If you want to be found for the terms "McKinney Texas Photographers or McKinney Texas Photography" then make sure that is what appears in your page title.
Check out my page title "Photography from around the Mendip Hills by Caroline Shipsey" I am on page 1 for google with "Photography from around the Mendip Hills" "Photography Mendip Hills" and "mendip hills photography" and "mendip hills photos".
Give it a try and I'm pretty sure you will get the result you want :-)
Over the past few months, I've really concentrated on my findability. I've gone through this thread and followed SM's suggestions and think I have things like they should be. I have put my info in various forum signatures that I frequent among other things on the web. The results on Google and other search engines seem to be getting better.
However, when trying to emulate someone that might do a generic search for photography in my area, I'm still only appearing on page 5 or 6 of Google's results. This is consistent on Google Maps as well and I've gone through their setup for that also. When typing something like McKinney Texas Photographers or McKinney Texas Photography will give you a good example. I know there are a lot of photographers in my area, but is there perhaps something that I am missing that might improve these results? Could it be that there is simply too much saturation that I am trying to compete against?
If you want to be found for the terms "McKinney Texas Photographers or McKinney Texas Photography" then make sure that is what appears in your page title.
Check out my page title "Photography from around the Mendip Hills by Caroline Shipsey" I am on page 1 for google with "Photography from around the Mendip Hills" "Photography Mendip Hills" and "mendip hills photography" and "mendip hills photos".
Give it a try and I'm pretty sure you will get the result you want :-)
Caroline
Thanks Caroline. However, I've had this in my page title for quite a long time now.....
I'm never too sure to put Tx or Texas but I assume what I have had should suffice.......no?
I had checked your page title and also that of your competitors who appear above you in google results. What I'm suggesting is subtle I know, but take at look at some of your competitors page titles and also their descriptions, notice the placement of the words McKinney, TX or Texas and photography/er etc. No doubt you think you are saying the same thing but google is seeing it differently. Give it a try, what have you got to lose - it works for me.
Cheers,
Caroline
I had checked your page title and also that of your competitors who appear above you in google results. What I'm suggesting is subtle I know, but take at look at some of your competitors page titles and also their descriptions, notice the placement of the words McKinney, TX or Texas and photography/er etc. No doubt you think you are saying the same thing but google is seeing it differently. Give it a try, what have you got to lose - it works for me.
Cheers,
Caroline
Excellent points, Caroline. Subtle differences can certainly be the culprit. I've made some changes on the page title and description so I'll wait and see how Google likes it.
Excellent points, Caroline. Subtle differences can certainly be the culprit. I've made some changes on the page title and description so I'll wait and see how Google likes it.
I've been following this thread, and I'm not clear whether people's photos are now being found in Google Image Search or not.
Mine are NOT being found. I've tried searching on caption titles and keywords, and gone through hundreds of Google pages, but have not found any of my images. In the regular web search, my pages come up, but absolutely NOTHING in Google Image Search, or Bing either, for that matter. Is there anything else I need to do in order to get my images found on Google?
In other words, I want my photos to come up in Google Image Search if someone types in, "Carolina Wren", for example. In web search, it may come up, but not in image search.
I'd like if people are looking for images, that my photos are in there along with all of the others.
Thanks. I know this keeps being asked, but it's not clear if it has been solved yet.
You'll also see a spot to enter a Homepage Meta Description. Choosing your words carefully can help increase your site's relevancy in searches. More on Search Engine Optimization.
Thanks Denise but I have added the meta description and added keywords to the galleries. I'd like to change the keywords on the homepage and since their are no galleries and no option on the control panel (from what I can find) to change meta keywords, only the description, I'm not understanding how to do this...
Thanks Denise but I have added the meta description and added keywords to the galleries. I'd like to change the keywords on the homepage and since their are no galleries and no option on the control panel (from what I can find) to change meta keywords, only the description, I'm not understanding how to do this...
Ok but if it's not important for SEO why is smugmug using them? Also my nicenames are not appearing properly in my page titles. I read that this was fixed but I checked mine today and the page titles are just gallery w/ ID numbers, this for sure doesn't help w/ SEO.
