Getting Google to notice us!

HarrietHuss

Hey all,

I've just joined SmugMug and Google isn't finding my site yet. Even if I type in Harriet Huss smugmug I still don't get my primary site, just one I have with some artist friends of mine.

Does anyone know how to get Google to notice their site more? I've heard there are ways. Also, is there a place on smugmug to set keywords to make Google see those when searching?

Let me know!
Thanks a million!

-Harriet

Allen

HarrietHuss wrote:

Hey all,

I've just joined SmugMug and Google isn't finding my site yet. Even if I type in Harriet Huss smugmug I still don't get my primary site, just one I have with some artist friends of mine.

Does anyone know how to get Google to notice their site more? I've heard there are ways. Also, is there a place on smugmug to set keywords to make Google see those when searching?

Let me know!
Thanks a million!

-Harriet

Start here.
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=45537
AL

Art Scott

As I believe ANDY has said before many times.....keyword the HeCK out of everythng...individual pics, galleries, catagories...EVERYTING so their spiders will find you and index you......

agunther

Art Scott wrote:

As I believe ANDY has said before many times.....keyword the HeCK out of everythng...individual pics, galleries, catagories...EVERYTING so their spiders will find you and index you......

I recommend this place:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com
Its the best place to look for this kind of advise.

I would say:
- Find a way to point some links to your gallery (Link Exchange, Buy Links, ask for links)
- Guest write for some other websites and put some links in your article (for example one of my sites: http://www.opentravelinfo.com accepts articles with links) - Its more powerful than link exchanges since Google is really noticing these now. It gives a lot more credit to links in articles
- Don't get hung up on Pagerank. Make sure the page your link is on is cached by google and is relevant. Its more important than high PR unrelated links.
- Put your Link into Forum Signatures
- Do some Keyword stuff, but overall I'd say its overrated. Just make sure there is some text with each image, so google knows what the image is about (gives you lots of hits from google images). Stay away from keyword stuffing, it gets punished.
- Write about something really unique (or controversial)
- Set up a Blog and point it to your site (or blog on your site)
- Use clean markup and don't do Javascript Menus
- Submit a XML sitemap to Google (there are generators for this)

And most important:
- Let your domain name mature. For some reason Google likes old domains a LOT more. Your site might even be sandboxed for the first 3 months of its life. Not much you can do about it.

- Stay clean. Don't spam other peoples websites !

This helped my photosite to get a lot of traffic (I am going to hit 2000 / day soon).

EDIT: I forgot: Stay away from those "search engine submission" services and ignore those emails / letters tyring to sell you a search engine inclusion service. They are all fake. Google will find your site and those guys cannot guarantee anything.
Every year I get a letter from a company trying to tell me, if I don't pay them, my site will vanish from the search engines. It's a big hoax.

dogwood

agunther wrote:

I recommend this place:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com
Its the best place to look for this kind of advise.

I would say:
- Find a way to point some links to your gallery (Link Exchange, Buy Links, ask for links)
- Guest write for some other websites and put some links in your article (for example one of my sites: http://www.opentravelinfo.com accepts articles with links) - Its more powerful than link exchanges since Google is really noticing these now. It gives a lot more credit to links in articles
- Don't get hung up on Pagerank. Make sure the page your link is on is cached by google and is relevant. Its more important than high PR unrelated links.
- Put your Link into Forum Signatures
- Do some Keyword stuff, but overall I'd say its overrated. Just make sure there is some text with each image, so google knows what the image is about (gives you lots of hits from google images). Stay away from keyword stuffing, it gets punished.
- Write about something really unique (or controversial)
- Set up a Blog and point it to your site (or blog on your site)
- Use clean markup and don't do Javascript Menus
- Submit a XML sitemap to Google (there are generators for this)

And most important:
- Let your domain name mature. For some reason Google likes old domains a LOT more. Your site might even be sandboxed for the first 3 months of its life. Not much you can do about it.

- Stay clean. Don't spam other peoples websites !

This helped my photosite to get a lot of traffic (I am going to hit 2000 / day soon).

