After having my Smugmug site for a couple of months I have observed that Flickr still wins for findability, at least for me. I've been attending a few motorsports events this year and I upload photos to both Flickr and Smugmug right after the event. Each time my photos from Flickr usually show up on the first page of Google searches for that event in less than 24 hours. My Smugmug site never shows up even days later. Do I need to give my Smugmug site a little more time before it shows up more regularly? I was going to stop paying for a pro Flickr account but if it continues like this I'll keep it for visibility.
Each time my photos from Flickr usually show up on the first page of Google searches for that event in less than 24 hours. My Smugmug site never shows up even days later.
I might be wrong but this may simply be because on Flickr your site is under the www.flickr.com url and so Google will use the PageRank of that site in determining the importance or your images. Flickr has a PR of 9 which you just can't beat. At least on your Flickr site make a link back to your Smugmug site. I don't think that Flickr allows pagerank to flow out but at least people who find your pictures via flickr can then get to your site (EDIT: sometimes you have done this, just not constantly and it may be better to link to a related gallery than your homepage)
Even though you are hosting your photos on Smugmug they appear to the world under your own URL www.tkephotography.com which unfortunately has a PR of 0 as far as I can see. My experience has been that Google really doesn't rate sites with a PR of zero even though the photos are great.
I suspect that you need to work on the SEO of your site and Google will start to show you. As a reference we have a PR of 5 and Google picks up everything that we make public.
There is a lot of good info. on SEO in the threads here but the two usual tips are:
* Start a blog, e.g. on the races that you visit, and then make sure to link from there directly into galleries rather than just to your home page. It seems silly but Google likes blogs and likes text as it can't really work out directly what a picture is about.
* When you do link to your homepage (as you sometimes do on forums) try to use descriptive anchor text rather than My Smugmug site, e.g. Motorsports photography. That way if Google sees it on a forum about motorsports it is more likely to think the link is relevant and hence important. If you link to galleries about motorsports that have a description about motorsports (rather than your homepage) then Google will be able to see that the landing page is relevant and hence bump you up a little more. It's all about lots of little things rather than one big button to push to make it work
Can I suggest one more thing if you are going to start trying to bump yourself up the google rankings. It can be very difficult to know if what you are doing is having any real effect so if you aren't doing so already you want to start tracking a few different measurements. You don't need to do this every day but every fortnight might not be bad. As a start I would suggest:
1. The Crawl stats on Google webmaster tools
This will tell you whether or not Google is actually bothering to look at your pages. As a reference, on average Google crawls about 4000 pages a day for us and downloads 51MB
2. Search engine visitors in Google Analytics
As a start simply record how many visitors come to your site each week via Google
3. How many images google has in Google images for you (ie. type site:tkephotography.com)
This is a little inaccurate as you often get duplicates due to thumbnails etc. but it isn't a bad marker. As a reference we were at about 200 before the big sitemap change at the end of last year and now we are at 9000.
The actual numbers aren't so important as being able to see that what you are doing is making some sort of difference. Again as reference it took about 4 months of work initially for us to make any impact on our search results but it did come in the end.
I'll say this much about SmugMug heroes and customer service!
If you look back at when this thread was started and see the date 2006 and read what has been done and how many people it has helped since then..... It just goes to show, how much SmugMug does care for their customers! I'm glad to be one! The service is priceless.
Hi here's a goodie!...I've been googling my googlies in a book called "Complete Idiots Guide to, Search Engine Optimization".
Some of it, still confuses me!...age related stubborness? not sure! lol.
Anyway, I did get some it, as below some tips, I & have a good question for you too;)
Google does not always take note of oodles of keywords, apparently it can choose to ignore them especially if repeated.
It only reads HTML, not java, photos or vid's.
Meta tags are good....as well as links from outside sites, linking back to yours. (Importantly if it is relevant info, related to your site or product.)
Text is good, especially if relevant & informative. Headings, titles are important & can be crawled through, rather than keywords.
Updating your site on a frequent basis is important too, google likes to look for new info & freshness. If your site is stagnant, google may overlook you.
I have noticed my site has not been crawled by googles bot's, for sometime!...you can find that out by checking the cache, next to your search results. or google tools/dashboard.
Also, if I search for Wellington Wedding photographer, I am nowhere in the search results:( Not Good!!
