Keywords question

Montec

Does anyone know offhand how long it takes Google or other search engines to resolve your keywords after you add them...weeks, months, years?

Just curious...

ivar

Montec wrote:

Does anyone know offhand how long it takes Google or other search engines to resolve your keywords after you add them...weeks, months, years?

Just curious...

No one knows, it's a big mystery to all... I recently had some discovered by them withing about two weeks, but I don't know if that's normal or not

Michael Ray

Sorry
To answer your question... It depends on how often your page gets visited by the bots and that depends on how often you've updated your page in the past. In other words... I don't know. What I do know though is that even when they do visit your site, it won't matter. Google doesn't care about the keyword meta tag. They mostly look at the content. Google likes words. They can read them. You have few, if any words. Even your few words are graphics. Google can't read graphics, or pictures, for that matter.

Sorry to pee on your parade...

:+)

Andy

Michael Ray wrote:

Google doesn't care about the keyword meta tag.

Well, they like the keywords on my site I have lots of high rank on searches that are hitting my keywords.

onethumb

Michael Ray wrote:

To answer your question... It depends on how often your page gets visited by the bots and that depends on how often you've updated your page in the past. In other words... I don't know. What I do know though is that even when they do visit your site, it won't matter. Google doesn't care about the keyword meta tag. They mostly look at the content. Google likes words. They can read them. You have few, if any words. Even your few words are graphics. Google can't read graphics, or pictures, for that matter.

Sorry to pee on your parade...

:+)

Google does pay attention to images. They pay attention to the alt and title tags on images, and give them a huge amount of weight.

Keywords get embedded on the page, in image tags, and all over the place. So even though they don't weigh the meta tags highly (they don't ignore them), they're still super-useful and easily the best spider-food you have. Captions are also incredibly important.

SmugMug pages get crawled by Google *a lot*, so you'll see updates relatively quickly. How quickly depends on how many other pages, both inside of SmugMug and out, link to a given page and how important those pages are.

Keywords mean more SmugMug pages provide links to your photos, since the photos belong on multiple pages. So yet again, keywords are vital.

Finally, there's some top-secret stuff we're working on with Google that hinges on keywords. If you want your photos to participate, keyword them.

Don

Michael Ray

Don / Andy

You're right about the Alt tags and captions. They are both "words". Google likes words. I don't think that they are as important as a lot of other elements of a well SEO'd page, but they sure don't hurt, that's for sure. I "alt tag" every image I can.

But I have to disagree with you about the "key word" tag. Everything I've read and experienced, disagrees with you on that one.

MR

Andy

Michael Ray wrote:

But I have to disagree with you about the "key word" tag. Everything I've read and experienced, disagrees with you on that one.

MR

OK disagree But google for
westchester senior portrait

2nd result gets you my site, and links to this page:
http://www.moonriverphotography.com/gallery/830860/1/37170326/Large

Then view source.

Michael Ray

Oh ya...

I can beat that! Google "food photographer"

:+)

devbobo

Michael Ray wrote:

Oh ya...

I can beat that! Google "food photographer"

:+)

Michael,

There is a distinct difference between your 'food photographer' and Andy's ' westchester senior portrait'.

All the posting you do on the web points back to your site that has loads of references to food, photography, photographer, food photography...etc.

But I doubt Andy promotes himself using those keywords besides on one particular gallery on smugmug.

There is a subtle difference.

Cheers,

David

devbobo

Michael Ray wrote:

Oh ya...:+)

btw Michael, there is something that really sucks on your web site. When you mouse over the images on your front page...it resizes the browser window ti 800x600. That is a big no-no in web design :nono

And i feel that strongly about it...that if i was browsing on your web site...regardless of how interested i was in the material/photos etc..i would leave the site immediately.

Something to think about.

Cheers,

David

steveL

captions...
I noticed that my captions show up in a Google search in 24 - 48 hours. I don't know much of anything about search engines. I snapped a few shots at a local garden on Monday; uploaded to Smugmug that night and the next day (Tuesday) and they show up today (Wednesday) when doing a search.

I wonder how you add the alt (I think I kind of know what that is)?

My gallery I am talking about is:
http://steveandbecky.smugmug.com/gallery/2331588/1/121988565

CavalierPhoto

SmugMug Communities
Associating your galleries with the appropriate SM community(s) doesn't hurt either.

Chris V.

Scott_Quier

devbobo wrote:

btw Michael, there is something that really sucks on your web site. When you mouse over the images on your front page...it resizes the browser window ti 800x600. That is a big no-no in web design :nono

And i feel that strongly about it...that if i was browsing on your web site...regardless of how interested i was in the material/photos etc..i would leave the site immediately.

