Best way to get out there on Google!

Photolistic · November 29, 2007

I want potential clients to be able to find me when they type in key words...

What are the best ways to do that with my Smugmug pro account?

ivar · November 29, 2007

Some tips:

Keywords, keywords, keywords. Add keywords to the photos on your site. All of them.
Add gallery descriptions and photo captions.
Post and contribute to forums and blogs. Link your website in your post.
Get other sites to link to you. (Be careful of link farms, though - they'll get you banned from a search engine!)
Start a blog, and post to it frequently. See examples from Barb Gates and Mike Lane.
Register your site with Google and the other search engines.
Put descriptive information in your Bio box. That will be picked up as Meta information. For example when viewing source, it would show (without the asterisk):
<*meta name="description" content="blah blah blah blah" />

Photolistic · November 29, 2007

WOW THANKS! I have a lot to do!

What would the best way to just be linked to the search "Portland Wedding Photographer"?

Put that on every photo?

Sorry about the dumb question.

denisegoldberg · November 29, 2007

Photolistic wrote:

WOW THANKS! I have a lot to do!

What would the best way to just be linked to the search "Portland Wedding Photographer"?

Put that on every photo?

Sorry about the dumb question.

Putting the same keyword on every photo feels wrong to me. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing for some thoughts.

I would at least put "Portland Wedding Photographer" in your bio description. And follow the other suggestions in Ivar's post - including setting up a blog and updating it regularly. If you blog, I'd recommend putting photos in your blog (linking to the photos in your galleries, that is) and setting up the blog photos so that a click on the photo will take the viewer to that photo in your galleries. You can look at my blog (linked below) for an example of that. I don't know what your level of html knowledge is, but just in case you don't know how to link from a blog to your galleries, here's an example of the code from my blog (remove the *'s):

<a href="http://www.denisegoldberg.com/gallery/3567671/1/222792977"><img src="http://www.denisegoldberg.com/photos/222792977-S.jpg"><*/a>

Then give the search engines a chance to index your (new) content and search again in a few weeks.

--- Denise

aktpics · November 29, 2007

denisegoldberg wrote:

Putting the same keyword on every photo feels wrong to me. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing for some thoughts.

I would at least put "Portland Wedding Photographer" in your bio description. And follow the other suggestions in Ivar's post - including setting up a blog and updating it regularly. If you blog, I'd recommend putting photos in your blog (linking to the photos in your galleries, that is) and setting up the blog photos so that a click on the photo will take the viewer to that photo in your galleries. You can look at my blog (linked below) for an example of that. I don't know what your level of html knowledge is, but just in case you don't know how to link from a blog to your galleries, here's an example of the code from my blog (remove the *'s):
<a href="http://www.denisegoldberg.com/gallery/3567671/1/222792977"><img src="http://www.denisegoldberg.com/photos/222792977-S.jpg"><*/a>
Then give the search engines a chance to index your (new) content and search again in a few weeks.

--- Denise

I do agree with Denise, however -- If the picture is of a wedding and it is in Portland, I don't see anything wrong with adding those 2 keywords. JMO

Photolistic · November 30, 2007

aktpics wrote:

I do agree with Denise, however -- If the picture is of a wedding and it is in Portland, I don't see anything wrong with adding those 2 keywords. JMO

So if I should not put "Portland Vancouver Oregon Washington Wedding Photographer photography" in every photo how many photos should I tag that with?

Photolistic · November 30, 2007

///

aktpics · November 30, 2007

Photolistic wrote:

So if I should not put "Portland Vancouver Oregon Washington Wedding Photographer photography" in every photo how many photos should I tag that with?

First of all, I am not saying what you should or shouldn't do. Sorry if I gave you that impression.

The more photos that are key worded the higher the ranking your site will most likely get.

The point I was trying to make about how you key word is that if I am looking for pictures in Oregon and my search brings me to your picture of the Washington Monument because you are a photographer from Oregon I will get slightly annoyed. Maybe even mildly irritated if I haven't had my first cup of coffee

Good luck with your site.

Photolistic · November 30, 2007

I am talking about not putting too many of the same words so I will not be "stuffing"

aktpics · November 30, 2007

Photolistic wrote:

I am talking about not putting too many of the same words so I will not be "stuffing"

I think the term "stuffing" is pretty subjective. I think if you are trying to get people to your site - do what ever it takes while trying not to piss people off in the process. But you got to do what ever feels right to you.

I think that if every shot you did was in Oregon, there is nothing wrong with putting it in every picture's keyword, because it is accurate.