So! I have decided to be hopefully proactive, & not destructive!... & have a go at creating a map of my site (Sitemap) & submit it myself, to google & yahoo. This should prompt them to crawl through your site & pick up any new info.
(Which I have added new keywords, titles etc)
However! apparently, once you have generated your sitemap, you upload it to your "root directory" of your website. eg-reference it in your "robots.txt file".
Apparently you should name it "sitemaps.xml" & place it in the uppermost (root) directory of your website.
Then if you like, you can submit directly to each of the major search engines. Which will prompt them to crawl through your site, collecting info.
Some popular recommended tools for help creating sitemaps- "AutoMapIt.com"; "AutoSitemap.com"; "G-Mapper.co.uk"; "GSiteCrawler.com"; "sitemagellan.com" .
Q-That's what I want to do, & I wonder if this is possible? -where is my root directory?? are these actions we can not do, because its a smugmug site overall?
or, can I place my sitemap, in my uppermost root directory? where would that be found?
I'm keen to submit my sitemap, I have new keywords etc, yet I've long disappeared in googles search, so I'd like to wake em up, so to speak!
Warning! I have not finished reading the book yet! lol
Q-That's what I want to do, & I wonder if this is possible? -where is my root directory?? are these actions we can not do, because its a smugmug site overall?
or, can I place my sitemap, in my uppermost root directory? where would that be found?
I'm keen to submit my sitemap, I have new keywords etc, yet I've long disappeared in googles search, so I'd like to wake em up, so to speak!
Thanks guys!...look forward to your reply
You don't need to create sitemaps yourself, SmugMug has already done it for you!thumb
Hi here's a goodie!...I've been googling my googlies in a book called "Complete Idiots Guide to, Search Engine Optimization".
Some of it, still confuses me!...age related stubborness? not sure! lol.
Anyway, I did get some it, as below some tips, I & have a good question for you too;)...
As has been stated, Smugmug does make out the sitemap for you. However, there are lots of things you can do to improve your PageRank (PR) with Google. Read through the discussion thread here, especially the first post.
Keywording all of your photos is really important, and using descriptive filenames (i.e. instead of just DSC1245_012.NEF).
Also, make sure that your homepage title and description are crafted to put the most important info first for Google. I.e. my title is "Nacogdoches Photography - Ballenger Photography - Portrait, Wedding, Event and Corporate Photographer"
You can search for "search engine optimization" and get lots of other great tips. Also, don't just forget about Yahoo! and Bing as well. Google gets about 65% of the total search engine traffic, but they're definitely not the only ship in town...
Yes I was aware that smugmug do the sitemaps for us, but how often would they update our sitemaps!? hmmmmn I wonder with the gazillions on smugmug, would they ever update them?
They get stale & google spiders, don't trawl them anymore:(
I found my sitemap recieved smugmug in my google set-up...there was a msg from smugmug at the start of my sitemap saying-
"If you are reading this, then you should have a job with us".
I didn't think that was cute:(
I know about keywords, headers etc...however don't be fooled with them either! google doesn't like it when you cram lots of keywords...heres a tip! thats helped imporve my ranking SLIGHTLY...not through smugmugs help either, from the book I mentioned in my previous post.
Google own Youtube:) ....create a channel on Youtube;)
arghhh the things we have to resort to!
I am waiting on a reply, on here...I want my sitemap updated!! Will smugmug do it? or can I?
I've been going through the SEO steps, one of which is to submit a site map to Google. The site map generators I've used only list one web page. Is that right? I thought it was supposed to identify all of the pages. Can you recommend a site map generator?
Issues with changing my domain?
Hey all, I need some advice here. In 2009, I started my photo biz and signed up for Smugmug. Over the last 2 years, I've put a LOT of effort into optimizing my keywords, content, metadata, etc. to boost my SE rank as much as possible.
The domain I wanted to purchase, www.ballengerphotography.com, wasn't available when I needed it, so I set up my current domain, www.ballengerphotos.com. My current domain ranks pretty well in the organic results.
Here's my question: How will my rank / traffic be affected if I swap out my current domain for the new one? I know Smug says they take care of the sitemap, and I would definitely set up my old domain to redirect to the new one. I really want the new domain to be where my site lives, but I don't want to hurt my organic results either.
Here's my question: How will my rank / traffic be affected if I swap out my current domain for the new one? I know Smug says they take care of the sitemap, and I would definitely set up my old domain to redirect to the new one. I really want the new domain to be where my site lives, but I don't want to hurt my organic results either.