Something to think about.

Cheers,

David

I not only would leave your site, but did. I lost interest in that nanosecond it takes for the browser to re-size. I only went back once with my browser window maximized to see if it would happen again. It did. Not too cool!

Michael Ray

devbobo wrote:

Michael,

There is a distinct difference between your 'food photographer' and Andy's ' westchester senior portrait'.

All the posting you do on the web points back to your site that has loads of references to food, photography, photographer, food photography...etc.

But I doubt Andy promotes himself using those keywords besides on one particular gallery on smugmug.

There is a subtle difference.

David

David

You're right about there being a difference between "westchester senior portrait" and "food photographer". A huge difference! If you've ever ventured into the word of SEO, you would know what the difference is, but I don't expect you to understand. It just shows that you have a lot ot learn on the subject. And that's ok. That's what these forums are all about.

As far as my resizing goes... Ya, some people don't like that. Quite a few, as a metter of fact. But I've decided to keep it this way so that I can show my work the way I want people to see it. It's a trade-off I've decided to make. I figure that causual viewers (like you) really don't matter and my target market will be motivated in dealing with my design wishes.

As far as design "rules" go... Isn't it a sign of a true artist that "it's ok to break the rules" sometimes...?

MR

Michael Ray

David

Even though its obvious that you don't know much about SEO, I must admit that you do some beautiful work.

Very nice.

MR

DavidTO

Michael Ray wrote:

David

Even though its obvious that you don't know much about SEO, I must admit that you do some beautiful work.

Very nice.

MR

Michael.

I suggest you take a look at the posts you've been making here on dgrin, and try to read them from our perspective. Perhaps you, too, will see the condescension and nasty little barbs that we see. And maybe you'll stop.

Michael Ray

The compliment on his work was real. He does make some beautiful images. He just doesn't understand SEO.

I didn't make any personal attacks, call anyone names, or anything like that.

It wasn't meant to be a barb, just an observation and then a genuine compliment.

devbobo

Michael Ray wrote:

David

You're right about there being a difference between "westchester senior portrait" and "food photographer". A huge difference! If you've ever ventured into the word of SEO, you would know what the difference is, but I don't expect you to understand. It just shows that you have a lot ot learn on the subject. And that's ok. That's what these forums are all about.

As far as my resizing goes... Ya, some people don't like that. Quite a few, as a metter of fact. But I've decided to keep it this way so that I can show my work the way I want people to see it. It's a trade-off I've decided to make. I figure that causual viewers (like you) really don't matter and my target market will be motivated in dealing with my design wishes.

As far as design "rules" go... Isn't it a sign of a true artist that "it's ok to break the rules" sometimes...?

MR

wow...could you be any more condescending. I find it somewhat amusing that you come here asking how someone did something...then act like a total asshat when people make some suggestions. But I guess you must have bravado up to wazoo to call yourself a SEO guru after only successfully getting a few sites to some reasonable level in google.

I find it funny that you are so offhanded with me, when you have no idea about my background etc. As a result I have decided to conduct a little test, I will keep you informed of my progress.

devbobo

Michael Ray wrote:

As far as my resizing goes... Ya, some people don't like that. Quite a few, as a metter of fact. But I've decided to keep it this way so that I can show my work the way I want people to see it. It's a trade-off I've decided to make. I figure that causual viewers (like you) really don't matter and my target market will be motivated in dealing with my design wishes.

obviously, you are an IE user (not there is anything wrong with that)...but if you were a user of any decent browser, one that perhaps supports tabbed browsing perhaps you would understand what i am talking about.

Michael Ray wrote:

As far as design "rules" go... Isn't it a sign of a true artist that "it's ok to break the rules" sometimes...?

umm no...criminals break rules but i wouldn't call them artists.

Michael Ray

David

If I’ve offended you, I apologize.

There IS a huge difference between the two searches. With SEO, your basically competing for exposure for certain words. By searching for two words, instead of one, you are asking the search engine to look for web pages that best represent the first word AND the second one too. Whenever you add a city to a search, you eliminate or whittle down the competition enormously. If you name a city in your keywords, you end up competing against other photographers in that city. (a really smart thing, but the way, if your market is local) When you don’t mention a city, you’re competing against the world. Do you think that there are more photographers that shoot food in the world, or more photographers that shoot Senior Portraits in Westchester? That’s what I was talking about.

By casual viewer, I meant anyone that just might happen upon my site. By target viewer, I meant someone that wanted or needed the information, like an Art Buyer or Art Director.

Again, I’m sorry for sounding condescending.

