You should also use ALT tags for the images you post to your blog (as long as you use a relevant caption and don't keyword spam). Not only is it highly recommended by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for the benefit of readers who surf the web with images turned off (or blind web surfers who use a reader and therefor required for ADA compliancy), I have had some of my best search results from the ALT tags on the images I've posted to my blog.
For example, on Denise's example above I would insert an ALT tag before /a something like
ALT="Sand sculpture at Revere Beach"
BTW Denise, love that photo!
ETA - Ok, I couldn't figure out how to write that properly in the forum as text so it would show up, so I had to delete the <> to get it to show up.
You should also use ALT tags for the images you post to your blog (as long as you use a relevant caption and don't keyword spam). Not only is it highly recommended by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for the benefit of readers who surf the web with images turned off (or blind web surfers who use a reader and therefor required for ADA compliancy), ....
I'll do you one better, it's required for html according to the w3c standard. Use it for all img tags
You should also use ALT tags for the images you post to your blog (as long as you use a relevant caption and don't keyword spam). Not only is it highly recommended by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for the benefit of readers who surf the web with images turned off (or blind web surfers who use a reader and therefor required for ADA compliancy), I have had some of my best search results from the ALT tags on the images I've posted to my blog.
....
BTW Denise, love that photo!
Thanks for the tip - I can tell I'm going to be madly updating blog entries tonight!
Glad to hear that you liked the photo too. It was fun seeing the work in progress. I was toying with the idea of going back on the last day to see the finished product, but somehow going to a beach very close to Boston on a weekend day - yikes! too many people for me.
Shouldn't matter because the actual address is in the code that displays your site name. So even though it's not visible, it is still there.
One other thing that does matter - I just took a look at your blog, and it looks like you took advantage of blogger's "add a picture" button. That will not drive traffic to your site because it essentially is copying the photo into a blogger storage location and displaying it from there. I always use html to display my photo and to link back to that photo's location in my galleries. I use a combination of a <a href statement and a <img src statement. And I use smug's custom photo sizes to generate an image that "fits" in the available space in my blog - http://www.smugmug.com/help/custom-photo-sizes. The reason that I use the combination of statements is to support clicking on the photo to jump into my galleries.
Once again, thanks for all your help Denise.
I did think of using html, but in the end, I didn't think it really mattered since I always post a link to the photos right in my blog post. Isn't it basically the same thing? I mean, as long as people can find the galleries for the blog photos my site, does it matter how they got there? Or, does having the HTML stuff somehow increase traffic?
You should also use ALT tags for the images you post to your blog (as long as you use a relevant caption and don't keyword spam). Not only is it highly recommended by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) for the benefit of readers who surf the web with images turned off (or blind web surfers who use a reader and therefor required for ADA compliancy), I have had some of my best search results from the ALT tags on the images I've posted to my blog.
For example, on Denise's example above I would insert an ALT tag before /a something like
What does the alt code do, exactly? How does it differ from using HTML that Denise is referring to above?
The ALT tag is html providing a text description of your image. It should be used in addition to the code Denise referred to (as Allen has kindly shown in the post below mine since I couldn't figure out how to post code in the forum). For SEO purposes, search engines don't pick up images, but they do pick up text, so a search engine wouldn't know that you posted an image of a red flower unless you inserted ALT text stating that it was an image of a red flower.
So to use all of it:
a href= makes a clickable link to the webpage you specify
img src= inserts the image you specifiy
ALT= is text describing the image
I did think of using html, but in the end, I didn't think it really mattered since I always post a link to the photos right in my blog post. Isn't it basically the same thing? I mean, as long as people can find the galleries for the blog photos my site, does it matter how they got there? Or, does having the HTML stuff somehow increase traffic?
I think that it's natural for people to click on images in blogs.