Help??
I'd advise against it. Changing your domain would result in you losing your search ranking and you'd have to start from scratch building your SEO for the new domain.
Not to mention that all links you've given out and any embeds on forums and blogs would stop working if the urls were using your custom domain.
There might be ways to work around broken embeds and links but I can't say if or how this might be done.
Do you not just keep both sites but do a 301 redirect from one to the other. As the specific part of the link to each photo wouldn't change the links should all keep working and the 301 should tell the search engines that this is a deliberate change rather than things breaking so you shouldn't lose any 'juice'.
Might be wrong but that is how I understood that it worked.
Rich, we don't have any control over your domain and you can only set up one domain to work with SmugMug directly. I'm not familiar with what advanced domain redirecting options there may be at your domain registrar to try to keep the search juice. As far as I know that's something entirely depending on the domain registrar and what options there may be.
Rich, we don't have any control over your domain and you can only set up one domain to work with SmugMug directly. I'm not familiar with what advanced domain redirecting options there may be at your domain registrar to try to keep the search juice. As far as I know that's something entirely depending on the domain registrar and what options there may be.
Sebastian
I don't think Google digs redirects like that and it may ding you.
What I did before the move though was to use Google Webmaster tools to get a list of the links that people had to our site so I could check that I hadn't forgotten any.
I've used 301 redirects when I changed our CMS system and the URL of a lot of pages that were already indexed changed. We kept the same base name but pages with names such as asp300 got changed to 'sensible names' but with the original weblinks still being to the 'asp300' type names. I saw no loss of Google traffic because of it. In James case he is just changing the 'base' name so only the start of the URL should change but it is still worth it to make sure that nothing has gone awry
For James, the trick is to make sure that you aren't just forwarding your old site to your new one but that you are saying that it has permanently moved by doing the 301 redirect.
Forgive me if this has already been asked.
Would it help me to add Html <h2> or <h3> tags to my image captions?
I have just started to rekeyword my site and was curious about this.
Thanks in advance,
--Shawn
Search Captions vs Keywords.
Andy - Please help clarify the difference between putting useful search terms in photo captions vs keywords.
It seems that SmugMug's search finds a desired search term in gallery titles & descriptions, photo names, keywords, and captions (and probably other places I'm not aware of). If so, why repeat words in both a caption and keyword (or have keywords at all if a caption contains the words anyone is likely to search for)?
I try to put specific descriptive terms in individual photo captions and use more general terms in keywords. I'd rather not have to go thru the steps of putting useful search terms in both places. Do external search engines (like Google) only pick up on keywords?
Andy - Please help clarify the difference between putting useful search terms in photo captions vs keywords.
It seems that SmugMug's search finds a desired search term in gallery titles & descriptions, photo names, keywords, and captions (and probably other places I'm not aware of). If so, why repeat words in both a caption and keyword (or have keywords at all if a caption contains the words anyone is likely to search for)?
I try to put specific descriptive terms in individual photo captions and use more general terms in keywords. I'd rather not have to go thru the steps of putting useful search terms in both places. Do external search engines (like Google) only pick up on keywords?
Thanks
Rick
All I can tell you is that Google likes captions and keywords. And VERY much likes Album Descriptions
Having spent 13 hours straight yesterday reading through as much of this thread as I could, as well as related info I found by way of links provided by some along the way, I arrived somewhere down page 12 with a number of the questions I'd had answered but more having come up.
I guess I could spend another day or two reading and digesting the next 14 pages, but seeing as there's apparently been so many changes and improvements made to SmugMug since 2009 (which is where page 12 of this thread was at!), I think it more prudent of me to ask some questions now in the hope of receiving the most up-to-date thoughts, opinions and advice.
Although this question was asked a few times before Andy saw it and answered that it's not possible to change file names of photos already uploaded to SmugMug, up to page 12 I didn't see anything more written about this. So my current understanding is, if I wish to enhance the chances of photos in my galleries being picked up by Google Image Searches (GIS) by adding ALT= tags to the file names, it means I need to rewrite the file names on each respective jpg file I want to feature on my website, delete all the photos that are there right now, then upload the newly named ones, which, being that I have nearly 1,400 photos I want to replace, is of course going to take a considerable amount of time.
