for a general inquiry such as "polar bear express", google seems to take no account of the amount of content I have on this topic. So, I am guessing, number of images you have on a topic is not a factor.
For specific searches, google picks up stuff very well. For example, if I search on google for "2202 gp40-2" (looking for locomotive model gp40-2 number 2202) an image from smugmug tops the google search results in web search but not in image search. However, I think image search has a long way to go.
Overall, it is frustrating to have a collection of images on a specialized topic (e.g. "Polar Bear Express") that tends not to turn up when searches are done.
Open to suggestions.
Photography is a hobby for me so this does not really affect me financially but I can imagine it would be very frustrating for people for whom it is a profession.
Paul
Hi Amos,
1. Any company's relationship with Google has no effect on their ability to rank. But as of yesterday, Google still has 65% market share.
2. If you are trying to rank for a term like "Aerial Photos of New York" then that term better be in your site or page title, and it better be in the text of the links that point back to your site. Can't blame SmugMug when your site title is eMixPix's Stock and your forum signature links spell out your domain names. (Notice you rank #1 for "eMixPix's Stock")
3. Check out my book and blog for more help, like how to phrase your title, homepage text, and link building ideas for getting more links to your site (the most important factor in ranking)
Rank your blog with Photoblog SEO Zen
Thanks Zach for your attention,
- Yes, Google has 65% while Bing has about 10% (and that is about what i get to my independent website which i fully control and did the SEO). However, to my site on Smugmug i get more traffic from Bing than from Google!
- I don't try to get traffic to my home page, i want people to find what they look for, namely, aerial photo in a specific location. And that is how i constructed my website - with individual pages (with keywords) and titles.
- Thanks for your offer to read your book, but i cannot afford to read more SEO things (i started my first website about 15 years ago and already spent a zillion hours on studying and practicing SEO).
- I still claim that there are faults with the the way Smugmug lets search engines (especially Google in my case) see and index my website. I don't see a way you can help so i'll not waste your time with proofs and examples
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">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 think you are being stubborn, and I'm sorry about that
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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'm really sorry, Amos - I really do want to help but I'm at a loss as to how to proceed with you. I'm all ears if you've got some ideas.
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http://www.moonriverphotography.com/Galleries/Landscapes-for-Sale/glacier-national-park-amtrak/749035290_bujvb-L.jpg
I just uploaded that file tonight - not sure how long it will take but we'll find out together
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There are other issues that might interest others and i'll bring it here later after i deal with my individual issues, but i want to mention again the issue of Google's Site Map. I read your answer about the "challenge" smugmug faces in implementing Site Map in the best possible way, but i want to remind you that Google is not stupid and there is a reason Google encourages (even insists) inserting a Site Map. I more than suspect that a Site Map would eliminate most of my problems. Any hope for a near future implementation?
The main reason for my frustration with you and Smugmug, is your inability (as i see it) to even consider the possibility that you might be wrong or don't know. I read here similar claims from others and i also remember our argument around the gallery Titles' issue...
I very much appreciate your time, energy and trying to help (in your own way, of course). As i wrote then, i love Smugmug but its arrogance (as i see it) drives me crazy.
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
Amos, I'm not saying we might not be wrong (we have been before and we alwyas try to fix stuff if we're wrong or it can be done better). But I continue to get report after report of SmugMug customers who have SEO that is soaring.
Please write me with your details.
Amos, why is there script stuff at the end of all your posts? Some sort of 'input gwProxy' stuff.
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Thanks Andy for your quick response.
- Anything in regard to what i wrote about Google's Site Maps?
- If you have the time you may want to try the two site searched i did (site:emixpix.com and site:emixpix.com.smugmug.com). You'll notice immediately the differences (which shouldn't be, as i was told by smugmug), and... i have 286 published aerial photos galleries, check how many indexed pages Google returns (and many are not even galleries)...
- I don't know what you were talking about regarding which is seen at the end of my posts - i don't see a thing. Don't tell me i got another computer's problem...
