I've been reading up on keywords and trying to figure out how to use them in the most efficient and effective manner. I have some questions that are niggling at my brain about them, and I am hoping that there is a little bit more clarity to be gleaned here.
Background: I'm a pretty smart systems admistrator with basically little to no web development experience, but quite a bit of SQL/Stuctured query experience... so most of my views are colored by manually writing DB queries for... you guessed it... keywords.
So... part one of "How does this work best?" is... should there be a heirachial nature to your keywords... eg:
Where "landscape ..." gets (alas, manually) propogated to all images in the subtree as does "colorado .." for that specific gallery... so the child inherets the parent's keywords, but not necessarily it's siblings' (nature would have nature instead of landscape)????
Does this help in indexing, or index stats, rankings, yadda, yadda? Does it make it easier for anyone? Is it just more work to do with no net benefit?
I understand that ultimately, each picture should have it's own unique keyword or two... but should it inherit the 6-7 (relevant) KW's from it's parents or not?
And should your business name be a keyword? :=)
Help make it clear part II: Common mispellings. Is this useful or a waste of time/effort? Should phto and phtoo (phtooey!) be included or is that just really, really wasteful?
I'm pretty sure I have more questions, but these two are really racking my brain because no single page in 7+ days of searching has been able to answer it to any satisfaction.... particularly the first.
SEO research is really, really annoying... and tends to generate a lot more questions than answers.
Thanks in advance,
Mark
I don't know the answers to your questions, maybe some of the other experts in the community can help... but I do know that following this basic formula gives results....
I don't know the answers to your questions, maybe some of the other experts in the community can help... but I do know that following this basic formula gives results....
Thanks, Andy.
You know it seems these questions would be obvious (at least from a tech perspective) but so far I have found one of two scenarios on practically everything SEO related... either nothing answers the question directly, or there are a fairly good mix of equally authoritative opinions expounding their correctness on opposite ends of the spectrum.
I'd much rather get it right the "first" time. I'm in the middle of round 2, taking a pause, and I don't really want to finish then realise I could have done it better and go back and redo everything again. Once I can get a cohesive system, I can spend less time setting up web and more time taking, processing, and posting (heck, and maybe even selling!) pictures
Thanks!
Thanks Denise and Caroline for your replies! I hadn't thought of inserting pictures that way... like Caroline I was just using the "add photo" button. I'll be sure to change that from now on.
You are both great at keeping your blogs current. I'm always woefully behind! I suppose I should go post something for this month!
I tried separating my keywords with semicolons...the result was that none of my keywords were recognized anymore.
I went back to quotes and added some key words to three photos WITHOUT the bulk update and those were recognized on my homepage keywords...clicking on them listed the photos correctly. I then used the bulk update and cut and paste the same keywords into a gallery. None of those photos were accessible from my home page...only the three I did without bulk update.
I doubt there's a bug in bulk update or everyone would be complaining...but I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong!
Help!.
I notice the same thing when I uploaded my photos.
All of my keywording is done in Adobe Lightroom, but after upload, all of my "" are stripped out and commas are gone and replaced with semi-colons (;) in between. I added a few keywords in bulk update and kept with the semi-colon format, yet when I view source for these images, my keywords for that photo are nowhere to be seen. Any ideas?
I've been studying keywording for weeks (here and all over the internet), and I've become pretty good at making my photos and site come up on the first pages of both SmugMug and Google when you search with keywords, but I still have a question that I can't find an answer to. Do you have to enter the plural form of every keyword? (i.e. cat; cats; dog; dogs) Or do search engines somehow find you if the only keyword you've searched with is "cats", and the only keyword you entered into your photos metadata was "cat"?
I notice the same thing when I uploaded my photos.
All of my keywording is done in Adobe Lightroom, but after upload, all of my "" are stripped out and commas are gone and replaced with semi-colons (;) in between. I added a few keywords in bulk update and kept with the semi-colon format, yet when I view source for these images, my keywords for that photo are nowhere to be seen. Any ideas?
I notice the same thing when I uploaded my photos.
All of my keywording is done in Adobe Lightroom, but after upload, all of my "" are stripped out and commas are gone and replaced with semi-colons (;) in between. I added a few keywords in bulk update and kept with the semi-colon format, yet when I view source for these images, my keywords for that photo are nowhere to be seen. Any ideas?
I've discovered that if I use bulk keywording on SmugMug to do any keywords, that it adds quotes ("") around the keywords I enter, which makes none of my keywords work when I try to search for my photos. If I go back and remove those quotes, everything works fine.