There may be some issues with "dilution" (I am not sure if this is the right term) packing too many insignificant keywords which will dilute the ones you want hits on... I wish more people chimed in on this thread.

On a side, but related note. I installed the free stat counter on my site, mostly out of curiosity. While looking through the hits I found that someone found one of my pictures by Googling "foolish picture". Now, some may argue that ALL of my pictures are foolish, but only ONE had the words foolish and picture in them. What I found interesting was that those words were in the CAPTION, NOT the keywords!

So I think there is some valuable information to be learned from looking at your webstats, so if you are not already... it's free!

Photolistic · November 30, 2007

so there is nothing wrong with tagging all of my wedding photos (thousands) with wedding photographer shot in portland oregon?

aktpics wrote:

I think the term "stuffing" is pretty subjective. I think if you are trying to get people to your site - do what ever it takes while trying not to piss people off in the process. But you got to do what ever feels right to you.

I think that if every shot you did was in Oregon, there is nothing wrong with putting it in every picture's keyword, because it is accurate.

There may be some issues with "dilution" (I am not sure if this is the right term) packing too many insignificant keywords which will dilute the ones you want hits on... I wish more people chimed in on this thread.

On a side, but related note. I installed the free stat counter on my site, mostly out of curiosity. While looking through the hits I found that someone found one of my pictures by Googling "foolish picture". Now, some may argue that ALL of my pictures are foolish, but only ONE had the words foolish and picture in them. What I found interesting was that those words were in the CAPTION, NOT the keywords!

So I think there is some valuable information to be learned from looking at your webstats, so if you are not already... it's free!

denisegoldberg · November 30, 2007

Photolistic wrote:

so there is nothing wrong with tagging all of my wedding photos (thousands) with wedding photographer shot in portland oregon?

I wouldn't do that if I were you - although I sense we don't see eye to eye on this topic. I believe that tagging all of your photos with the same keywords is going to work against you.

Take a look at this writeup, http://www.onepax.com/info/56/the-dangers-of-keyword-stuffing/, maybe it will help.

--- Denise

aktpics · November 30, 2007

denisegoldberg wrote:

I wouldn't do that if I were you - although I sense we don't see eye to eye on this topic. I believe that tagging all of your photos with the same keywords is going to work against you.

Take a look at this writeup, http://www.onepax.com/info/56/the-dangers-of-keyword-stuffing/, maybe it will help.

--- Denise

Hi Denise,

Thanks for posting that link -- honestly, I haven't done any real research on search engine strategies for many years. But to me it just seems logical that if you have "thousands" of pictures from weddings in Portland, you should be ranked higher in a search than someone who has 2. To me having a keyworded picture is a legitimate keyword as opposed to a "stuffed" page that has the same words over and over.

But, I guess that doesn't nescessarily mean that is how the search engines work

denisegoldberg · November 30, 2007

aktpics wrote:

Hi Denise,

Thanks for posting that link -- honestly, I haven't done any real research on search engine strategies for many years. But to me it just seems logical that if you have "thousands" of pictures from weddings in Portland, you should be ranked higher in a search than someone who has 2. To me having a keyworded picture is a legitimate keyword as opposed to a "stuffed" page that has the same words over and over.

But, I guess that doesn't nescessarily mean that is how the search engines work

What you're saying makes sense from a people perspective, but I'm afraid that galleries upon galleries with the same keywords will be highlighted as a problem. I may be totally off base here, but everything I've read says not to put the same keywords on every photo. Then again, I do have a tendency to tag my photos with a location, and what Photolistic is proposing is similar - just focused around the wedding photography business. The previous post referring to thousands of photos which would bear the same keywords was what concerned me.

I also found Google's webmaster guidelines interesting - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

--- Denise

aktpics · December 1, 2007

denisegoldberg wrote:

What you're saying makes sense from a people perspective, but I'm afraid that galleries upon galleries with the same keywords will be highlighted as a problem. I may be totally off base here, but everything I've read says not to put the same keywords on every photo. Then again, I do have a tendency to tag my photos with a location, and what Photolistic is proposing is similar - just focused around the wedding photography business. The previous post referring to thousands of photos which would bear the same keywords was what concerned me.

I also found Google's webmaster guidelines interesting - http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769

--- Denise

That's a pretty good article - kind of brings me up to date. They mentioned a product that you shouldn't use (Web Position Gold). I used that on my friends project. It took the keywords that you wanted people to be able to find your site with and inserted them in all of your web pages. Back then it worked pretty good!

Best way to get out there on Google!

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