I've been following this thread, and I'm not clear whether people's photos are now being found in Google Image Search or not.
Mine are NOT being found. I've tried searching on caption titles and keywords, and gone through hundreds of Google pages, but have not found any of my images. In the regular web search, my pages come up, but absolutely NOTHING in Google Image Search, or Bing either, for that matter. Is there anything else I need to do in order to get my images found on Google?
In other words, I want my photos to come up in Google Image Search if someone types in, "Carolina Wren", for example. In web search, it may come up, but not in image search.
I'd like if people are looking for images, that my photos are in there along with all of the others.
Thanks. I know this keeps being asked, but it's not clear if it has been solved yet.
Hello Carolina (jachang),
Sorry to welcome you to the "club". I too, experience that problem; more than that, i have other websites (which i can fully control) and their images do appear beautifully!
(I've just checked one; i also tried my site on SmugMug but eventually they have technical difficulties with it this evening...).
I wrote "Welcome to the club" because as i've seen and experienced, 'they' generally ignore you (or brush you off) when they have no good answer...
I'm sorry, i wish i was wrong.
Ok but if it's not important for SEO why is smugmug using them?
I ask the same thing, and if according to Andy...
"we have them so we get categorized properly in certain directories", why not leave these keywords only on SmugMug own pages?
I for example, am trying to sell stock aerial photos, but Google is confused with my categorization - Google thinks i'm a photo sharing website...
By the way, they're still having technical difficulties this evening - my site is slow to load and then it indicates "empty gallery" on those gallery that managed to appear...
I wrote "Welcome to the club" because as i've seen and experienced, 'they' generally ignore you (or brush you off) when they have no good answer...
I'm sorry, i wish i was wrong.
Haven't ever brushed you off, not once in your many posts or emails, Amos. Your situation is rather unique. You have a domain name that's 1 letter off from a major porn site. I think that is at least part of the problem you're having with Google.
So many customers are writing us with page one google results due to the SEO changes we've implemented over the past months.
Haven't ever brushed you off, not once in your many posts or emails, Amos. Your situation is rather unique. You have a domain name that's 1 letter off from a major porn site. I think that is at least part of the problem you're having with Google.
So many customers are writing us with page one google results due to the SEO changes we've implemented over the past months.
Still, we have more things in store!
Andy,
You're absolutely right that Google results do show up on page one--at least for me, they do. But that's for a web search, not an image search. With web search everything works like a charm. It's when I try to do an image search by subject material that I notice NONE of my images appear.
The only way I can get an image to appear in "image search" is if I include my website name in the search. When I do that, then I get about six thumbnails--one for each gallery category, but none of the actual images. But I repeat--that's only when you include my website name. If I search by image content, for example "chickadee", NONE of my bird photos show up in the image search, only the web search. I think others are having the same problem.
I know you're probably just as frustrated by hearing about it as we are for complaining about it. I really hope that the SmugMug Heroes can fix this one. (I still have faith in you!)
Haven't ever brushed you off, not once in your many posts or emails, Amos. Your situation is rather unique. You have a domain name that's 1 letter off from a major porn site. I think that is at least part of the problem you're having with Google.
So many customers are writing us with page one google results due to the SEO changes we've implemented over the past months.
Still, we have more things in store!
I don't blame you Andy, you are in a very frustrating position. Of course you do your best and try to help, but the only thing "they" let you do is 'talk'. I don't expect you to call your answers brushing off, but your answer to Jean (and to me) is just that.
...and yes, i noticed you were very diplomatic regarding the already four-year-old-promised Google Sitemap.
As for my site, it doesn't bother Google that my site name is close to a porno site (as you like to repeat), Google is confused because of smugmug's setting (...and it's keywords on MY site which you chose to ignore), and errors.
I wrote you and sent you two screen shots showing that Google sees some words and phrases that people don't.
