One more question on that: In your opinion, would adding a short title (e.g. "Minor Collision") to the words I already use in my captions add or detract from the "findability" factor in GIS?
Clarification Request: The question was raised a couple of times on the first page of this thread as to whether NOT displaying keywords to viewers under photos would make them invisible to search engines. And I believe your answer, Andy, was no, and you showed the code to add into CSS, something I'd actually already done a while ago.
However, what I'm not clear on is if you were referring to SmugMug's own search engine or all search engines (including GIS) on the net?
One last thing for now: While a good number of my images can be found by doing a search on Ashley Vincent Photography, Nature Impressions Ashley Vincent, and other similar combinations, in GIS, with the exception of one photo (which ironically is a picture taken from a gallery that, while "listed", is not readily displayed on my site for viewers to see!), all the other photos link back to 500px (where I've previously posted them up) or to sites like Scoop.it, Facebook, Tumbler, Wordpress, Cruzin, pxleyes, StumbleUpon, etc., where apparent admirers have chosen to add my images to ... if only I could get a dollar for each one of those and the every time they've been relinked to other sites and pages, the struggle to make money at this pro photography game would be a whole lot easier
Anyhow, seeing as you feel the captions I already have (and have had for many months now) in place seem to be sufficient, and the keywords I use are pretty much written the same, yet none of my actual SmugMug loaded photos come up in GIS (other than the one mentioned above that I don't really want showing up!), is there any real point in me trying to think of more creative words I could possibly add to each photo on my website, be it in the captions or keywords, in the hope some of those pictures might eventually appear on the first (or even first few) pages of Google Image Search?
Thanks for your time Andy, and wishing you and your family a wonderful weekend
One more question on that: In your opinion, would adding a short title (e.g. "Minor Collision") to the words I already use in my captions add or detract from the "findability" factor in GIS?
I wouldn't worry to much about it. I'd concentrate on making the caption interesting for your visitors.
Clarification Request: The question was raised a couple of times on the first page of this thread as to whether NOT displaying keywords to viewers under photos would make them invisible to search engines. And I believe your answer, Andy, was no, and you showed the code to add into CSS, something I'd actually already done a while ago.
However, what I'm not clear on is if you were referring to SmugMug's own search engine or all search engines (including GIS) on the net?
Take a look here. While you can hide keywords, it may not be advisable SEO-wise.
Anyhow, seeing as you feel the captions I already have (and have had for many months now) in place seem to be sufficient, and the keywords I use are pretty much written the same, yet none of my actual SmugMug loaded photos come up in GIS (other than the one mentioned above that I don't really want showing up!), is there any real point in me trying to think of more creative words I could possibly add to each photo on my website, be it in the captions or keywords, in the hope some of those pictures might eventually appear on the first (or even first few) pages of Google Image Search?
Getting content on GIS isn't as easy as getting your content indexed by Google. As far as I know, GIS doesn't add just all the content that it can finds, but concentrates on highly ranked content. So make sure that you get your photos embedded on your blog and other pages that have a good ranking along with links back to your SmugMug gallery. Getting your content and links out on blogs, forums and other high traffic sites should help.
It's difficult to succeed if you just focus on your own site and it's not really getting any exposure elsewhere.
I wouldn't worry to much about it. I'd concentrate on making the caption interesting for your visitors.
Take a look here. While you can hide keywords, it may not be advisable SEO-wise.
Getting content on GIS isn't as easy as getting your content indexed by Google. As far as I know, GIS doesn't add just all the content that it can finds, but concentrates on highly ranked content. So make sure that you get your photos embedded on your blog and other pages that have a good ranking along with links back to your SmugMug gallery. Getting your content and links out on blogs, forums and other high traffic sites should help.
It's difficult to succeed if you just focus on your own site and it's not really getting any exposure elsewhere.
Hi Sebastian,
Thanks for your answers to my questions, much appreciated!
Gotcha re interesting info in captions.
Reactivated visibility on my keywords beneath photos.
And understood re getting my photos embedded on my blog (which is something I'm planning on setting up in the very near future!) and other pages that have a good ranking along with links back to my SmugMug gallery.