Look at the difference - go to my blog and click on one of the photos. You will be taken to the galley containing the photo - not to a blogger page. Yes, there are some "images" in my blog that don't link to the gallery - but those are things like the rainfall totals that I posted in from the National Weather Service last week, not a photo... And actually, that image isn't clickable since I embedded it using only an <img src statement, with no surrounding <a href= statement.
flash sites and keywords
Ive been reading thru the huge amount of info in this discussion and elsewhere on SM on keywords and search engines. one tip I saw, in 10 Things SEOs Don’t Want You to Know (http://www.treyperry.com/2007/03/14/search-engine-optimization/)
was:
2. Don’t Flash your audience.
While Adobe Flash is often useful for delivering rich multimedia presentations, that content is extremely difficult for most search engines to decipher. Sometimes, it can’t be deciphered at all, and won’t do anything to increase your visibility on the Web. If your navigation is part of a Flash movie, search engines might not even know some parts of your site exist. In other words, when Flash isn’t kept on a tight leash, it will work against you.
does this mean that if your photo galleries are in flash mode, search engines won't see or find your keywords?
While Adobe Flash is often useful for delivering rich multimedia presentations, that content is extremely difficult for most search engines to decipher. Sometimes, it can’t be deciphered at all, and won’t do anything to increase your visibility on the Web. If your navigation is part of a Flash movie, search engines might not even know some parts of your site exist. In other words, when Flash isn’t kept on a tight leash, it will work against you.
does this mean that if your photo galleries are in flash mode, search engines won't see or find your keywords?
dick louderman
Dick,
What it means is that while a flash intro might look great to a human being, a search engine might have trouble understanding what the website is even about. Using flash does not mean that a search engine will not find your keywords.
Having a flash element to your website will not keep you from showing up on a search engine, but you do not want to create an entire website out of flash and expect that flash to automatically get recognized by a search engine bot.
Hope that helps.
Google Results showing my slideshow script
After submitting my site to Google, I now appear right at the top of the results for "Pro Perspective". The problem is that instead of showing the content from my bio page, it shows the script(code) to generate the slideshow.
I'm guessing the problem has something to do with using a second bio page as the slideshow, but I am unsure how to eliminate this problem.
Here is what Google currently shows under the result -
After submitting my site to Google, I now appear right at the top of the results for "Pro Perspective". The problem is that instead of showing the content from my bio page, it shows the script(code) to generate the slideshow.
You need to add the information you want be picked up by search engines in front of the slideshow code in your bio. Go to the help for the flash slideshow at http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/Flash+Slideshow and scroll down to the section "Add Text To Your Bio So Your Search Results Look Better".
You need to add the information you want be picked up by search engines in front of the slideshow code in your bio. Go to the help for the flash slideshow at http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/Flash+Slideshow and scroll down to the section "Add Text To Your Bio So Your Search Results Look Better".
--- Denise
That has worked! Now I just get to wait for Google to recrawl and update! Thanks
Lost again
I have inserted the code from http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/Flash+Slideshow for information to be picked up by search engines on my constantly evolving website www.imagingthat.com. My slide show disappeared and the text I entered shows up visible for the viewer. Now what have I done wrong? Thanks for your help.
I have inserted the code from http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/Flash+Slideshow for information to be picked up by search engines on my constantly evolving website www.imagingthat.com. My slide show disappeared and the text I entered shows up visible for the viewer. Now what have I done wrong? Thanks for your help.
Ive heard alot about smugmug on this site, but what about flickr? its a pretty big(ok very big) site and im sure it can help to increase your traffic.
Also, is it true that google images prioritize picasa pictures over other hosting sites?
Keywords not leading to Google search results
Hi y'all,
I followed the recommendations at the beginning of this thread and the tutorial on keywording. Specifically, I wanted to ensure that the gallery from this weekend shows up in the top results. If I search for the the title of the gallery "2008 East Coast Surfing Championships" + "Photos", my gallery displays as the first Google result.
However, few people are going to search the full name so in my key words, I put ecsc, 2008 ecsc, surfing, surfer, Miss ECSC, etc. When I search on any of these,I don't show up in the Google results at all.
Travis, it has been my experience that keywords for images in our smugmug galleries are only searchable within smugmug/our own website. It has been driving me crazy for months, because I don't think it was like that last year. I'm fairly certain that when I checked after I first got serious about SEO that google would find my images via keywords, then all of sudden one day nothing would show up by keyword.
I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. I personally think it's a pretty big issue. The few times I've raised it, no one has seemed to care.