(I just copied the following from Google cache...) Other sizes:S • Medium • L |
Also, i'm still waiting for smugmug to fix the 876 "not followed" and 1 "unreachable" crawl errors, as well as the 829 "duplicate meta descriptions" and 395 "Duplicate title tags" html suggestions (according to my Google webmaster tools)
I don't blame you Andy, you are in a very frustrating position. Of course you do your best and try to help, but the only thing "they" let you do is 'talk'. I don't expect you to call your answers brushing off, but your answer to Jean (and to me) is just that.
...and yes, i noticed you were very diplomatic regarding the already four-year-old-promised Google Sitemap.
As for my site, it doesn't bother Google that my site name is close to a porno site (as you like to repeat), Google is confused because of smugmug's setting (...and it's keywords on MY site which you chose to ignore),
You do have the ability to add your own site meta - and then more in each gallery with your gallery descriptions. And - after input from Erick L, and you, and Jfriend - we're trying to address the no-description situation, if you have no album description we'll default to your site Meta input in your control panel.
Excellent points, Caroline. Subtle differences can certainly be the culprit. I've made some changes on the page title and description so I'll wait and see how Google likes it.
Well, a week later and still not happy with how things are looking. I know these things take time but I've also noticed that my Google Page Rank is a whopping zero for my homepage and any other page on my site. In addition to following the rules from SM, I've got lots of links out on the web that point back to different pages on my site as well. What's worse is the strange behavior when searching Google Images. Depending on how you type in the search string, the most I can see are about 4 images and those are from other sites, not my url. I may join that Google Image discussion over on that thread but it ties in to my frustration here as well.
Perhaps more time is needed, but based on my descriptions, captions, keywords, page title, etc., things should be looking better than they are. My site is not new by any means so I wonder if I'm missing something simple that could be negatively impacting my findability.
Gallery Meta Description
We've made it so if you are a Pro, and if you leave your album description blank, Google will grab your Site Meta description you've added into your Control Panel, Settings tab.
This was a request made by Erick L, and at first, I didn't think it necessary, because, 'why not just add an album description and get what you want' - but we're in the business of customer satisfaction - so, after some further prodding by Jfriend who made the suggestion to use the site meta, we did it.
Thanks as always, to them and of our customers - YOU! - who keep us honest and make our job easier by telling us what's so important to you.
And, you can always get to your keywords, by adding this to your site name: /keyword
welcome to Dgrin!
This is a great little tip! However, when I tried it, I found that I had a TON of numbers. Check it out: www.bethsingley.com/keyword
I use a standard practice of naming photos as I upload. Generally, its BSP_event_XXXX.jpg with the XXXX being a sequential number. I think this is the cause of my keyword craziness.
I need to be more easily searched. How do I fix my crazy keywording issues here?
This is a great little tip! However, when I tried it, I found that I had a TON of numbers. Check it out: www.bethsingley.com/keyword
I use a standard practice of naming photos as I upload. Generally, its BSP_event_XXXX.jpg with the XXXX being a sequential number. I think this is the cause of my keyword craziness.
I need to be more easily searched. How do I fix my crazy keywording issues here?
Why is it SMUGMUG does not show up well in Google?
I have performed numerous searches on tons of subjects but Smugmug simply does not show up very much in the results.
Flickr does
Pbase sort of does
Do a search on Moulton Barn and you will see what I mean.
First five pages 7 for Flickr 1 for Smugmug.
Now there is one smugmug person that shows up regularly and you can him with the Moulton Barn search.
I'm not trying to start anything here except to find out how best to get found by google and to show up in searches.
My account is new so that is why I am searching on popular landscape names to see how it works for others.
It disturbs me that Smugmug is making such a poor showing.
Any insights?
I have performed numerous searches on tons of subjects but Smugmug simply does not show up very much in the results.
Flickr does
Pbase sort of does
Do a search on Moulton Barn and you will see what I mean.
First five pages 7 for Flickr 1 for Smugmug.
Now there is one smugmug person that shows up regularly and you can him with the Moulton Barn search.
I'm not trying to start anything here except to find out how best to get found by google and to show up in searches.
My account is new so that is why I am searching on popular landscape names to see how it works for others.