BTW, while I've got your attention, and hoping this isn't too OT: I understand you're running the daily community, which I may like to post images in, however, I can't seem to find anything written about rules, regulations, instructions (on how to post images up), and same goes for any of the other community galleries. Could you please provide me with a link where I can find all the related info?
BTW, while I've got your attention, and hoping this isn't too OT: I understand you're running the daily community, which I may like to post images in, however, I can't seem to find anything written about rules, regulations, instructions (on how to post images up), and same goes for any of the other community galleries. Could you please provide me with a link where I can find all the related info?
Though I did search for communities, all I came up with were the groups but, call me blind if you will, I couldn't see any written info on how it all works, certainly never noticed the info + chat page before; good job you had your magnifying glass handy
That said, I've now searched for that window you provided in your screen grab and I can't find it; I can find other pages and galleries related to the DailyPhotos community, but not the one you show here with the Daily Photos info page + chat. Can you give me a direct link to that page please?
Also, when looking in the Wildlife community, again there's no written info on what's allowed, not allowed, or how to actually post anything up. Still I'm confused by this
Though I did search for communities, all I came up with were the groups but, call me blind if you will, I couldn't see any written info on how it all works, certainly never noticed the info + chat page before; good job you had your magnifying glass handy
That said, I've now searched for that window you provided in your screen grab and I can't find it; I can find other pages and galleries related to the DailyPhotos community, but not the one you show here with the Daily Photos info page + chat. Can you give me a direct link to that page please?
Also, when looking in the Wildlife community, again there's no written info on what's allowed, not allowed, or how to actually post anything up. Still I'm confused by this
Just join the community and link a gallery. Then enjoy. You're overthinking things, Ashley
Thanks as always Andy!
And what can I tell ya', over-thinking for me goes hand in hand with my other lifelong challenge of seeming to always use 10 words where one would adequately do for most :loll
Probably be back with more questions tomorrow, but for now I'll give it a rest and wish you once again a great weekend
Lemur,
If you assign keywords to your images, you might want to add the "Top Keywords" widget to the bottom of your home page. I did this about 6 months ago and was able to increase traffic from Google, etc. To read more about adding the "Top Keywords" widget to the bottom of your web site, check out: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93315-make-your-homepage-pretty
Lemur,
If you assign keywords to your images, you might want to add the "Top Keywords" widget to the bottom of your home page. I did this about 6 months ago and was able to increase traffic from Google, etc. To read more about adding the "Top Keywords" widget to the bottom of your web site, check out: http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93315-make-your-homepage-pretty
Thanks for your input and for the links, which had been interesting and useful to read, although I don't feel any closer to coming up with a near perfect formula for any of this, and chances are there isn't one to be found
What follows isn't now in direct response to you Chip, but happy to receive answers, thoughts and opinions from you and/or anyone else.
With respect to Homepage Meta Descriptions: On the SmugMug help page it says, “Fill in your Homepage Meta Description and Google will pick up the first 140 characters to display a description of your home page in their search results”, yet when one goes to Account Settings > SmugMugIsland Settings it's written under the Homepage Meta Descriptions field, “255 characters max” - what would be the point of going for the maximum of 255 characters if Google only picks up the first 140 characters?
Something else that adds to my confusion is that when doing a automated word-count in a MS Word doc, the relevant numbers coming up on a selected paragraph shows the count for characters with spaces as well as characters without spaces. So regardless of whether it's 140 or 255 characters, I'm still at a loss for not knowing whether this limit (or maximum) is including spaces or not, which is it?
BTW, the same applies to Homepage Meta Keywords: Written under the text field it also states a 255 character max.
For those inclined to shed some light on the above questions but are otherwise too busy, please don't feel the need to read anything else I write below, as it's more musings and a means of gently venting my frustrations over trying to figure out the most effective keywords to use with my photos than anything else
In reference to keywords related to photos, I've noticed that searches are very word specific, as in, if you feel the word “cat” is a very good word to have, you really need to use the plural “cats” in addition to “cat”, as using both of these will generally find your images in far more search results.
Thing is, with the limit of words one can use – or at least the number that will actually be picked up on and prove in any way effective – it's real difficult to pick the ones that would serve us best in both the singular as well as the plural.