Working 12-15 hours a day is something I'm used to and willing to do, however, seems like a good idea to put this out there before I plunge into all this, lest it turn out to be a complete waste of my time and effort:
What are the latest thoughts on whether adding ALT= words to a file name one uploads to (in particular) SmugMug having any effect on GIS picking them up and featuring the related image in a relatively prominent position?
What are the latest thoughts on whether adding ALT= words to a file name one uploads to (in particular) SmugMug having any effect on GIS picking them up and featuring the related image in a relatively prominent position?
You do not need to do this. Googlebot sees a different version of your galleries than you see when you're browsing. Googlebot already gets the alt= words from your captions.
You do not need to do this. Googlebot sees a different version of your galleries than you see when you're browsing. Googlebot already gets the alt= words from your captions.
Thanks for your response Andy!
Excellent, that's one less thing I have to spend time on then
While on the subject of captions then: For prints we sell at our gallery and those that I share on 500px, I always use a caption that hopefully adds a little something extra to a viewer's enjoyment. For example, the picture I'm attaching to this is captioned "Minor Collision".
However, as I didn't want to add too many words in the caption field on my website and felt it more important to offer a description to the viewer of the subject they were looking at, I leave off my choice of title. So the caption for this shot on my website (which is the same format I use for all the others) is: African Lion cubs (females, two weeks old), Born at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, Chonburi, Thailand, Ref # KKC 124
For the purpose of enhancing my "findability" what, would you suggest?
Comments
http://www.tkephotography.com
I might be wrong but this may simply be because on Flickr your site is under the www.flickr.com url and so Google will use the PageRank of that site in determining the importance or your images. Flickr has a PR of 9 which you just can't beat. At least on your Flickr site make a link back to your Smugmug site. I don't think that Flickr allows pagerank to flow out but at least people who find your pictures via flickr can then get to your site (EDIT: sometimes you have done this, just not constantly and it may be better to link to a related gallery than your homepage)
Even though you are hosting your photos on Smugmug they appear to the world under your own URL www.tkephotography.com which unfortunately has a PR of 0 as far as I can see. My experience has been that Google really doesn't rate sites with a PR of zero even though the photos are great.
I suspect that you need to work on the SEO of your site and Google will start to show you. As a reference we have a PR of 5 and Google picks up everything that we make public.
There is a lot of good info. on SEO in the threads here but the two usual tips are:
* Start a blog, e.g. on the races that you visit, and then make sure to link from there directly into galleries rather than just to your home page. It seems silly but Google likes blogs and likes text as it can't really work out directly what a picture is about.
* When you do link to your homepage (as you sometimes do on forums) try to use descriptive anchor text rather than My Smugmug site, e.g. Motorsports photography. That way if Google sees it on a forum about motorsports it is more likely to think the link is relevant and hence important. If you link to galleries about motorsports that have a description about motorsports (rather than your homepage) then Google will be able to see that the landing page is relevant and hence bump you up a little more. It's all about lots of little things rather than one big button to push to make it work
Good luck
http://www.tkephotography.com
Great
Can I suggest one more thing if you are going to start trying to bump yourself up the google rankings. It can be very difficult to know if what you are doing is having any real effect so if you aren't doing so already you want to start tracking a few different measurements. You don't need to do this every day but every fortnight might not be bad. As a start I would suggest:
1. The Crawl stats on Google webmaster tools
This will tell you whether or not Google is actually bothering to look at your pages. As a reference, on average Google crawls about 4000 pages a day for us and downloads 51MB
2. Search engine visitors in Google Analytics
As a start simply record how many visitors come to your site each week via Google
3. How many images google has in Google images for you (ie. type site:tkephotography.com)
This is a little inaccurate as you often get duplicates due to thumbnails etc. but it isn't a bad marker. As a reference we were at about 200 before the big sitemap change at the end of last year and now we are at 9000.
The actual numbers aren't so important as being able to see that what you are doing is making some sort of difference. Again as reference it took about 4 months of work initially for us to make any impact on our search results but it did come in the end.
Good luck.
Rich
If you look back at when this thread was started and see the date 2006 and read what has been done and how many people it has helped since then..... It just goes to show, how much SmugMug does care for their customers! I'm glad to be one! The service is priceless.
Some of it, still confuses me!...age related stubborness? not sure! lol.