I also notice that SmugMug automatically replaces the commas between keywords with semi-colons. I use Adobe Bridge CS3 for my keywording, which separates keywords with commas, but everything seems to work ok.
Found on Google.. but not Google Images
Been keeping an eye on my site www.OsirisPhoto.com on Google.
On the Web search results, the site and images are fairly visible. E.g. search term "westray lass" will have the following image listed on 1st page (as you would expect with a reasonably unique search term)
However, the same search term on Google Images results in no find
This image has been on my site for a while now, so I'm sure it has been crawled.
Actually, I can't find ANY of my images on Smugmug using Google Images.. although there was one referral link from there recorded a few days ago on analytics report. What I do find are my photos on Google's picassa web album (No surprise there).
What is even more strange.. if I search for my nickname OsirisPhoto, Google Images again returns all my images on picassa web album and then avatars of various other people on forums I have posted on (including Dgrin), but nothing to do with my smugmug images.. and not even MY avatar
Have I broken something on my site, or does Google Images hate Smugmug?
Have I broken something on my site, or does Google Images hate Smugmug?
This is a *really* interesting question. I find that I don't really ever find any of my Smugmug images in the Google Images search - even though I've explicitly opted in to the "Enhanced Images Search" feature of the Google Webmaster Toolkit for "gallery.rrdphoto.com" (my SM site).
What is also interesting is that the photos that *do* show up in the Images search when I do a site:gallery.rrdphoto.com search on Google Images appears to be just the photos that I've included on my blog (which are hosted in a gallery on my SM site).
Quite bizarre indeed - if our images are keyworded, etc. (as mine are for the most part) why would they not be showing up in Google Images?
This is a *really* interesting question. I find that I don't really ever find any of my Smugmug images in the Google Images search - even though I've explicitly opted in to the "Enhanced Images Search" feature of the Google Webmaster Toolkit for "gallery.rrdphoto.com" (my SM site).
What is also interesting is that the photos that *do* show up in the Images search when I do a site:gallery.rrdphoto.com search on Google Images appears to be just the photos that I've included on my blog (which are hosted in a gallery on my SM site).
Quite bizarre indeed - if our images are keyworded, etc. (as mine are for the most part) why would they not be showing up in Google Images?
Yeah, this has come up before, I don't know the answer as to how to get images themselves to show up in the image search.
"The keywords for the image search are based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image, and text adjacent to the image."
That seems to account for most of my images, which I prefer to leave with the filenames "IMG_9999b" for example (makes them unique and I find versions easier). However, one image I have in a gallery is named "Hebridean Princess 001" - and using that exact search phrase in Google Images fails to find it.
Also, when using the image file name "IMG_5444.jpg" (another of my images) it fails to find that too, although it finds many other images with the same filename.
Something aint right between my images on SM and Google Images. :cry
"The keywords for the image search are based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image, and text adjacent to the image."
Andy - good detective work! So this at least explains the situation... The filename doesn't jive with SM images (since the image name on the site is really the ID of the image + the size dot jpg), images inside your galleries don't really have any useful link text pointing to them, and perhaps "text adjacent to the image" doesn't really work out with the way the galleries are laid out on SM...
Interesting stuff. If you ask me, Google should really consider this a failure of their search algorythm rather than something SM should have to deal with... Google is supposed to find stuff, not dictate how sites work to cater to their needs (though it of course ends up being a little of both).
Wonder why they wouldn't be basing this mostly off of the image tag's ALT text. Seems like that's a no-brainer.
Andy - good detective work! So this at least explains the situation... The filename doesn't jive with SM images (since the image name on the site is really the ID of the image + the size dot jpg), images inside your galleries don't really have any useful link text pointing to them, and perhaps "text adjacent to the image" doesn't really work out with the way the galleries are laid out on SM...
Interesting stuff. If you ask me, Google should really consider this a failure of their search algorythm rather than something SM should have to deal with... Google is supposed to find stuff, not dictate how sites work to cater to their needs (though it of course ends up being a little of both).
Wonder why they wouldn't be basing this mostly off of the image tag's ALT text. Seems like that's a no-brainer.
I'm trying a little experiment. I made a new gallery, and linked a photo that is stored on my Google pages account, it's called "*f i re scape.jpg" (don't want the bot to see it here so i messed the typing on purpose). I put a caption. It's a public gallery.
I'm trying a little experiment. I made a new gallery, and linked a photo that is stored on my Google pages account, it's called "*f i re scape.jpg" (don't want the bot to see it here so i messed the typing on purpose). I put a caption. It's a public gallery.
Cool idea. Let us know what happens (and great photograph, by the way).