EDIT: I forgot: Stay away from those "search engine submission" services and ignore those emails / letters tyring to sell you a search engine inclusion service. They are all fake. Google will find your site and those guys cannot guarantee anything.
Every year I get a letter from a company trying to tell me, if I don't pay them, my site will vanish from the search engines. It's a big hoax.

All good, solid advice. My experience is almost identical. It does take a little bit of time for google to notice you but it will. In my experience, creating a blog was a huge benefit. I post an entry everyday and put my web link in there. Google also likes the words you use in your link and the words before and after the link-- so use different words to describe your site (words someone would use in a search engine). My blog only gets five or so hits a day (I don't publicize it) but it comes up number three on a google search of my name! My SM homepage is #1, #2 is a gallery of mine linked by another, much more popular blog.

digital_gopher

Google does provide some information about when it crawls a site. Check out http://www.google.com/webmasters/

There is even an option to sign up for "enhanced image search" which may help as well.


Jeremy

HarrietHuss

wow, thank you all. amazing advice.

agunther wrote:

I recommend this place:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com
Its the best place to look for this kind of advise.

I would say:
- Find a way to point some links to your gallery (Link Exchange, Buy Links, ask for links)
- Guest write for some other websites and put some links in your article (for example one of my sites: http://www.opentravelinfo.com accepts articles with links) - Its more powerful than link exchanges since Google is really noticing these now. It gives a lot more credit to links in articles
- Don't get hung up on Pagerank. Make sure the page your link is on is cached by google and is relevant. Its more important than high PR unrelated links.
- Put your Link into Forum Signatures
- Do some Keyword stuff, but overall I'd say its overrated. Just make sure there is some text with each image, so google knows what the image is about (gives you lots of hits from google images). Stay away from keyword stuffing, it gets punished.
- Write about something really unique (or controversial)
- Set up a Blog and point it to your site (or blog on your site)
- Use clean markup and don't do Javascript Menus
- Submit a XML sitemap to Google (there are generators for this)

And most important:
- Let your domain name mature. For some reason Google likes old domains a LOT more. Your site might even be sandboxed for the first 3 months of its life. Not much you can do about it.

- Stay clean. Don't spam other peoples websites !

This helped my photosite to get a lot of traffic (I am going to hit 2000 / day soon).

EDIT: I forgot: Stay away from those "search engine submission" services and ignore those emails / letters tyring to sell you a search engine inclusion service. They are all fake. Google will find your site and those guys cannot guarantee anything.
Every year I get a letter from a company trying to tell me, if I don't pay them, my site will vanish from the search engines. It's a big hoax.

Thank you all so much!
That's amazing advice and I will follow every word.

Thank you thank you!
I'm new to all of this so the more hi-tech stuff I don't know how to do yet, but the more basic stuff like blogs I can handle and will get on right now.

Best wishes to all of you and thank you for the advice and help!
-Harriet

Scott_Quier

I just did a Google search on my nickname (LoveNLaughter) and nothing else. I'm not on the first page of links, but I am on the second. It found this page...

http://lovenlaughter.smugmug.com/gallery/2095156

which happens to be where I describe some of the services I provide. The descriptions are in the loaded into the photo descriptions. I have not done any significant key-wording on my site. I might have one gallery with some keywords that was the result of some playing around, but nothing other than that. Maybe the take-away here is that interesting, non-repetitive descriptions add to the "indexability" of a page. The page above is one of my newest but it's the one that Google has tagged.

Yahoo! search has my home page as the #4 item on the first page! I can live with that!

BTW - I just changed my nickname on Friday or Saturday (4 or 5 days ago) and, refererencing the link provided by digital_gopher, I find that Google crawled my site on 5 Nove (that's two days ago!). I'm happy.

Just for grins, yesterday I searched "barefootandnatural" 'cause I was in a discussion with her and I just got to wondering. Using just her nickname, she's the first item on the first page! I asked her how she managed that. Her response?

Barefoot and Natural wrote:

:curtsey
WOW...That is cool!
I have never done a search for my site!! Is that weird?