I must admit that the more I look into and think about keywords the more questions come up and the more I feel I'm at a loss to understanding how people do searches that will give me some sort of edge; the most obvious words that relate to a specific image will obviously produce the greatest number of search results - take “Lion” for example – but of course this then greatly reduces the odds of people searching for Lions coming up with one's own image. Granted there are more than a few other words one can add that relate to Lions, and words to describe what's going on in the photo surely help too (e.g. laying down, profile portrait, feasting, roaring, playing cards, shooting pool, etc.), but generally speaking, with the thousands of Lion photographers out there also using keywords, logic suggests that most of those have also been used thousands of times before.
Get creative methinks! And I do, which is why I'm just about to add words I use in my caption titles (like “astonished”, “perplexed”, “youthful”, “darkness”, “enlightenment”, “collision”, “tentative”, “regrets”, to name but a few) for printed images we sell at our galley to the keywords for photos on our website, as this may help us to pick up the extra odd visitor or two who does a search on words like that, though chances are weren't expecting to see an image of, say, a Lion come up. And the more creative one tries to be the further away one probably gets from what any “normal” person would think to type into a search engine while looking for Lion photos.
I happened across SmugMug's Most Active Keywords of All-Time - http://www.smugmug.com/keyword/all yesterday morning and, while I wasn't really expecting to find “Lion”, I was very surprised by the top keywords I found there, words like “events” which has been used on 764,364 photos, or “July” (734,805 photos), “photography” (1,864,579!), and “2012” (2,796,967 … and to think we're only half way through the year!!!).
I know one can choose between “most recent” and “most popular” and I can see the logic in someone wanting to check out the most recent events for in the hope of finding a images of, say, a Rolling Stones concert or a presidential inauguration, but you'd have to be a very patient and determined person indeed to be willing enough to trawl through countless images and pages featuring young Eddie's fourth birthday party, Nancy's cookout, and the like, all the while optimistic you'd eventually come across what you're looking for.
And as for searching the year “2012”, knowing that 2,796,967 people have already used that for a specific search simply blows my mind!
Another point of frustration is seeing so many images come up in a search on a particular keyword that bares little or absolutely no relation to the actual word, let's use Lion once again as an example. Of the first 50 photos that come up (at time of writing I see there are 259,360 “Lion” images to be found in the Photos gallery), these are the primary subjects I see:
African Lions – 12 photos
Mountain Lions – 7 photos
Sea Lion – 2 photos
Lion Fish – 1 photo
Statues of Lions – 2 photos
Lion Toys – 3 photos
[now this is where we really start to stray]
Landscape at “Lions” Park (no actual Lions to be seen) – 1 photo
Lady in a red dress holding a red umbrella … complete with the “Lion” Dancer (whatever that is?!?! and again no discernible Lion in the frame) – 1 photo
Reflection in a shop window, no Lion in the image, though commentary mentions something about the possibility a Bear having injured a Deer rather than a Mountain “Lion” as apparently thought by the photographer and mentioned on a previous photo, i.e. that part of the commentary actually had absolutely nothing to do with the current photo! - 1 photo
Dragonfly captured at “Lions” Park – 1 photo
A Giraffe (!), with thanks in the commentary related to a previous photo uploaded of a “Lion” - 1 photo
Nice picture of a girl with commentary saying the day this was taken, one of the things the family did was visit Lazy “Lion” Used Books, and from all the other things they did that day sounds like they had a wonderful time, though apparently they didn't get to see an actual Lion and I certainly didn't find one in the featured picture – 1 photo
To cut this short, as I'm pretty sure anyone still reading this will have gotten the point already, the others out of the first 50 photos on this page that show no evidence of a Lion show instead: a Dog, a couple of Deer, close-up of some ice-cream, three more landscapes, a child's face painted with whiskers, a speeding train, two flower shots, a Peacock, a woman running excitedly toward a statue of a Lion (though unfortunately the statue was kept out of the frame, really would have liked to see that at least!) as she tried to take a picture of it, then there's a photo of some (in case the photographer happens across this thread and is interested to know the species name!) Dusky Leaf-Monkeys (AKA Spectacled also Dusky Langur) with commentary mentioning a previously uploaded image of a Lion, and lastly, an Austin Healy car.
