I got the keyword thing down, now on to photo captions.

Ryan Armbrust

Just wanting to know what the best way to input my photo captions is. I use the bulk tool.
Do I seperate each word with commas?
Do I put each word in ""?
Or do I just string a bunch of words together?
What is the best way for search engines to pick up on these?

Barb

Ryan Armbrust wrote:

Just wanting to know what the best way to input my photo captions is. I use the bulk tool.
Do I seperate each word with commas?
Do I put each word in ""?
Or do I just string a bunch of words together?
What is the best way for search engines to pick up on these?

Hi Ryan,

Seems maybe you are describing keywords here. Those are typically separated by a space, and two or more words you wish to keep together should be surrounded by quotes. Captions typically describe the photo. For captions, use the edit captions/keywords bulk tool and just type your captions for each photo in. Unless I'm misunderstanding, a caption for a photo is typically something like, "Big blue bird on sandy beach." Of course, yours would most likely be different unless you have a photo of a big blue bird on a sandy beach

Keywords: http://www.smugmug.com/help/keywords-tags
Captions: http://www.smugmug.com/help/web-photo-album

Ryan Armbrust

Barb wrote:

Hi Ryan,

Seems maybe you are describing keywords here. Those are typically separated by a space, and two or more words you wish to keep together should be surrounded by quotes. Captions typically describe the photo. For captions, use the edit captions/keywords bulk tool and just type your captions for each photo in. Unless I'm misunderstanding, a caption for a photo is typically something like, "Big blue bird on sandy beach." Of course, yours would most likely be different unless you have a photo of a big blue bird on a sandy beach

Keywords: http://www.smugmug.com/help/keywords-tags
Captions: http://www.smugmug.com/help/web-photo-album

What I was thinking was that if I captioned my photos as if I were keywording them, this would make them show up in search engines more often. Is this wrong? I added code to my page so as not to show the keywords or captions. This way I could add many words each in quotes that people would search for to find my pics.

Barb

Ryan Armbrust wrote:

What I was thinking was that if I captioned my photos as if I were keywording them, this would make them show up in search engines more often. Is this wrong? I added code to my page so as not to show the keywords or captions. This way I could add many words each in quotes that people would search for to find my pics.

Captions - > good; keywords - > better! The more the merrier. Here's a great thread on tips to being found:

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

Ryan Armbrust

Barb wrote:

Captions - > good; keywords - > better! The more the merrier. Here's a great thread on tips to being found:

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

Yeah, I read that thread. It is why I am wondering about how to format my captions. I have read about many different ways to input captions.
Here are some choices I have seen:

1.) kentucky ky derby infield churchill downs
2.) "kentucky""ky""derby""infield""churchill""downs"
3.) kentucky_ky_derby_infield_churchill_downs
4.) "kentucky ky derby infield churchill downs"

C O N F U S E D! Is one way better than another?

Barb

Ryan Armbrust wrote:

Yeah, I read that thread. It is why I am wondering about how to format my captions. I have read about many different ways to input captions.
Here are some choices I have seen:

1.) kentucky ky derby infield churchill downs
2.) "kentucky""ky""derby""infield""churchill""downs"
3.) kentucky_ky_derby_infield_churchill_downs
4.) "kentucky ky derby infield churchill downs"

C O N F U S E D! Is one way better than another?

Hmmm, I believe you would input them the same way you input your keywords. Separate words separated by a space, and if you want two or more words together, surround them with quotes. I'll double check on this for you.

Ryan Armbrust

Barb wrote:

Hmmm, I believe you would input them the same way you input your keywords. Separate words separated by a space, and if you want two or more words together, surround them with quotes. I'll double check on this for you.

Thanks, right now I have my captions placed like the following: "kentucky""derby""infield" and my keyword "kentucky derby infield".

Ryan Armbrust

Ryan Armbrust wrote:

Thanks, right now I have my captions placed like the following: "kentucky""derby""infield" and my keyword "kentucky derby infield".

Still confused about the caption methods.

PBolchover

As far as Google is concerned, both the caption and the keywords appear under the photo. This means that Google should process the two of them equivalently.

As far as a random user (ie me) is concerned, I really hate sites which are obviously search-engine optimised by having lots of keywords in the caption, and would never buy any photos from them. I would suggest having a paragraph describing the photo, that contains all of the keywords, but in plain (ie readable) English. It doesn't matter if all of the photos in a gallery have the same caption: the average user won't spot this. The average user will on the other hand be impressed that you have gone to the effort of writing descriptive captions, and may therefore by more likely to purchase photos.

ivar

Ryan Armbrust wrote:

Still confused about the caption methods.

Hi Ryan,

You can just add the keywords using blanks as separator.

So for instance:

Ryan Armbrust good looking photos

Will give you 5 keywords. If you want to 'cling' two or more together, use quotation marks, as such:

"Ryan Armbrust" good looking photos

This will give you 4 keywords. See also http://www.smugmug.com/help/keywords-tags

Hope this helps.

ivar

PBolchover wrote:

As far as a random user (ie me) is concerned, I really hate sites which are obviously search-engine optimised by having lots of keywords in the caption, and would never buy any photos from them. I would suggest having a paragraph describing the photo, that contains all of the keywords, but in plain (ie readable) English. It doesn't matter if all of the photos in a gallery have the same caption: the average user won't spot this. The average user will on the other hand be impressed that you have gone to the effort of writing descriptive captions, and may therefore by more likely to purchase photos.

Keywords and captions are two totally different things at SmugMug. You can write your caption (readable english) below the image, but that has nothing to do with the keywords. Keywords are placed in the 'keywords' field. Don't leave out the keyword as it helps getting you found in search engines, but also allows you to use our cool keyword stuff and searches.

PBolchover

I agree entirely, which is why I was responding to the original poster's comment that

What I was thinking was that if I captioned my photos as if I were keywording them, this would make them show up in search engines more often