It disturbs me that Smugmug is making such a poor showing.
Any insights?
First of all, Flickr has free accounts so there are a lot more people.
Second, many people at Smugmug use their own domain name so they could be in front of Flickr and you wouldn't know just by the domain. I know my images routinely come before Flickr and PBase.
Third, although I'm not 100% sure how it plays out, if you have your domain name, it isn't Smugmug vs Flickr but yoursite.com against Flickr.
As much as I have complained about Smugmug SEO's in the past, there isn't anything I can think of now that could prevent anyone from getting at the top of the search results.
Before I was using a catagory name such as "Image Galleries" and Now I am using catogories like "Birds", "Landscapes" .... and more specific gallery names.
That's excellent. Every bit of text is a place to put keywords. There are many:
Categories
Sub-categories
Gallery titles
Gallery Nicenames
Gallery description
Captions, also used as alt tags and individual photo pages.
Filenames
Keywords
Make good use of these. Use synonyms. For exemple, One can have a gallery titled "Birds" and use "Avian" as nicename. The description can be used to add more synonyms, or to reinforce keywords.
Captions are most important for individual images. It's not the captions per se but what SM does with them. SM puts the captions in the alt tag (mouse-over text) and title for individual photo pages. The alt tag (alternative text tag) is text describing images because can't figure what an image is about, so it's important!
I use keywords as a navigation tool but also to add something that could be missing in the caption. For exemple, I have this image captionned Hikers and Montmorency falls at night - Quebec City. I wanted to add something about winter but "Hikers and Montmorency falls at night in winter" didn't look right. Luckily, I have a keyword "winter" so I dropped it from the caption. the result is searching Google Image for "Montmorency falls winter" gets me on first... oops, second page today. Perhaps I should add "winter" in the caption.
Just to show the weight of caption vs keywords: "Montmorency falls night" gets me three images on first page, while "Montmorency falls winter" shows only one image on second page (was bottom of 1st page yesterday).
Note how I dropped a link to my website using good anchor text (underlined text). Google will crawl this thread and see a link named "Montmorency Falls at night - Quebec City" and follow it. It has little to no impact on its own but hey, the ocean is filled with tiny dropplets. Text links like this are a good way to add to a forum discussion without annoying forum members.
As much as I have complained about Smugmug SEO's in the past, there isn't anything I can think of now that could prevent anyone from getting at the top of the search results.
Erick - you say 'complaining' I say 'pushing us to do better by our customers' thanks for posting this
Erick - you say 'complaining' I say 'pushing us to do better by our customers' thanks for posting this
Well... yes, definitely you are getting better; let me try "pushing" you to do even betterer... I'll start bringing here some samples:
The first image shows one possible reason why Google is confused with my site. I combined two screen shots, on top is a Google cache with the extra 'confusing' phrases Google see vs. the real(?) thing (what viewers see) on the lower part of this image:
The next image (a combination of the top and bottom of a gallery) shows that NiceNames are missing (or not visible to search engines at occasions) and how Google get confused (see Google Ads at the bottom which disregard the page's title and its keywords - Montauk, NY):
Hi Amos,
Going slightly OT here but I'm wondering why when I look at the source code for your pages I'm seeing this :-
****** name="keywords" content="online photo albums, photo sharing, photo hosting," etc
Or in some cases no keywords at all.
Those are meta keywords put by Smugmug for directories, or something of the sort. Google dropped them because they aren't visible to visitors. They were strictly for search engines and people abused and spammed. It's the same reason Google doesn't put much weight on meta-descriptions. They display it on the search result page but its content has little weight, if any. The difference between Smugmug and a conventionnal site is that meta-descriptions are visible at Smugmug. I don't know if Google understand that. One thing I know is that I had text pages using the html-page trick. That meant the whole text went in the description and Google never found those pages until I moved the text from the description to a caption field in old-journal style. From G's perpective, it probably looked like a spammy description with no content.