Travis, it has been my experience that keywords for images in our smugmug galleries are only searchable within smugmug/our own website. It has been driving me crazy for months, because I don't think it was like that last year. I'm fairly certain that when I checked after I first got serious about SEO that google would find my images via keywords, then all of sudden one day nothing would show up by keyword.
I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. I personally think it's a pretty big issue. The few times I've raised it, no one has seemed to care.
Thanks for replying Lori. I thought I was on mute. I definitely agree. If i remember correctly, I was able to find my galleries using Google via the image keywords but it does not seem to be the case now. This definitely impacts event and fine art photographers that use traffic generated from search engines to make added sales.
Hi,
I'm going to join in here and agree with you both.
I have tried various tests using my keywords from my site and concur 100%. I specialize in photography of my local area know as 'Mendip', 'the Mendips', 'Mendip Hills' and various other permutations of this. I have keyworded using these terms and am pretty certain that several months ago I could find my site around 3 pages down on Google. Now I've gone 16 pages down and there isn't a whiff :-( However if I use the same keywords to search on Yahoo my site comes up on page 3.
Its really disappointing given the effort taken.
Thanks for replying Lori. I thought I was on mute. I definitely agree. If i remember correctly, I was able to find my galleries using Google via the image keywords but it does not seem to be the case now. This definitely impacts event and fine art photographers that use traffic generated from search engines to make added sales.
If I google 'priddy fair' my site comes up on the 2nd page of listings, but no mention of my 2008 pics. However, on the first page there is a listing at no.7 for an image posted on a forum, taken at the same event this year. http://www.ephotozine.com/photo/973862
The keywords are similar to mine so why isn't my gallery or my images appearing in the results ?
Andy, Allen, other Smuggies out there that can help?
Travis, do you have pics on Flickr, pbase etc ? I am thinking of doing a test where I put some new pics on my site and simultaneously do the same on pbase or some other place and see what shows up.
Do you have any specific examples you can use to help drive this point home?
Travis, do you have pics on Flickr, pbase etc ? I am thinking of doing a test where I put some new pics on my site and simultaneously do the same on pbase or some other place and see what shows up.
Do you have any specific examples you can use to help drive this point home?
Caroline
No Caroline, I keep all of my posts here on Smugmug. The service that I have gotten from them has been incredible thus far. I would be interested in seeing how keywording stacks up against the other sites.
Hi Travis, this is not likely to be a quick fix situation so hopefully when Andy returns he will be able to shed some light on this. It would be helpful if any others in the same situation would come forward to give a fuller picture.
I've absolutely no intention of leaving SmugMug but an explanation would be helpful.
Just to clarify, and this might help both of you, my GALLERY keywords are searchable with google, my image keywords are not. So it is extremely important to make sure you have entered gallery keywords. That should help a little for event photography.
However, with Google Image search, the only results are for photos I've blogged with an appropriate <ALT> tag. Neither gallery keywords nor image keywords are found with Google Image search.
I'm going to take a wild guess here that the image keyword problem has something to do with the fact that Andy told us our IPTC data is stripped <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/eek7.gif" border="0" alt="" > for performance reasons, so the keywords that are grabbed from our IPTC (if you keyword prior to uploading) when we upload and keywords entered via smuggy's keywording tool are for internal (smugmug universe) only.
Just to clarify, and this might help both of you, my GALLERY keywords are searchable with google, my image keywords are not. So it is extremely important to make sure you have entered gallery keywords. That should help a little for event photography.
<alt>
Okay, you confused me a little Lori (which is easy to do).... how do you set Gallery keywords as opposed to Image keywords. The keywords showing at the bottom of my gallery are the ones I set for the image. Is there something else?
</alt>
Okay, you confused me a little Lori (which is easy to do).... how do you set Gallery keywords as opposed to Image keywords. The keywords showing at the bottom of my gallery are the ones I set for the image. Is there something else?
</ALT>
Gallery keywords are entered on the customize gallery screen - in the Extras section just under the gallery description.
Comments
For example, on Denise's example above I would insert an ALT tag before /a something like
ALT="Sand sculpture at Revere Beach"
BTW Denise, love that photo!