Anyway, I did get some it, as below some tips, I & have a good question for you too;)
Google does not always take note of oodles of keywords, apparently it can choose to ignore them especially if repeated.
It only reads HTML, not java, photos or vid's.
Meta tags are good....as well as links from outside sites, linking back to yours. (Importantly if it is relevant info, related to your site or product.)
Text is good, especially if relevant & informative. Headings, titles are important & can be crawled through, rather than keywords.
Updating your site on a frequent basis is important too, google likes to look for new info & freshness. If your site is stagnant, google may overlook you.
I have noticed my site has not been crawled by googles bot's, for sometime!...you can find that out by checking the cache, next to your search results. or google tools/dashboard.
Also, if I search for Wellington Wedding photographer, I am nowhere in the search results:( Not Good!!
So! I have decided to be hopefully proactive, & not destructive!... & have a go at creating a map of my site (Sitemap) & submit it myself, to google & yahoo. This should prompt them to crawl through your site & pick up any new info.
(Which I have added new keywords, titles etc)
However! apparently, once you have generated your sitemap, you upload it to your "root directory" of your website. eg-reference it in your "robots.txt file".
Apparently you should name it "sitemaps.xml" & place it in the uppermost (root) directory of your website.
Then if you like, you can submit directly to each of the major search engines. Which will prompt them to crawl through your site, collecting info.
Some popular recommended tools for help creating sitemaps- "AutoMapIt.com"; "AutoSitemap.com"; "G-Mapper.co.uk"; "GSiteCrawler.com"; "sitemagellan.com" .
Q-That's what I want to do, & I wonder if this is possible? -where is my root directory?? are these actions we can not do, because its a smugmug site overall?
or, can I place my sitemap, in my uppermost root directory? where would that be found?
I'm keen to submit my sitemap, I have new keywords etc, yet I've long disappeared in googles search, so I'd like to wake em up, so to speak!
Warning! I have not finished reading the book yet! lol
Thanks guys!...look forward to your reply
You don't need to create sitemaps yourself, SmugMug has already done it for you!
Luc
As has been stated, Smugmug does make out the sitemap for you. However, there are lots of things you can do to improve your PageRank (PR) with Google. Read through the discussion thread here, especially the first post.
Keywording all of your photos is really important, and using descriptive filenames (i.e. instead of just DSC1245_012.NEF).
Also, make sure that your homepage title and description are crafted to put the most important info first for Google. I.e. my title is "Nacogdoches Photography - Ballenger Photography - Portrait, Wedding, Event and Corporate Photographer"
You can search for "search engine optimization" and get lots of other great tips. Also, don't just forget about Yahoo! and Bing as well. Google gets about 65% of the total search engine traffic, but they're definitely not the only ship in town...
Proofing: clients.captured-photos.com
Facebook: Like Me || Twitter: Follow Me
Gear: Lots of Nikon bodies & glass, an office full of tools and toys
They get stale & google spiders, don't trawl them anymore:(
I found my sitemap recieved smugmug in my google set-up...there was a msg from smugmug at the start of my sitemap saying-
"If you are reading this, then you should have a job with us".
I didn't think that was cute:(
I know about keywords, headers etc...however don't be fooled with them either! google doesn't like it when you cram lots of keywords...heres a tip! thats helped imporve my ranking SLIGHTLY...not through smugmugs help either, from the book I mentioned in my previous post.
Google own Youtube:) ....create a channel on Youtube;)
arghhh the things we have to resort to!
I am waiting on a reply, on here...I want my sitemap updated!! Will smugmug do it? or can I?
Cheers!
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Imagine Your World · Tours & Workshops · News · Google+ · Facebook · LinkedIn
http://imagine-your-world.smugmug.com/sitemap-index.xml
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
http://www.richardsharpephotography.com
Thanks!
http://www.richardsharpephotography.com/sitemap-index.xml
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Just a reminder: Free smugmug seo optimization pdf document:
http://photographers-seo.com/downloads/SmugMug-SEO-How-to-Guide.pdf
http://www.sritch.com
The Dogs of Vancouver, BC
Yes indeed
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Hey all, I need some advice here. In 2009, I started my photo biz and signed up for Smugmug. Over the last 2 years, I've put a LOT of effort into optimizing my keywords, content, metadata, etc. to boost my SE rank as much as possible.
The domain I wanted to purchase, www.ballengerphotography.com, wasn't available when I needed it, so I set up my current domain, www.ballengerphotos.com. My current domain ranks pretty well in the organic results.