PS - You’re pretty thin-skinned for someone willing to tell someone else that their web design “sucks”

:+)

devbobo

Michael Ray wrote:

PS - You’re pretty thin-skinned for someone willing to tell someone else that their web design “sucks”

I said that your browser resizing sucks not your page design. I actually quite like the layout of your site. But again, the whole browser resizing thing would be enough to turn any tech savvy person away fairly quickly.

I will respond to the other stuff when i have a chance.

devbobo

Michael Ray wrote:

There IS a huge difference between the two searches.

ok...so here's the original point i was trying to make in regard to comparing yours and Andy's google search.

Your site is related to food photography, and is keyworded accordingly. Yes I agree that the two words are very generic and heavy used. However, you have lot of people linking to your site with terms like 'Food Photographer' or 'Food Photography', link popularity goes along way to increasing PageRank. As well as you posting on forums like this with links back to your own website and the term 'Food Photography', all of this cross-pollination helps improve your standings with regard to 'Food Photographer' or 'Food Photography'.

Andy's situation on the other hand is different, I highly doubt he promotes himself outside of smugmug with the words 'westchester senior portrait' nor do people link back to his site with those words. While those keywords are less generic than yours, it shows that his google ranking is purely based on the keywording within that smugmug gallery.

In regard to my thin-skinnedness...i suggest that you take a look at my posting history here, for the most part I have spent over two years here helping people on a miriad of diffent issues. I guess to some extent I am confused about why you would bother ever posting a question here, if when someone posts a comment you are just going to post something to the effect of 'you don't know what you're talking about, I know more than you'.

btw...thanks for the comments about my photography, I am just an amateur but it's a passionate hobby of mine. Unlike alot of photography forums out there, dgrin is exremely community based...and I enjoy spending time here and helping out where needed. Since you are obviously a talented photography, perhaps you might like to share some information on techniques etc...where people can ask questions and learn from you.

Onrey

Michael, I have to agree, I hate the way your web site resizes my bowser, reguardless how good your work is or how you want to display your "art" it's not cool to control someones browser !

Mike Lane

Resizing the browser window is just plain dumb. When you resize your browser you are pissing of those who are using browsers that support tabbed browsing. That means that you're pissing off up to 41% of your viewers. And that number is only going to go up as IE7 takes over for IE6. Choose a more suitable alternate solution. Have your main splash page and then when a user clicks on one of your links, open a new window that is sized the way you want it. That way, you won't drive 41% of your users away screaming and you'll be able to display your pages your way. It is still pretty poor form since you need to cater to the users not the other way around; however, it's less poor form than resizing the browser willy nilly.

And as far as SEO goes. If I were looking for SEO services and I came across your site, I wouldn't trust your services any farther than I could throw them. First off your SEO site is just plain ugly, that makes me think you're not serious. Then I would delve into the html and I would see that it's a comedy of a '90s era table layout with font tags everywhere. It's almost sad really. I'd probably go up a folder to see your main site where I'd be greeted with the browser resize. I'd then check out your code to see that you haven't even bothered with a doctype (!) for your main site and what's more your use of frames (!! ) is more than a little disturbing.

My thought would be if this guy can't even build an accessible site, then he must not have to worry too much about getting a lot of web traffic. Then I'd move on to someone else.

But maybe that's just me.

Mike Lane

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Also you said in an earlier response

[/FONT]
There IS a huge difference between the two searches. With SEO, your basically competing for exposure for certain words. By searching for two words, instead of one, you are asking the search engine to look for web pages that best represent the first word AND the second one too. Whenever you add a city to a search, you eliminate or whittle down the competition enormously. If you name a city in your keywords, you end up competing against other photographers in that city. (a really smart thing, but the way, if your market is local) When you don’t mention a city, you’re competing against the world. Do you think that there are more photographers that shoot food in the world, or more photographers that shoot Senior Portraits in Westchester? That’s what I was talking about.[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]

Yet you seem to admit on your seo site that searches that are locally specific are not only useful, they have been lucrative to you personally.

What kind of jobs do you get mostly from Google? I find that I get a lot of out-of-town clients looking for a photographer in my city. I guess that they're too cheap to fly someone here. I end up working for lots of Magazines that need portraits of local people. Just recently, I've shot two, 1/2 days of executive portraits at a local industrial park. Last month alone, I shot Allen Fannaca (Pittsburgh Steeler) for a medical magazine and I shot a couple of kids for American Girl Magazine. Some of the jobs have good budgets and some don't.