I don't know what to tell you about how I am #1! That is funny!

I might to google myself!!

My wife's site (http://www.balancedbodycompany.com/ , there, I've just linked her site!!) has been in existance for more than a year with very little in the way of modifications, keywording, or external links. When you search on the name of her business, "Balanced Body Company", her site link is #1 on page 1. The one thing she has done is to submit her home page URL to Google, Yahoo!, and Netscape (google is done here)

agunther

Grumpfishly
Allright, I guess I need to do some more explaining.
If I search for my Name I always come out first on all engines. Big deal. There is very little competition.

When you search for anything in Google, you will also see a number of results. For highly competetive terms (lets say Landscape Photography) you will get millions of results (About 7.5M for Landscape Photography).
In order to rank for those (means you want to be on page 1 before 7.5M other webpages), you need to put in a lot more effort than throwing up some keywords on your page.
How many people do you think search for your name every day and how many people search for Landscape Photography?
(According to Nichebot 22k searches on their Meta Search Engines for Landscape Photography and 0 for your nickname).

This gives you a fairly good idea about the market. It is very hard to rank for highly competetive terms.

In my previous post I forgot to mention that you have to use the correct anchor text when you are creating backlinks. Lets say you want to rank well for Landscape Photography. You will literally need hundreds of high quality links using this phrase in the link text like so:

<a href=http://www.mysite.com" title="Landcape Photography>Landscape Photography</a>

See how I managed to put my Keywords (Landscape Photography) into the link text twice. Google reads this and understands that Website A (the one linking to you) thinks you are all about Landscape Photography. This carries a lot more weight than you claiming you are about Landscape Photography by putting the Keywords on your page.

Either way, this is how google works. The more competetive the terms are, the more efforts you need. BUT Competetive Terms get searched a lot and can bring you lots of traffic.

The art is to balance potential (number of searches, competetiveness) to what you can achieve.
e.g.: It is nearly impossible to rank for some general term like photos unless you spend tens of thousands of dollars a month, but it is much easier to rank for your specific niche e.g. "portland wedding photos".

To proof my point, I used the phrase Grumpfishly in this thread. Just by saying Grumpfishly a couple of times, you can search for this term in 3 months (Google takes a long time to update) and by searching for Grumpfishly you will find this thread. However the phrase Grumpfishly is worthless, since noone searches for it (hence it is so easy to rank this thread for Grumpfishly).

there, I've just linked her site!!

Yes, but you didn't use Anchor text !!!

When you search on the name of her business, "Balanced Body Company", her site link is #1 on page 1

Sorry to burst your bubble, but thats exactly the 3 words used in the domain. No wonder she ranks for it. Google understands domain names. When you do that search, do you see that her domain name is bold green. Thats why she ranks for it. You have exactly 3 backlinks to this domain:
https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=www.balancedbodycompany.com&bwm=i&bwmo=d&bwmf=u
and only one of them uses your keywords (correct anchor).
With that I can outrank you within 4 weeks without any effort.

The one thing she has done is to submit her home page URL to Google, Yahoo!, and Netscape

Completely unnecessary. Google finds your site from a single link. Submission doesn't do anything. There is no real person looking at your site (its all spiders). Might as well find it on its own. I never submitted a single website of mine and I always had Google deep crawling it within a month.

Grumpfishly:
Besides, if you submit a sitemap (XML or TXT) (as I mentioned in the other post) you are effectively telling google about every single page on your site.

dogwood

agunther wrote:

How many people do you think search for your name every day and how many people search for Landscape Photography?
(According to Nichebot 22k searches on their Meta Search Engines for Landscape Photography and 0 for your nickname).

Good points in this post. Though I do get a fair amount of searches of my name and website hits-- but your point is well-taken. My favorite is when someone googles my entire url (minus the http) instead of just entering it in the address bar.