Amos, I think your descriptions are way too long and look a little spammy, especially this:
I want to see/buy Aerial Views of My House", "Aerial View of My Home", "Aerial Photo of My House" or "Aerial View of Property"
You already have "aerial" several times in your navbar, category, gallery name. Once in the description is more than enough.
You also emphasize unimportant words like "go", "directly", "don't forget" and "first step". This not only sends the wrong message to Google, it's difficult to read.
Even things like "More Photos??!!" looks spammy (two question marks and exclamation marks!).
Comments
If you want to be found for the terms "McKinney Texas Photographers or McKinney Texas Photography" then make sure that is what appears in your page title.
Check out my page title "Photography from around the Mendip Hills by Caroline Shipsey" I am on page 1 for google with "Photography from around the Mendip Hills" "Photography Mendip Hills" and "mendip hills photography" and "mendip hills photos".
Give it a try and I'm pretty sure you will get the result you want :-)
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
I'm never too sure to put Tx or Texas but I assume what I have had should suffice.......no?
-Danny
dannyberryphotography.com
Facebook
I had checked your page title and also that of your competitors who appear above you in google results. What I'm suggesting is subtle I know, but take at look at some of your competitors page titles and also their descriptions, notice the placement of the words McKinney, TX or Texas and photography/er etc. No doubt you think you are saying the same thing but google is seeing it differently. Give it a try, what have you got to lose - it works for me.
Cheers,
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
Excellent points, Caroline. Subtle differences can certainly be the culprit. I've made some changes on the page title and description so I'll wait and see how Google likes it.
-Danny
dannyberryphotography.com
Facebook
C
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
Mine are NOT being found. I've tried searching on caption titles and keywords, and gone through hundreds of Google pages, but have not found any of my images. In the regular web search, my pages come up, but absolutely NOTHING in Google Image Search, or Bing either, for that matter. Is there anything else I need to do in order to get my images found on Google?
In other words, I want my photos to come up in Google Image Search if someone types in, "Carolina Wren", for example. In web search, it may come up, but not in image search.
I'd like if people are looking for images, that my photos are in there along with all of the others.
Thanks. I know this keeps being asked, but it's not clear if it has been solved yet.
Jean Chang Photography
www.jeanachang.blogspot.com
Hi Smugmugers
When I view the source code on my homepage these keywords are showing up:
meta name="keywords" content="online photo albums, photo sharing, photo hosting, photo storage, video, videos, online video, video sharing, albums, photo albums, photo, sharing, picture sharing, share photos, photo galleries, photo gallery, photos, photographs, online gallery, picture gallery, picture galleries, online galleries, smugmug gallery, smugmug, smug mug, smugmug photos, images, image galleries, image gallery, gallery hosting, galleries hosting, hosting">
I'd like to input my own searchable keywords that are non smugmug, how do I do this?
www.grooverphoto.com
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
www.grooverphoto.com
we have them so we get categorized properly in certain directories.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
www.grooverphoto.com
Sorry to welcome you to the "club". I too, experience that problem; more than that, i have other websites (which i can fully control) and their images do appear beautifully!
(I've just checked one; i also tried my site on SmugMug but eventually they have technical difficulties with it this evening...).
I wrote "Welcome to the club" because as i've seen and experienced, 'they' generally ignore you (or brush you off) when they have no good answer...
I'm sorry, i wish i was 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
"we have them so we get categorized properly in certain directories", why not leave these keywords only on SmugMug own pages?
I for example, am trying to sell stock aerial photos, but Google is confused with my categorization - Google thinks i'm a photo sharing website...
By the way, they're still having technical difficulties this evening - my site is slow to load and then it indicates "empty gallery" on those gallery that managed to appear...
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
So many customers are writing us with page one google results due to the SEO changes we've implemented over the past months.
Still, we have more things in store!
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Andy,
You're absolutely right that Google results do show up on page one--at least for me, they do. But that's for a web search, not an image search. With web search everything works like a charm. It's when I try to do an image search by subject material that I notice NONE of my images appear.