ETA - Ok, I couldn't figure out how to write that properly in the forum as text so it would show up, so I had to delete the <> to get it to show up.
My Photos
My Blog
On Google+
On DrivingLine
<center>
<a href="LINK TO GALLERY">
<img src="LINK TO PHOTO" alt="Sand sculpture at Revere Beach">
</a>
</center>
Bold all the <'s and the html shows.
My Website index | My Blog
Thank you Allen! I'll remember for next time.
My Photos
My Blog
On Google+
On DrivingLine
www.ivarborst.nl & smugmug
Glad to hear that you liked the photo too. It was fun seeing the work in progress. I was toying with the idea of going back on the last day to see the finished product, but somehow going to a beach very close to Boston on a weekend day - yikes! too many people for me.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Once again, thanks for all your help Denise.
I did think of using html, but in the end, I didn't think it really mattered since I always post a link to the photos right in my blog post. Isn't it basically the same thing? I mean, as long as people can find the galleries for the blog photos my site, does it matter how they got there? Or, does having the HTML stuff somehow increase traffic?
What does the alt code do, exactly? How does it differ from using HTML that Denise is referring to above? <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/ne_nau.gif" border="0" alt="" >
My site:Fine Image Photography
The ALT tag is html providing a text description of your image. It should be used in addition to the code Denise referred to (as Allen has kindly shown in the post below mine since I couldn't figure out how to post code in the forum). For SEO purposes, search engines don't pick up images, but they do pick up text, so a search engine wouldn't know that you posted an image of a red flower unless you inserted ALT text stating that it was an image of a red flower.
So to use all of it:
a href= makes a clickable link to the webpage you specify
img src= inserts the image you specifiy
ALT= is text describing the image
My Photos
My Blog
On Google+
On DrivingLine
If I click on the image in your blog entry http://fineimagephotography.blogspot.com/2008/07/more-butterflies-fluttering-by.html, this is where I end up - http://bp0.blogger.com/_PTAKSDpjv4c/SIpZfqcOHwI/AAAAAAAAALo/iIyVe8ajf44/s1600-h/Kory_20080622_6003Master.jpg. Aren't you trying to drive people to your galleries?
Look at the difference - go to my blog and click on one of the photos. You will be taken to the galley containing the photo - not to a blogger page. Yes, there are some "images" in my blog that don't link to the gallery - but those are things like the rainfall totals that I posted in from the National Weather Service last week, not a photo... And actually, that image isn't clickable since I embedded it using only an <img src statement, with no surrounding <a href= statement.
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Ive been reading thru the huge amount of info in this discussion and elsewhere on SM on keywords and search engines. one tip I saw, in 10 Things SEOs Don’t Want You to Know (http://www.treyperry.com/2007/03/14/search-engine-optimization/)
was:
2. Don’t Flash your audience.
While Adobe Flash is often useful for delivering rich multimedia presentations, that content is extremely difficult for most search engines to decipher. Sometimes, it can’t be deciphered at all, and won’t do anything to increase your visibility on the Web. If your navigation is part of a Flash movie, search engines might not even know some parts of your site exist. In other words, when Flash isn’t kept on a tight leash, it will work against you.
does this mean that if your photo galleries are in flash mode, search engines won't see or find your keywords?
dick louderman
http://velographie.smugmug.com/
Dick,
What it means is that while a flash intro might look great to a human being, a search engine might have trouble understanding what the website is even about. Using flash does not mean that a search engine will not find your keywords.
Having a flash element to your website will not keep you from showing up on a search engine, but you do not want to create an entire website out of flash and expect that flash to automatically get recognized by a search engine bot.
Hope that helps.
David
After submitting my site to Google, I now appear right at the top of the results for "Pro Perspective". The problem is that instead of showing the content from my bio page, it shows the script(code) to generate the slideshow.
I'm guessing the problem has something to do with using a second bio page as the slideshow, but I am unsure how to eliminate this problem.
Here is what Google currently shows under the result -
I would like it to display the text in the bio box on my 'Contact' page - http://www.properspective.com/gallery/5630975_GCt6q
Thanks for any help!