Hey, one quick follow up-- is this the correct html (all the quotes are in the right places). I love this idea:

<a href=http://www.mysite.com&quot; title="Landcape Photography>Landscape Photography</a>

agunther

dogwood wrote:

Good points in this post. Though I do get a fair amount of searches of my name and website hits

Maybe you are famous already . Who knows. I bet lots of people are searching for Ansel Adams too, however not many people are searching for my name . One of the most searched for Terms is "Paris Hilton".

dogwood wrote:

Hey, one quick follow up-- is this the correct html (all the quotes are in the right places). I love this idea:

Landscape Photography

I think its correct, yes. Don't forget to use alt tags when you put up an image. This tag is automatically being generated for me from the Title (Heading) of the image.
Also keep in mind to vary your Anchor Text a bit. Google is getting smarter by the minute and if they see tons of links with exactly the same Anchor text, they know what you are up to.[/quote]

dogwood

agunther wrote:

Maybe you are famous already . Who knows. I bet lots of people are searching for Ansel Adams too, however not many people are searching for my name



I think its correct, yes. Don't forget to use alt tags when you put up an image. This tag is automatically being generated for me from the Title (Heading) of the image.
Also keep in mind to vary your Anchor Text a bit. Google is getting smarter by the minute and if they see tons of links with exactly the same Anchor text, they know what you are up to.

Thanks again. Great tips.

agunther

One more point I forgot: Make sure your Link Anchor Text is relevant and the other website is somewhat related to yours. Above all you want targetted traffic.

Someone put a link to my 222 Megapixel Machu Picchu image on Digg once. Within 30 minutes I had over 10,000 visitors. Since the page contains lots of data (people zooming around in the image), my hosting account was suspended after 30 minutes for abuse.
This traffic is not very useful, since those people are not interested in buying stuff (and I wasn't selling at that point in time), but people liked it a lot and linked to this page from their own websites.
This is called "link bait". Basically offering something people want to link to. Its the hardest form of link generation but also the best (its free, its one way, its genuine ...)
As a result the page has become one of the most viewed on my site. Once people like it, there is a good chance they go to my peru galleries or want to buy a photo.

dogwood

agunther wrote:

Maybe you are famous already

Ironically, someone just googled me as we've been having this conversation-- Delware is across the country from me and I don't know anyone there. But this happens all the time-- the google searches that lead to my site. So-- guess what I'm saying for the OP is to remember all these tips plus make sure whatever name you choose for your site is something easily remembered and searched.

agunther

True, but it takes no effort. Even though my domain name only contains part of my name and I haven't put a single link with my name anywhere myself it comes natural if only one or two people link to you with your name in the link.
In the last 7 days my name got searched 19 times, but it is only seen as background noise:


(The number of Pages and Hits are too high due to my phpadsnew installation, I will fix that soon). I guess on average the true number is 8k pages / day.
Don't get me wrong. It is important to rank 1st for your name. It's whats called brand recognition. It would be a disaster if someone searches for Intel and gets the AMD site first.
I guess my point is, ranking for your name comes naturally, unless your name is George Bush or Paris Hilton. You don't need to waste much thought on it and quite frankly 19 visitors won't make a difference.

BTW: My name is Andre Gunther, nice to meet you all.

Scott_Quier

dogwood wrote:

Good points in this post. Though I do get a fair amount of searches of my name and website hits-- but your point is well-taken. My favorite is when someone googles my entire url (minus the http) instead of just entering it in the address bar.

Hey, one quick follow up-- is this the correct html (all the quotes are in the right places). I love this idea:

<a href="http://www.mysite.com&quot; title="Landcape Photography">Landscape Photography</a>

Missed two quotes (see highlighted)

dogwood

Scott_Quier wrote:

Missed two quotes (see highlighted)

Thanks. I tried it out on wordpress and it automatically added the quotes, so I figured it out. It's pretty cool how "smart" computers are getting. If only the same were true for me!

agunther

dogwood wrote:

Thanks. I tried it out on wordpress and it automatically added the quotes, so I figured it out. It's pretty cool how "smart" computers are getting. If only the same were true for me!

Oh, I wish my computer had the cognitive intelligence of my cat.
The massive power of the brain can not be met by any computer in the future.