Here's my question: How will my rank / traffic be affected if I swap out my current domain for the new one? I know Smug says they take care of the sitemap, and I would definitely set up my old domain to redirect to the new one. I really want the new domain to be where my site lives, but I don't want to hurt my organic results either.
Help??
Proofing: clients.captured-photos.com
Facebook: Like Me || Twitter: Follow Me
Gear: Lots of Nikon bodies & glass, an office full of tools and toys
Not to mention that all links you've given out and any embeds on forums and blogs would stop working if the urls were using your custom domain.
There might be ways to work around broken embeds and links but I can't say if or how this might be done.
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
Might be wrong but that is how I understood that it worked.
Sebastian
SmugMug Support Hero
I don't think Google digs redirects like that and it may ding you.
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
The original question wasn't mine, it was James. I was just replying to him.
301 redirects are what Google recommends for exactly this situation as far as I know.
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83105
What I did before the move though was to use Google Webmaster tools to get a list of the links that people had to our site so I could check that I hadn't forgotten any.
I've used 301 redirects when I changed our CMS system and the URL of a lot of pages that were already indexed changed. We kept the same base name but pages with names such as asp300 got changed to 'sensible names' but with the original weblinks still being to the 'asp300' type names. I saw no loss of Google traffic because of it. In James case he is just changing the 'base' name so only the start of the URL should change but it is still worth it to make sure that nothing has gone awry
For James, the trick is to make sure that you aren't just forwarding your old site to your new one but that you are saying that it has permanently moved by doing the 301 redirect.
ymmv of course
Rich
No.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Andy - Please help clarify the difference between putting useful search terms in photo captions vs keywords.
It seems that SmugMug's search finds a desired search term in gallery titles & descriptions, photo names, keywords, and captions (and probably other places I'm not aware of). If so, why repeat words in both a caption and keyword (or have keywords at all if a caption contains the words anyone is likely to search for)?
I try to put specific descriptive terms in individual photo captions and use more general terms in keywords. I'd rather not have to go thru the steps of putting useful search terms in both places. Do external search engines (like Google) only pick up on keywords?
Thanks
Rick
Washington DC: Where taxation without representation thrives.
All I can tell you is that Google likes captions and keywords. And VERY much likes Album Descriptions
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I guess I could spend another day or two reading and digesting the next 14 pages, but seeing as there's apparently been so many changes and improvements made to SmugMug since 2009 (which is where page 12 of this thread was at!), I think it more prudent of me to ask some questions now in the hope of receiving the most up-to-date thoughts, opinions and advice.
Although this question was asked a few times before Andy saw it and answered that it's not possible to change file names of photos already uploaded to SmugMug, up to page 12 I didn't see anything more written about this. So my current understanding is, if I wish to enhance the chances of photos in my galleries being picked up by Google Image Searches (GIS) by adding ALT= tags to the file names, it means I need to rewrite the file names on each respective jpg file I want to feature on my website, delete all the photos that are there right now, then upload the newly named ones, which, being that I have nearly 1,400 photos I want to replace, is of course going to take a considerable amount of time.
Working 12-15 hours a day is something I'm used to and willing to do, however, seems like a good idea to put this out there before I plunge into all this, lest it turn out to be a complete waste of my time and effort:
What are the latest thoughts on whether adding ALT= words to a file name one uploads to (in particular) SmugMug having any effect on GIS picking them up and featuring the related image in a relatively prominent position?
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
You do not need to do this. Googlebot sees a different version of your galleries than you see when you're browsing. Googlebot already gets the alt= words from your captions.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Thanks for your response Andy!
Excellent, that's one less thing I have to spend time on then
While on the subject of captions then: For prints we sell at our gallery and those that I share on 500px, I always use a caption that hopefully adds a little something extra to a viewer's enjoyment. For example, the picture I'm attaching to this is captioned "Minor Collision".
However, as I didn't want to add too many words in the caption field on my website and felt it more important to offer a description to the viewer of the subject they were looking at, I leave off my choice of title. So the caption for this shot on my website (which is the same format I use for all the others) is: African Lion cubs (females, two weeks old), Born at Khao Kheow Open Zoo, Chonburi, Thailand, Ref # KKC 124
For the purpose of enhancing my "findability" what, would you suggest?
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
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