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
That has worked! Now I just get to wait for Google to recrawl and update! Thanks
David
I have inserted the code from http://wiki.smugmug.com/display/SmugMug/Flash+Slideshow for information to be picked up by search engines on my constantly evolving website www.imagingthat.com. My slide show disappeared and the text I entered shows up visible for the viewer. Now what have I done wrong? Thanks for your help.
www.imagingthat.co
All done
Need an help, yell
http://www.smugmug.com/help/emailreal
www.imagingthat.co
Ive heard alot about smugmug on this site, but what about flickr? its a pretty big(ok very big) site and im sure it can help to increase your traffic.
Also, is it true that google images prioritize picasa pictures over other hosting sites?
Hi y'all,
I followed the recommendations at the beginning of this thread and the tutorial on keywording. Specifically, I wanted to ensure that the gallery from this weekend shows up in the top results. If I search for the the title of the gallery "2008 East Coast Surfing Championships" + "Photos", my gallery displays as the first Google result.
However, few people are going to search the full name so in my key words, I put ecsc, 2008 ecsc, surfing, surfer, Miss ECSC, etc. When I search on any of these,I don't show up in the Google results at all.
Can someone please tell me what I am doing wrong? The gallery is http://owney.smugmug.com/gallery/5779588_DRm2d/4/357651609_Ji9wR#P-1-15 .
Thanks!
My Images | My Lessons Learned and Other Adventures
Bump.... anyone still monitoring this thread?
My Images | My Lessons Learned and Other Adventures
I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. I personally think it's a pretty big issue. The few times I've raised it, no one has seemed to care.
My Photos
My Blog
On Google+
On DrivingLine
Thanks for replying Lori. I thought I was on mute.
My Images | My Lessons Learned and Other Adventures
I'm going to join in here and agree with you both.
I have tried various tests using my keywords from my site and concur 100%. I specialize in photography of my local area know as 'Mendip', 'the Mendips', 'Mendip Hills' and various other permutations of this. I have keyworded using these terms and am pretty certain that several months ago I could find my site around 3 pages down on Google. Now I've gone 16 pages down and there isn't a whiff :-( However if I use the same keywords to search on Yahoo my site comes up on page 3.
Its really disappointing given the effort taken.
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
http://www.carolineshipsey.co.uk/gallery/5769304_9GfbB
If I google 'priddy fair' my site comes up on the 2nd page of listings, but no mention of my 2008 pics. However, on the first page there is a listing at no.7 for an image posted on a forum, taken at the same event this year.
http://www.ephotozine.com/photo/973862
The keywords are similar to mine so why isn't my gallery or my images appearing in the results ?
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
Andy, Allen, other Smuggies out there that can help?
My Images | My Lessons Learned and Other Adventures
Travis, do you have pics on Flickr, pbase etc ? I am thinking of doing a test where I put some new pics on my site and simultaneously do the same on pbase or some other place and see what shows up.
Do you have any specific examples you can use to help drive this point home?
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
No Caroline, I keep all of my posts here on Smugmug. The service that I have gotten from them has been incredible thus far. I would be interested in seeing how keywording stacks up against the other sites.
My Images | My Lessons Learned and Other Adventures
I've absolutely no intention of leaving SmugMug but an explanation would be helpful.
Caroline
www.carolineshipsey.co.uk - Follow me on G+
[/URL]
However, with Google Image search, the only results are for photos I've blogged with an appropriate <ALT> tag. Neither gallery keywords nor image keywords are found with Google Image search.
I'm going to take a wild guess here that the image keyword problem has something to do with the fact that Andy told us our IPTC data is stripped <img src="https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/emoji/eek7.gif" border="0" alt="" > for performance reasons, so the keywords that are grabbed from our IPTC (if you keyword prior to uploading) when we upload and keywords entered via smuggy's keywording tool are for internal (smugmug universe) only.
My Photos
My Blog
On Google+
On DrivingLine
Okay, you confused me a little Lori (which is easy to do).... how do you set Gallery keywords as opposed to Image keywords. The keywords showing at the bottom of my gallery are the ones I set for the image. Is there something else?
</alt>
My Images | My Lessons Learned and Other Adventures
--- Denise
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com