Having written all this, please don't misunderstand me: To be fair, it's clear that all those photos that I don't feel should be gathered up in the first 50 Lion shots are there by way of the word “Lion” being used in captions, not keywords, and I'm sure with the amount of words I've used in some of my gallery descriptions (though not so far in my captions), some of my galleries might pop up on other people's monitors who are searching for something entirely different, so I'm really not complaining about anyone or even the search structure in general, I'm merely choosing to write as a way of conveying my thoughts on how immensely challenging it is to come up with effective keywords for specific photos with a view to getting them noticed, a feeling that I'm sure others will be able to relate to!
Perhaps I would have been better saving all this for a blog, but I haven't yet set myself up with one, and this subject of keywords does appear to come up over here so I thought why not?
Still interested in receiving answers to the questions I posed at the beginning of all this, and happy to hear the thoughts and experiences of others regarding all this if you wish to share.
With respect to Homepage Meta Descriptions: On the SmugMug help page it says, “Fill in your Homepage Meta Description and Google will pick up the first 140 characters to display a description of your home page in their search results”, yet when one goes to Account Settings > SmugMugIsland Settings it's written under the Homepage Meta Descriptions field, “255 characters max” - what would be the point of going for the maximum of 255 characters if Google only picks up the first 140 characters?
OVERthinking again!
Just come up with something short and sweet. Here's mine. You can see anyone's by simply using your browser and View>Source
OVERthinking again!
Just come up with something short and sweet. Here's mine. You can see anyone's by simply using your browser and View>Source
Hey Andy,
Me, over-think a subject? Nah, you've got me all wrong buddy :haha
Yeah, what can I say, nearly 50 years of being the same way makes it something of a challenge to change
Still interested in having an answer on this part I wrote above if you happen to know:
Something else that adds to my confusion is that when doing a automated word-count in a MS Word doc, the relevant numbers coming up on a selected paragraph shows the count for characters with spaces as well as characters without spaces. So regardless of whether it's 140 or 255 characters, I'm still at a loss for not knowing whether this limit (or maximum) is including spaces or not, which is it?
Me, over-think a subject? Nah, you've got me all wrong buddy :haha
Yeah, what can I say, nearly 50 years of being the same way makes it something of a challenge to change
Still interested in having an answer on this part I wrote above if you happen to know:
Something else that adds to my confusion is that when doing a automated word-count in a MS Word doc, the relevant numbers coming up on a selected paragraph shows the count for characters with spaces as well as characters without spaces. So regardless of whether it's 140 or 255 characters, I'm still at a loss for not knowing whether this limit (or maximum) is including spaces or not, which is it?
Wishing you a great week ahead Andy
Includes spaces. You could easily see this for yourself. Just enter your info, save it, then view source in your browser. Try it.
OVERthinking again!
Just come up with something short and sweet. Here's mine. You can see anyone's by simply using your browser and View>Source
One other item that should be mentioned is that the meta description tag is no longer considered by Google when it comes to page or keyword ranking. It's most important role is to describe what your site is about and get people to click on your listing in the search engine results page. The 140 characters should include a brief description of your site, as well as a "call to action" that will give people a reason to click on your listing, rather than the ones above or below.
OVERthinking again!
Just come up with something short and sweet. Here's mine. You can see anyone's by simply using your browser and View>Source
Good to see someone else is overthinking things.
I noticed you (at Moon River Photography) have only five words not separated by commas in your "meta homepage keywords." Why so few words and why not separated by commas? Do we need different phrases separated by commas or will all of the words one could search for be separated by commas be just as good? Do we need to put in variations of keywords, such as, the singular version and plural version?
I noticed you (at Moon River Photography) have only five words not separated by commas in your "meta homepage keywords." Why so few words and why not separated by commas? Do we need different phrases separated by commas or will all of the words one could search for be separated by commas be just as good? Do we need to put in variations of keywords, such as, the singular version and plural version?
Use comma separation as mentioned in the tool.
I'll let Andy know that he seems to be missing the commas on his site.
Less may be more - keep in mind that you can always tweak your keywords later on.