The only way I can get an image to appear in "image search" is if I include my website name in the search. When I do that, then I get about six thumbnails--one for each gallery category, but none of the actual images. But I repeat--that's only when you include my website name. If I search by image content, for example "chickadee", NONE of my bird photos show up in the image search, only the web search. I think others are having the same problem.
I know you're probably just as frustrated by hearing about it as we are for complaining about it. I really hope that the SmugMug Heroes can fix this one. (I still have faith in you!)
Jean
Jean Chang Photography
www.jeanachang.blogspot.com
I don't blame you Andy, you are in a very frustrating position. Of course you do your best and try to help, but the only thing "they" let you do is 'talk'. I don't expect you to call your answers brushing off, but your answer to Jean (and to me) is just that.
...and yes, i noticed you were very diplomatic regarding the already four-year-old-promised Google Sitemap.
As for my site, it doesn't bother Google that my site name is close to a porno site (as you like to repeat), Google is confused because of smugmug's setting (...and it's keywords on MY site which you chose to ignore), and errors.
I wrote you and sent you two screen shots showing that Google sees some words and phrases that people don't.
(I just copied the following from Google cache...) Other sizes: S • Medium • L |
|
Share photo: links, forums, blogs
Also, i'm still waiting for smugmug to fix the 876 "not followed" and 1 "unreachable" crawl errors, as well as the 829 "duplicate meta descriptions" and 395 "Duplicate title tags" html suggestions (according to my Google webmaster tools)
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
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
You do have the ability to add your own site meta - and then more in each gallery with your gallery descriptions. And - after input from Erick L, and you, and Jfriend - we're trying to address the no-description situation, if you have no album description we'll default to your site Meta input in your control panel.
'night, Amos.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Well, a week later and still not happy with how things are looking. I know these things take time but I've also noticed that my Google Page Rank is a whopping zero for my homepage and any other page on my site. In addition to following the rules from SM, I've got lots of links out on the web that point back to different pages on my site as well. What's worse is the strange behavior when searching Google Images. Depending on how you type in the search string, the most I can see are about 4 images and those are from other sites, not my url. I may join that Google Image discussion over on that thread but it ties in to my frustration here as well.
Perhaps more time is needed, but based on my descriptions, captions, keywords, page title, etc., things should be looking better than they are. My site is not new by any means so I wonder if I'm missing something simple that could be negatively impacting my findability.
-Danny
dannyberryphotography.com
Facebook
We've made it so if you are a Pro, and if you leave your album description blank, Google will grab your Site Meta description you've added into your Control Panel, Settings tab.
http://releasenotes.blogs.smugmug.com/2010/04/01/ipad%E2%84%A2-app-seo-new-stats-and-bug-fixes/
This was a request made by Erick L, and at first, I didn't think it necessary, because, 'why not just add an album description and get what you want' - but we're in the business of customer satisfaction - so, after some further prodding by Jfriend who made the suggestion to use the site meta, we did it.
Thanks as always, to them and of our customers - YOU! - who keep us honest and make our job easier by telling us what's so important to you.
http://releasenotes.blogs.smugmug.com/2010/04/01/ipad%E2%84%A2-app-seo-new-stats-and-bug-fixes/
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
-Danny
dannyberryphotography.com
Facebook
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Thanks Andy. I sort of figured that but wanted to make sure I didn't have something perhaps goofed up in my control panel, etc.
-Danny
dannyberryphotography.com
Facebook
I use a standard practice of naming photos as I upload. Generally, its BSP_event_XXXX.jpg with the XXXX being a sequential number. I think this is the cause of my keyword craziness.
I need to be more easily searched. How do I fix my crazy keywording issues here?
www.bethsingley.smugmug.com
http://www.bethsingley.com/homepage/controlpanel.mg?NickName=bethsingley
and then to remove, go to your keywords, and edit them, 'remove numeric'
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I have performed numerous searches on tons of subjects but Smugmug simply does not show up very much in the results.
Flickr does
Pbase sort of does
Do a search on Moulton Barn and you will see what I mean.
First five pages 7 for Flickr 1 for Smugmug.
Now there is one smugmug person that shows up regularly and you can him with the Moulton Barn search.