<input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">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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Thought i read somewhere that they didn't but am unable to find that info.
http://www.johnparliphotography.com/
http://www.johnparliphotography.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joliet-IL/John-Parli-Photography/235669552864
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnparliphotography-joliet_photographer/
https://twitter.com/johnparliphoto
Google shouldn't find password-protected and unlisted galleries.
Try uploading the same picture with a generic filename but with a relevant caption and see which one is found first.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
thanks!
http://www.johnparliphotography.com/
http://www.johnparliphotography.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Joliet-IL/John-Parli-Photography/235669552864
http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnparliphotography-joliet_photographer/
https://twitter.com/johnparliphoto
If your galleries and images are public, filenames are searchable.
He just says the URL is another place to put keywords. I find the second video more interesting, and his tips are the same stuff I learned years ago. SEO has not changed that much.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
I was very happy to find you here, a familiar and knowledgeable face, who has helped me a lot in the past.
I don't want to bother you much but i'm so confused, frustrated and feel helpless and brushed off by Smugmug, that even a clue or pointing to the right direction (before i try Smumug's help again) will be greatly appreciated.
I claim that there is something wrong in the way Google (not Bing or Yahoo) sees, indexes and displays my pages in search results. It's not a matter of SEO - i built my own four websites (two in the last few years) and studied a lot of SEO. I still fully control two and am happy with their 'findability'.
I thought initially that my lack of Findability was due to my site being new (Jan 09) or faults in my SEO.
But i then noticed in my Google Analytics that i get much more hits via Bing (which has only about 10% of the market) than from Google! Through my Google analytics, BTW, i saw first that Bing was seeing my galleries' niceNames while Google was not!
I made a test today and searched "aerial photos of great neck ny" (the name of one of my 286 galleries); in Bing i was First (while the Second place was my independent website where i inserted links to all my galleries here). I couldn't find myself in Google (while my other website with the link to my site with SM was Seventh place).
I tried site:emixpix.com and site:emixpix.smugmug.com (my nick name site) with both Google and Bing (who didn't find the nickname site) and got totally confused - Google sees very few of my galleries while it sees individual keywords (with the general Smugmug's Description) and individual images.
I don't want to bother you with more and i hope you got the picture. It might be partly my fault by choosing a nickname similar to my domain name, Smugmug lack of Google's Site map, or other things which i'm not aware of.
Any clue?
Thank you (even if you don't have the time for me) <input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden"><input id="gwProxy" type="hidden"><!--Session data--><input onclick="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" type="hidden">
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
The mails we're getting are overwhelmingly positive in terms of improvements to customer search results. I'm sorry you aren't getting the same, and I'm sorry you're angry.
I think that Bing and others like your site better than Google, for unknown reasons - but it's not anything we did, I can tell you that.
I see you've finally filled in your site meta info, that's good.
Your keywords are fairly un-unique and maybe google has trouble with all the zipcodes. I really don't know
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I found your image in the text search but not in image search, even searching for your site only. Meanwhile, I uploaded an image of Montmorency Falls at night on january 4th without a descriptive filename but a caption and I found it today at the very top of both text and image search.
SM used to emphasize keywords, now it's filename. I keep saying captions are where it's at.
BTW, notice the link to my image and the anchor text. It's not so innocent.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
www.janwillfotografie.com
As according to the tutorilas I inserted a flash slideshow, put a description in the biotext and the I customized it so the biotext is not shown, but google can pick it up. As far as I understood in this case it is no problem to hide the text.
Now I got an idea to make the site even more findable by google with different keywords. So I created a gallery page customized it that it looks pretty much like the homepage and also links to my main website:
http://www.janwillfotografie.com/Other/Profile/8185082_vDdgV
But now the description in the "bio text" is different so google finds me with different keywords. Now theoretically I can do a whole lot of entrance sites for my main website with different descriptions in the hidden biotext.
My question is, would that be something google does not like, since so many sites with similar seen content is pointing to one website?
Will my seo ranking go down because of having this multiple entrance sites?
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Luv Mug but I missed this change too (my fault, I was away and didn't read the small print). Question: is the bio now needed or does the meta replace it?
graham
http://www.grahamwaiting.com
http://www.grahamwaiting.com
http://www.bahamastockphotography.com
Thanks Andy! I read the release, but somehow missed that info.
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