This was written back in 2009, but they probably stopped using meta keywords as far back as early to mid-00's. Yahoo was using them for a longer period of time, but they rarely (if ever) use them today.
Just trying to clean-up an old misconception. You're much better off (from an SEO perspective) by spending your time assigning keywords to your images.
I noticed you (at Moon River Photography) have only five words not separated by commas in your "meta homepage keywords." Why so few words and why not separated by commas? Do we need different phrases separated by commas or will all of the words one could search for be separated by commas be just as good? Do we need to put in variations of keywords, such as, the singular version and plural version?
Bing image search
I find that my smugmug pictures do not show up in google image search very well so I tried out bing.
I did a very specific search (go transit moosonee). GO Transit is an Ontario Government agency which operates trains and buses around Toronto. A couple of years ago there was an experiment with using some of their bilevel cars on the Polar Bear Express train that comes to Moosonee. I posted quite a few pictures of this on my smugmug site and also on another site I don't really maintain now, www.lantz.ca.
When I ran the image search the first eight pictures that came up were mine, seven from www.lantz.ca and only one from my smugmug site.
@paullantz if you are using some photo-software like Lightroom you could export your photos to your smug mug page from there and automatically convert the filenames to something more descriptive - that is at least if you have given them captions or the place-data from where they are taken. And than it is really simple.
I admit putting this up after some years of photography without it is time consuming to say the last, but once you have a good workflow going - no problem.
Prior to that I actually had my own little Linux program coded that took the date and time from the exif-information of the files and was than able to put in some post-fix which I had specified as a parameter. So for example my photos from New Zealand had at least the date, time and country as filename information.
(Should anybody be interested I could post this bash-skript here too)
Key words, metadata~
Hi, I thought once we had a page that could we could add keywords to all photos at once to help if we wanted to put surname or web, any key word???
Hi, I thought once we had a page that could we could add keywords to all photos at once to help if we wanted to put surname or web, any key word???
You can add keywords to multiple photos at once if the photos are in the same gallery. That can be a real gallery or a smart gallery. See the Add Keywords in Bulk section of this help page.
Comments
Thanks for your timely response Andy!
One more question on that: In your opinion, would adding a short title (e.g. "Minor Collision") to the words I already use in my captions add or detract from the "findability" factor in GIS?
Clarification Request: The question was raised a couple of times on the first page of this thread as to whether NOT displaying keywords to viewers under photos would make them invisible to search engines. And I believe your answer, Andy, was no, and you showed the code to add into CSS, something I'd actually already done a while ago.
However, what I'm not clear on is if you were referring to SmugMug's own search engine or all search engines (including GIS) on the net?
One last thing for now: While a good number of my images can be found by doing a search on Ashley Vincent Photography, Nature Impressions Ashley Vincent, and other similar combinations, in GIS, with the exception of one photo (which ironically is a picture taken from a gallery that, while "listed", is not readily displayed on my site for viewers to see!), all the other photos link back to 500px (where I've previously posted them up) or to sites like Scoop.it, Facebook, Tumbler, Wordpress, Cruzin, pxleyes, StumbleUpon, etc., where apparent admirers have chosen to add my images to ... if only I could get a dollar for each one of those and the every time they've been relinked to other sites and pages, the struggle to make money at this pro photography game would be a whole lot easier
Anyhow, seeing as you feel the captions I already have (and have had for many months now) in place seem to be sufficient, and the keywords I use are pretty much written the same, yet none of my actual SmugMug loaded photos come up in GIS (other than the one mentioned above that I don't really want showing up!), is there any real point in me trying to think of more creative words I could possibly add to each photo on my website, be it in the captions or keywords, in the hope some of those pictures might eventually appear on the first (or even first few) pages of Google Image Search?
Thanks for your time Andy, and wishing you and your family a wonderful weekend
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
Take a look here. While you can hide keywords, it may not be advisable SEO-wise.
Getting content on GIS isn't as easy as getting your content indexed by Google. As far as I know, GIS doesn't add just all the content that it can finds, but concentrates on highly ranked content. So make sure that you get your photos embedded on your blog and other pages that have a good ranking along with links back to your SmugMug gallery. Getting your content and links out on blogs, forums and other high traffic sites should help.