I doubt highly that your out-of-town clients search food photographer with the hopes that they'll just happen to run across one from pittsburgh. (or is it philly? doesn't matter.) No, they search for pittsburgh (philly?) food photographer. Just as Andy's search would get him ranked way up high for senior portraits in westchester for the clientel that matter most. His keywords could just as easily be for pittsburgh food photographer and that'd get him right up there with yours. And all Andy worked with was captions and keywords.

Which rounds out this discussion nicely. Yes captions and keywords and Smugmug's built-in SEO are all very important and effective.
[/FONT]

Andy

Michael Ray wrote:

If you've ever ventured into the word of SEO, you would know what the difference is, but I don't expect you to understand.

:bigbs

we just make it easy here at SmugMug - no need for fancy SEO. Keyword your photos, and within a day or two, you can be at the top of the search results if you do it the right way

Trust me, our keywords are da bomb

Michael Ray

Mike

All these arguments seem to be going around in circles and I’m not quite sure that I understand what you’re saying in response to what comment I made on what web site. Let’s start over.

Yes, “target search phrases” (we’ll call them TSPs) that include a city a smart thing and very effective? Absolutely! Especially if that is your target market, which for most of us, it is. Is it more difficult to rank highly on a search without a geographic component, like a city? Yes! Why would some food want to do that? I am marketing myself Internationally. I just don’t want to do food photography here in Pittsburgh. I want people searching for a food photographer all around the world to find me if/when they look for a food photographer or food photography. That’s like asking which TSP would be more likely to bring you more traffic to your web site, Tacoma photography, or airplane photography.

I would think that you have both of those words in your keywords. Do me a favor and google both of those phrases and tell me on what page you show up. I’ll bet that you don’t show up on the first three pages for “Tocama Photography” and on the first one hundred pages for “airplane photography”. I may be wrong, but I doubt it.

The point I was trying to make was that I was able to achieve a difficult SEO task by ranking highly for the TSP “Food photographer”, which is more difficult than ranking highly for Andy’s search. I didn’t say that it was more effective for a particular goal, which is where I think that your argument was heading.

As far as my web design goes… You are welcome to your opinion.

By the way… I was born in your city and my family left when I was three. Is it really as beautiful as I was told? Does it rain every day?

MR

Mike Lane

Michael Ray wrote:

Mike

All these arguments seem to be going around in circles and I’m not quite sure that I understand what you’re saying in response to what comment I made on what web site. Let’s start over.

Yes, “target search phrases” (we’ll call them TSPs) that include a city a smart thing and very effective? Absolutely! Especially if that is your target market, which for most of us, it is. Is it more difficult to rank highly on a search without a geographic component, like a city? Yes! Why would some food want to do that? I am marketing myself Internationally. I just don’t want to do food photography here in Pittsburgh. I want people searching for a food photographer all around the world to find me if/when they look for a food photographer or food photography. That’s like asking which TSP would be more likely to bring you more traffic to your web site, Tacoma photography, or airplane photography.

Bah, not so bad considering the only thing I've done at all is some keywording here and there. And even then that's only been sporadic at best. Even with that limited amount of work on my part I've gotten literally dozens of requests for the use of my photos. Most people are cheap skates and want a free photo for exchange of a measly by line ... but that's a gripe for a different day. So if I were pushing my photography hard (or even doing photography all that much these days) I bet that it'd be a different story.

I would think that you have both of those words in your keywords. Do me a favor and google both of those phrases and tell me on what page you show up. I’ll bet that you don’t show up on the first three pages for “Tocama Photography” and on the first one hundred pages for “airplane photography”. I may be wrong, but I doubt it.

I don't actually have the word photography in my keywords. Like I said, mine are sporadic at best.

The point I was trying to make was that I was able to achieve a difficult SEO task by ranking highly for the TSP “Food photographer”, which is more difficult than ranking highly for Andy’s search. I didn’t say that it was more effective for a particular goal, which is where I think that your argument was heading.

SEO isn't easy in any case, but when all you need to do is enter good keywords into your smugmug galleries and images to get a good result, I say way to go smugmug.

As far as my web design goes… You are welcome to your opinion.

Hey, SEO's your thing, web design is mine.

By the way… I was born in your city and my family left when I was three. Is it really as beautiful as I was told? Does it rain every day?

MR

Only in the winter. In the summer it's actually very, very dry. If you don't turn your sprinklers on soon enough in the spring, your lawn will be brown until October. But I don't live there anymore. We just moved to England - which basically has the same weather.

Michael Ray

I think if you keep your face always in the sunshine, you'll be oblivious to everything going on around you.

Sounds appropriate…

:+)

Mike Lane

... meaning?

Michael Ray

Nothing...

:+)