** Also, since I normally notice this kind of stuff I'll happily call myself out on my use of the wrong word in my post above... The phrase is actually "doesn't jibe" as opposed to "jive". I'd hate to perpetuate the butchering of a phrase!
Filenames best format for search?
Are the filenames for our images better found (more easily found) if they contain spaces between each word in the file name or no spaces?
For example: I'm searching for red flowers
Will google (and you can answer for Smugsearch too please) find my files if they are........
1. red flowers.jpg
2. redflowers.jpg
3. red-flowers.jpg
Which is going to be found first / more easily?
Thank you in advance.... I"m still learning, and learning, and learning! :-)
Are the filenames for our images better found (more easily found) if they contain spaces between each word in the file name or no spaces?
For example: I'm searching for red flowers
Will google (and you can answer for Smugsearch too please) find my files if they are........
1. red flowers.jpg
2. redflowers.jpg
3. red-flowers.jpg
Which is going to be found first / more easily?
Thank you in advance.... I"m still learning, and learning, and learning! :-)
Google won't find any filenames on SmugMug, but we'll turn your filenames into keywords. So use things like red_flowers and we will make those keywords.
Change file names?
Never asked / thought of this question before.......
can I change a filename of an image ON Smugmug? That is, take a filename that is currently redflowers.jpg and change it to red_flowers.jpg while I'm on Smugmug?
BTW: thanks for the prompt reply on the other question, Andy!
Google won't find any filenames on SmugMug, but we'll turn your filenames into keywords. So use things like red_flowers and we will make those keywords.
Google won't find any filenames on SmugMug, but we'll turn your filenames into keywords. So use things like red_flowers and we will make those keywords.
I'm trying a little experiment. I made a new gallery, and linked a photo that is stored on my Google pages account, it's called "*f i re scape.jpg" (don't want the bot to see it here so i messed the typing on purpose). I put a caption. It's a public gallery.
Why not just set up a nice, free, simple Picasa Web account. Put up a bunch of photos, all keyworded and tagged and linked, back to your SmugMug site
Not a bad workaround. I have a Picassa Web Album, not got much up to date stuff though... it would be really nice if Google Images would find my Smugmug stuff.
Sorry if this has been brought up before... I haven't read the whole thread.
I think a big problem with smugmug getting into google search results is all the AJAX. I did an experiment, putting something very specific into a caption to see if google would find that page. Weeks later (and I know google has indexed my site since then using the webmaster tools), no sign of it. Not in regular results, not in image results. And google has only 3 results for that phrase to begin with.
I just don't think keywords and captions help much when google can't effectively index our pages because of all the javascript. I don't know how to fix that though. Anyone else think that AJAX might be hurting our search engine results?
I looked into adding a google sitemap, which would probably help, but it requires uploading an xml file which we can't do. Any chance that smugmug might start allowing us to create google sitemaps?
Sorry if this has been brought up before... I haven't read the whole thread.
I think a big problem with smugmug getting into google search results is all the AJAX. I did an experiment, putting something very specific into a caption to see if google would find that page. Weeks later (and I know google has indexed my site since then using the webmaster tools), no sign of it. Not in regular results, not in image results. And google has only 3 results for that phrase to begin with.
I just don't think keywords and captions help much when google can't effectively index our pages because of all the javascript. I don't know how to fix that though. Anyone else think that AJAX might be hurting our search engine results?
I looked into adding a google sitemap, which would probably help, but it requires uploading an xml file which we can't do. Any chance that smugmug might start allowing us to create google sitemaps?
Yeah, it works (my site does come up on google occasionally), but I don't think it works as well as a more traditional site. A lot of times, the search engine finds an RSS feed instead of the page on my site (shouldn't it find both?).
I have noticed a couple times that google found my images on another site that picks up a smugmug RSS feed. My pictures were easier to find on some random site than on my smugmug site (which wasn't in the search results at all). I don't know why that is, but I'm guessing that the AJAX on smugmug is not very search engine friendly.
Any idea if it's something that smugmug has looked into and can confirm one way or the other?
a related question, I think
I use Flickr as a way to make my work known. There are a number of local groups that use Flickr so I joined to get folks in my area interested in the work.
When I Google the name (Music Man5) it finds my Smugmug, Flickr, Amazon store and blogs. My question is how do I tie my photos on Flickr to my Smugmug site? Do I just tag them all with the address to my site? I've been all over Flickr's site and do not see any other way to close the loop.
I did most of the tips from the first post and I moved up the chain on Google.
I did some searches before and after. Where I was before on page 10 and later, I now found the same searches on page 1 and 2. It takes a few days before you see some changes.