I'm not trying to start anything here except to find out how best to get found by google and to show up in searches.
My account is new so that is why I am searching on popular landscape names to see how it works for others.
It disturbs me that Smugmug is making such a poor showing.
Any insights?
First of all, Flickr has free accounts so there are a lot more people.
Second, many people at Smugmug use their own domain name so they could be in front of Flickr and you wouldn't know just by the domain. I know my images routinely come before Flickr and PBase.
Third, although I'm not 100% sure how it plays out, if you have your domain name, it isn't Smugmug vs Flickr but yoursite.com against Flickr.
As much as I have complained about Smugmug SEO's in the past, there isn't anything I can think of now that could prevent anyone from getting at the top of the search results.
That's excellent. Every bit of text is a place to put keywords. There are many:
Categories
Sub-categories
Gallery titles
Gallery Nicenames
Gallery description
Captions, also used as alt tags and individual photo pages.
Filenames
Keywords
Make good use of these. Use synonyms. For exemple, One can have a gallery titled "Birds" and use "Avian" as nicename. The description can be used to add more synonyms, or to reinforce keywords.
Captions are most important for individual images. It's not the captions per se but what SM does with them. SM puts the captions in the alt tag (mouse-over text) and title for individual photo pages. The alt tag (alternative text tag) is text describing images because can't figure what an image is about, so it's important!
I use keywords as a navigation tool but also to add something that could be missing in the caption. For exemple, I have this image captionned Hikers and Montmorency falls at night - Quebec City. I wanted to add something about winter but "Hikers and Montmorency falls at night in winter" didn't look right. Luckily, I have a keyword "winter" so I dropped it from the caption. the result is searching Google Image for "Montmorency falls winter" gets me on first... oops, second page today. Perhaps I should add "winter" in the caption.
Just to show the weight of caption vs keywords: "Montmorency falls night" gets me three images on first page, while "Montmorency falls winter" shows only one image on second page (was bottom of 1st page yesterday).
Note how I dropped a link to my website using good anchor text (underlined text). Google will crawl this thread and see a link named "Montmorency Falls at night - Quebec City" and follow it. It has little to no impact on its own but hey, the ocean is filled with tiny dropplets. Text links like this are a good way to add to a forum discussion without annoying forum members.
borealphoto.smugmug.com
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The first image shows one possible reason why Google is confused with my site. I combined two screen shots, on top is a Google cache with the extra 'confusing' phrases Google see vs. the real(?) thing (what viewers see) on the lower part of this image:
The next image (a combination of the top and bottom of a gallery) shows that NiceNames are missing (or not visible to search engines at occasions) and how Google get confused (see Google Ads at the bottom which disregard the page's title and its keywords - Montauk, NY):
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
Going slightly OT here but I'm wondering why when I look at the source code for your pages I'm seeing this :-
****** name="keywords" content="online photo albums, photo sharing, photo hosting," etc
Or in some cases no keywords at all.
Is this for a reason or an oversight? Just curious as you are so hot on findability. :-)
Cheers,
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
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Those are meta keywords put by Smugmug for directories, or something of the sort. Google dropped them because they aren't visible to visitors. They were strictly for search engines and people abused and spammed. It's the same reason Google doesn't put much weight on meta-descriptions. They display it on the search result page but its content has little weight, if any. The difference between Smugmug and a conventionnal site is that meta-descriptions are visible at Smugmug. I don't know if Google understand that. One thing I know is that I had text pages using the html-page trick. That meant the whole text went in the description and Google never found those pages until I moved the text from the description to a caption field in old-journal style. From G's perpective, it probably looked like a spammy description with no content.
Amos, I think your descriptions are way too long and look a little spammy, especially this:
You already have "aerial" several times in your navbar, category, gallery name. Once in the description is more than enough.
You also emphasize unimportant words like "go", "directly", "don't forget" and "first step". This not only sends the wrong message to Google, it's difficult to read.
Even things like "More Photos??!!" looks spammy (two question marks and exclamation marks!).
borealphoto.smugmug.com