It's difficult to succeed if you just focus on your own site and it's not really getting any exposure elsewhere.
SmugMug Support Hero
Hi Sebastian,
Thanks for your answers to my questions, much appreciated!
Gotcha re interesting info in captions.
Reactivated visibility on my keywords beneath photos.
And understood re getting my photos embedded on my blog (which is something I'm planning on setting up in the very near future!) and other pages that have a good ranking along with links back to my SmugMug gallery.
BTW, while I've got your attention, and hoping this isn't too OT: I understand you're running the daily community, which I may like to post images in, however, I can't seem to find anything written about rules, regulations, instructions (on how to post images up), and same goes for any of the other community galleries. Could you please provide me with a link where I can find all the related info?
Thanks again and wishing you a great weekend
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
Ashley, our help pages are chock full of info - just typing "communities" into the search box on http://help.smugmug.com will get you this:
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93262
And did you click here?
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Thank Andy!
Though I did search for communities, all I came up with were the groups but, call me blind if you will, I couldn't see any written info on how it all works, certainly never noticed the info + chat page before; good job you had your magnifying glass handy
That said, I've now searched for that window you provided in your screen grab and I can't find it; I can find other pages and galleries related to the DailyPhotos community, but not the one you show here with the Daily Photos info page + chat. Can you give me a direct link to that page please?
Also, when looking in the Wildlife community, again there's no written info on what's allowed, not allowed, or how to actually post anything up. Still I'm confused by this
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
http://www.smugmug.com/community/DailyPhotos/
Just join the community and link a gallery. Then enjoy. You're overthinking things, Ashley
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Thanks as always Andy!
And what can I tell ya', over-thinking for me goes hand in hand with my other lifelong challenge of seeming to always use 10 words where one would adequately do for most :loll
Probably be back with more questions tomorrow, but for now I'll give it a rest and wish you once again a great weekend
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
If you assign keywords to your images, you might want to add the "Top Keywords" widget to the bottom of your home page. I did this about 6 months ago and was able to increase traffic from Google, etc. To read more about adding the "Top Keywords" widget to the bottom of your web site, check out:
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93315-make-your-homepage-pretty
BUT, you should be aware and careful of the recent Google "Penguin" algo update, which penalizes websites for over-optmization. See what Google says about this update here:
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/04/another-step-to-reward-high-quality.html
If you want to find out more about this update, go to a reputable site like SearchEngineLand.com:
http://searchengineland.com/library/google/google-penguin-update
Hi Chip,
Thanks for your input and for the links, which had been interesting and useful to read, although I don't feel any closer to coming up with a near perfect formula for any of this, and chances are there isn't one to be found
What follows isn't now in direct response to you Chip, but happy to receive answers, thoughts and opinions from you and/or anyone else.
With respect to Homepage Meta Descriptions: On the SmugMug help page it says, “Fill in your Homepage Meta Description and Google will pick up the first 140 characters to display a description of your home page in their search results”, yet when one goes to Account Settings > SmugMugIsland Settings it's written under the Homepage Meta Descriptions field, “255 characters max” - what would be the point of going for the maximum of 255 characters if Google only picks up the first 140 characters?
Something else that adds to my confusion is that when doing a automated word-count in a MS Word doc, the relevant numbers coming up on a selected paragraph shows the count for characters with spaces as well as characters without spaces. So regardless of whether it's 140 or 255 characters, I'm still at a loss for not knowing whether this limit (or maximum) is including spaces or not, which is it?
BTW, the same applies to Homepage Meta Keywords: Written under the text field it also states a 255 character max.
For those inclined to shed some light on the above questions but are otherwise too busy, please don't feel the need to read anything else I write below, as it's more musings and a means of gently venting my frustrations over trying to figure out the most effective keywords to use with my photos than anything else
In reference to keywords related to photos, I've noticed that searches are very word specific, as in, if you feel the word “cat” is a very good word to have, you really need to use the plural “cats” in addition to “cat”, as using both of these will generally find your images in far more search results.
Thing is, with the limit of words one can use – or at least the number that will actually be picked up on and prove in any way effective – it's real difficult to pick the ones that would serve us best in both the singular as well as the plural.