Comments
I don't know the answers to your questions, maybe some of the other experts in the community can help... but I do know that following this basic formula gives results....
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Thanks, Andy.
You know it seems these questions would be obvious (at least from a tech perspective) but so far I have found one of two scenarios on practically everything SEO related... either nothing answers the question directly, or there are a fairly good mix of equally authoritative opinions expounding their correctness on opposite ends of the spectrum.
I'd much rather get it right the "first" time. I'm in the middle of round 2, taking a pause, and I don't really want to finish then realise I could have done it better and go back and redo everything again. Once I can get a cohesive system, I can spend less time setting up web and more time taking, processing, and posting (heck, and maybe even selling!) pictures
Best,
Mark
http://www.terrawolf.com/
http://thewanderingwolf.blogspot.com/
Thanks Denise and Caroline for your replies! I hadn't thought of inserting pictures that way... like Caroline I was just using the "add photo" button. I'll be sure to change that from now on.
You are both great at keeping your blogs current. I'm always woefully behind! I suppose I should go post something for this month!
MontesaBryant.com
My Smug
My Facebook
I notice the same thing when I uploaded my photos.
All of my keywording is done in Adobe Lightroom, but after upload, all of my "" are stripped out and commas are gone and replaced with semi-colons (;) in between. I added a few keywords in bulk update and kept with the semi-colon format, yet when I view source for these images, my keywords for that photo are nowhere to be seen. Any ideas?
www.JasonCainePhotography.com
http://www.nightowlphotography.com/
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I've discovered that if I use bulk keywording on SmugMug to do any keywords, that it adds quotes ("") around the keywords I enter, which makes none of my keywords work when I try to search for my photos. If I go back and remove those quotes, everything works fine.
I also notice that SmugMug automatically replaces the commas between keywords with semi-colons. I use Adobe Bridge CS3 for my keywording, which separates keywords with commas, but everything seems to work ok.
http://www.nightowlphotography.com/
Been keeping an eye on my site www.OsirisPhoto.com on Google.
On the Web search results, the site and images are fairly visible. E.g. search term "westray lass" will have the following image listed on 1st page (as you would expect with a reasonably unique search term)
http://www.osirisphoto.com/gallery/3742007/1/185982402/Medium
However, the same search term on Google Images results in no find
This image has been on my site for a while now, so I'm sure it has been crawled.
Actually, I can't find ANY of my images on Smugmug using Google Images.. although there was one referral link from there recorded a few days ago on analytics report. What I do find are my photos on Google's picassa web album
What is even more strange.. if I search for my nickname OsirisPhoto, Google Images again returns all my images on picassa web album and then avatars of various other people on forums I have posted on (including Dgrin), but nothing to do with my smugmug images.. and not even MY avatar
Have I broken something on my site, or does Google Images hate Smugmug?
Wedding Photographer Glasgow | Scotland
SWPP Pet Photographer of the Year 2010
Follow us on Facebook - Click Here
What is also interesting is that the photos that *do* show up in the Images search when I do a site:gallery.rrdphoto.com search on Google Images appears to be just the photos that I've included on my blog (which are hosted in a gallery on my SM site).
Quite bizarre indeed - if our images are keyworded, etc. (as mine are for the most part) why would they not be showing up in Google Images?
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Image_Search
"The keywords for the image search are based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image, and text adjacent to the image."
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
That seems to account for most of my images, which I prefer to leave with the filenames "IMG_9999b" for example (makes them unique and I find versions easier). However, one image I have in a gallery is named "Hebridean Princess 001" - and using that exact search phrase in Google Images fails to find it.
Also, when using the image file name "IMG_5444.jpg" (another of my images) it fails to find that too, although it finds many other images with the same filename.
Something aint right between my images on SM and Google Images. :cry
Wedding Photographer Glasgow | Scotland
SWPP Pet Photographer of the Year 2010
Follow us on Facebook - Click Here
Andy - good detective work! So this at least explains the situation... The filename doesn't jive with SM images (since the image name on the site is really the ID of the image + the size dot jpg), images inside your galleries don't really have any useful link text pointing to them, and perhaps "text adjacent to the image" doesn't really work out with the way the galleries are laid out on SM...
Interesting stuff. If you ask me, Google should really consider this a failure of their search algorythm rather than something SM should have to deal with... Google is supposed to find stuff, not dictate how sites work to cater to their needs (though it of course ends up being a little of both).
Wonder why they wouldn't be basing this mostly off of the image tag's ALT text. Seems like that's a no-brainer.
I'm trying a little experiment. I made a new gallery, and linked a photo that is stored on my Google pages account, it's called "*f i re scape.jpg" (don't want the bot to see it here so i messed the typing on purpose). I put a caption. It's a public gallery.
We'll see what Google finds now
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/gallery/4313193_ssu83
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Cool idea. Let us know what happens (and great photograph, by the way).
** Also, since I normally notice this kind of stuff I'll happily call myself out on my use of the wrong word in my post above... The phrase is actually "doesn't jibe" as opposed to "jive". I'd hate to perpetuate the butchering of a phrase!
lol
Are the filenames for our images better found (more easily found) if they contain spaces between each word in the file name or no spaces?
For example: I'm searching for red flowers
Will google (and you can answer for Smugsearch too please) find my files if they are........
1. red flowers.jpg
2. redflowers.jpg
3. red-flowers.jpg
Which is going to be found first / more easily?
Thank you in advance.... I"m still learning, and learning, and learning! :-)
Canon AE1 - it was my first "real camera"
Canon 20D - no more film!
http://www.smugmug.com/help/keywords-tags
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Never asked / thought of this question before.......
can I change a filename of an image ON Smugmug? That is, take a filename that is currently redflowers.jpg and change it to red_flowers.jpg while I'm on Smugmug?
BTW: thanks for the prompt reply on the other question, Andy!
Canon AE1 - it was my first "real camera"
Canon 20D - no more film!
One more question:
To rank or not to rank?
how important a role does photo ranking play on smugmug in regards to searching / finding photos? (if it plays any role at all?)
Can you be specific about this also, why should we have photo ranking turned on or off / benefits of doing so?
Canon AE1 - it was my first "real camera"
Canon 20D - no more film!
http://www.smugmug.com/help/search-online-photo-album
Definitely use it.
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
I was even dumber than I thought!
Why not just set up a nice, free, simple Picasa Web account. Put up a bunch of photos, all keyworded and tagged and linked, back to your SmugMug site
Click and see...
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Not a bad workaround. I have a Picassa Web Album, not got much up to date stuff though... it would be really nice if Google Images would find my Smugmug stuff.
Wedding Photographer Glasgow | Scotland
SWPP Pet Photographer of the Year 2010
Follow us on Facebook - Click Here
I think a big problem with smugmug getting into google search results is all the AJAX. I did an experiment, putting something very specific into a caption to see if google would find that page. Weeks later (and I know google has indexed my site since then using the webmaster tools), no sign of it. Not in regular results, not in image results. And google has only 3 results for that phrase to begin with.
I just don't think keywords and captions help much when google can't effectively index our pages because of all the javascript. I don't know how to fix that though. Anyone else think that AJAX might be hurting our search engine results?
I looked into adding a google sitemap, which would probably help, but it requires uploading an xml file which we can't do. Any chance that smugmug might start allowing us to create google sitemaps?
Dave
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Yeah, it works (my site does come up on google occasionally), but I don't think it works as well as a more traditional site. A lot of times, the search engine finds an RSS feed instead of the page on my site (shouldn't it find both?).
I have noticed a couple times that google found my images on another site that picks up a smugmug RSS feed. My pictures were easier to find on some random site than on my smugmug site (which wasn't in the search results at all). I don't know why that is, but I'm guessing that the AJAX on smugmug is not very search engine friendly.
Any idea if it's something that smugmug has looked into and can confirm one way or the other?
Dave
I use Flickr as a way to make my work known. There are a number of local groups that use Flickr so I joined to get folks in my area interested in the work.
When I Google the name (Music Man5) it finds my Smugmug, Flickr, Amazon store and blogs. My question is how do I tie my photos on Flickr to my Smugmug site? Do I just tag them all with the address to my site? I've been all over Flickr's site and do not see any other way to close the loop.
Suggestions?
Smugmug site
Blog Portfolio
Facebook
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51904530@N00
Portfolio • Workshops • Facebook • Twitter
Couldn't see the forrest for the trees. Thanks Andy!
Smugmug site
Blog Portfolio
Facebook
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=osirisphoto&sll=55.976104,-4.257202&sspn=47.851731,164.53125&ie=UTF8&view=map
Wedding Photographer Glasgow | Scotland
SWPP Pet Photographer of the Year 2010
Follow us on Facebook - Click Here
I did most of the tips from the first post and I moved up the chain on Google.
I did some searches before and after. Where I was before on page 10 and later, I now found the same searches on page 1 and 2. It takes a few days before you see some changes.
gspep.smugmug.com & steendorp.smugmug.com
FB: www.facebook.com/peter.perdaen - Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/1150GSPEP/videos