I must admit that the more I look into and think about keywords the more questions come up and the more I feel I'm at a loss to understanding how people do searches that will give me some sort of edge; the most obvious words that relate to a specific image will obviously produce the greatest number of search results - take “Lion” for example – but of course this then greatly reduces the odds of people searching for Lions coming up with one's own image. Granted there are more than a few other words one can add that relate to Lions, and words to describe what's going on in the photo surely help too (e.g. laying down, profile portrait, feasting, roaring, playing cards, shooting pool, etc.), but generally speaking, with the thousands of Lion photographers out there also using keywords, logic suggests that most of those have also been used thousands of times before.
Get creative methinks! And I do, which is why I'm just about to add words I use in my caption titles (like “astonished”, “perplexed”, “youthful”, “darkness”, “enlightenment”, “collision”, “tentative”, “regrets”, to name but a few) for printed images we sell at our galley to the keywords for photos on our website, as this may help us to pick up the extra odd visitor or two who does a search on words like that, though chances are weren't expecting to see an image of, say, a Lion come up. And the more creative one tries to be the further away one probably gets from what any “normal” person would think to type into a search engine while looking for Lion photos.
I happened across SmugMug's Most Active Keywords of All-Time - http://www.smugmug.com/keyword/all yesterday morning and, while I wasn't really expecting to find “Lion”, I was very surprised by the top keywords I found there, words like “events” which has been used on 764,364 photos, or “July” (734,805 photos), “photography” (1,864,579!), and “2012” (2,796,967 … and to think we're only half way through the year!!!).
I know one can choose between “most recent” and “most popular” and I can see the logic in someone wanting to check out the most recent events for in the hope of finding a images of, say, a Rolling Stones concert or a presidential inauguration, but you'd have to be a very patient and determined person indeed to be willing enough to trawl through countless images and pages featuring young Eddie's fourth birthday party, Nancy's cookout, and the like, all the while optimistic you'd eventually come across what you're looking for.
And as for searching the year “2012”, knowing that 2,796,967 people have already used that for a specific search simply blows my mind!
Another point of frustration is seeing so many images come up in a search on a particular keyword that bares little or absolutely no relation to the actual word, let's use Lion once again as an example. Of the first 50 photos that come up (at time of writing I see there are 259,360 “Lion” images to be found in the Photos gallery), these are the primary subjects I see:
African Lions – 12 photos
Mountain Lions – 7 photos
Sea Lion – 2 photos
Lion Fish – 1 photo
Statues of Lions – 2 photos
Lion Toys – 3 photos
[now this is where we really start to stray]
Landscape at “Lions” Park (no actual Lions to be seen) – 1 photo
Lady in a red dress holding a red umbrella … complete with the “Lion” Dancer (whatever that is?!?! and again no discernible Lion in the frame) – 1 photo
Reflection in a shop window, no Lion in the image, though commentary mentions something about the possibility a Bear having injured a Deer rather than a Mountain “Lion” as apparently thought by the photographer and mentioned on a previous photo, i.e. that part of the commentary actually had absolutely nothing to do with the current photo! - 1 photo
Dragonfly captured at “Lions” Park – 1 photo
A Giraffe (!), with thanks in the commentary related to a previous photo uploaded of a “Lion” - 1 photo
Nice picture of a girl with commentary saying the day this was taken, one of the things the family did was visit Lazy “Lion” Used Books, and from all the other things they did that day sounds like they had a wonderful time, though apparently they didn't get to see an actual Lion and I certainly didn't find one in the featured picture – 1 photo
To cut this short, as I'm pretty sure anyone still reading this will have gotten the point already, the others out of the first 50 photos on this page that show no evidence of a Lion show instead: a Dog, a couple of Deer, close-up of some ice-cream, three more landscapes, a child's face painted with whiskers, a speeding train, two flower shots, a Peacock, a woman running excitedly toward a statue of a Lion (though unfortunately the statue was kept out of the frame, really would have liked to see that at least!) as she tried to take a picture of it, then there's a photo of some (in case the photographer happens across this thread and is interested to know the species name!) Dusky Leaf-Monkeys (AKA Spectacled also Dusky Langur) with commentary mentioning a previously uploaded image of a Lion, and lastly, an Austin Healy car.
Having written all this, please don't misunderstand me: To be fair, it's clear that all those photos that I don't feel should be gathered up in the first 50 Lion shots are there by way of the word “Lion” being used in captions, not keywords, and I'm sure with the amount of words I've used in some of my gallery descriptions (though not so far in my captions), some of my galleries might pop up on other people's monitors who are searching for something entirely different, so I'm really not complaining about anyone or even the search structure in general, I'm merely choosing to write as a way of conveying my thoughts on how immensely challenging it is to come up with effective keywords for specific photos with a view to getting them noticed, a feeling that I'm sure others will be able to relate to!
Perhaps I would have been better saving all this for a blog, but I haven't yet set myself up with one, and this subject of keywords does appear to come up over here so I thought why not?
Still interested in receiving answers to the questions I posed at the beginning of all this, and happy to hear the thoughts and experiences of others regarding all this if you wish to share.
Thanks for your time
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
OVERthinking again!
Just come up with something short and sweet. Here's mine. You can see anyone's by simply using your browser and View>Source
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Hey Andy,
Me, over-think a subject? Nah, you've got me all wrong buddy :haha
Yeah, what can I say, nearly 50 years of being the same way makes it something of a challenge to change
Still interested in having an answer on this part I wrote above if you happen to know:
Something else that adds to my confusion is that when doing a automated word-count in a MS Word doc, the relevant numbers coming up on a selected paragraph shows the count for characters with spaces as well as characters without spaces. So regardless of whether it's 140 or 255 characters, I'm still at a loss for not knowing whether this limit (or maximum) is including spaces or not, which is it?
Wishing you a great week ahead Andy
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
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Doh!
http://NatureImpressions.smugmug.com
Good to see someone else is overthinking things.
I noticed you (at Moon River Photography) have only five words not separated by commas in your "meta homepage keywords." Why so few words and why not separated by commas? Do we need different phrases separated by commas or will all of the words one could search for be separated by commas be just as good? Do we need to put in variations of keywords, such as, the singular version and plural version?
I'll let Andy know that he seems to be missing the commas on his site.
Less may be more - keep in mind that you can always tweak your keywords later on.
SmugMug Support Hero
FYI, but Google hasn't used meta keywords (for ranking pages) in a long time although it continues to be brought up in SEO discussions. Need some proof? Here's what Google said about meta keywords in 2009:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html
This was written back in 2009, but they probably stopped using meta keywords as far back as early to mid-00's. Yahoo was using them for a longer period of time, but they rarely (if ever) use them today.
Just trying to clean-up an old misconception. You're much better off (from an SEO perspective) by spending your time assigning keywords to your images.
I find that my smugmug pictures do not show up in google image search very well so I tried out bing.
I did a very specific search (go transit moosonee). GO Transit is an Ontario Government agency which operates trains and buses around Toronto. A couple of years ago there was an experiment with using some of their bilevel cars on the Polar Bear Express train that comes to Moosonee. I posted quite a few pictures of this on my smugmug site and also on another site I don't really maintain now, www.lantz.ca.
When I ran the image search the first eight pictures that came up were mine, seven from www.lantz.ca and only one from my smugmug site.
On smugmug I think I have my settings optimized for search engines, I use lots of captions and keywords but it just doesn't seem to work, even in a very specific search such as this one.
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=go+transit+moosonee&FORM=HDRSC2
One thing that I have not tried is using descriptive file names. That is a big and almost impossible job with thousands of pictures.
When I ran the same search in google images the first five pictures were all from my pbase website.
I admit putting this up after some years of photography without it is time consuming to say the last, but once you have a good workflow going - no problem.
Prior to that I actually had my own little Linux program coded that took the date and time from the exif-information of the files and was than able to put in some post-fix which I had specified as a parameter. So for example my photos from New Zealand had at least the date, time and country as filename information.
(Should anybody be interested I could post this bash-skript here too)
Hi, I thought once we had a page that could we could add keywords to all photos at once to help if we wanted to put surname or web, any key word???
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com