Search Engine Optimization Books

[Brian Vuillemenot]

I want to optimize my photo website for the search engines, and am looking for a good book and/or website to point me in the right direction. There's just so much hype out there on this topic that it's hard to know what to believe! Any suggestions? Thanks!

[QT Luong]

A lot of practitioners of this black art seem to congregate at http://www.webmasterworld.com/

[JW Dewdney]

The best information is available right on the web. You just have to dig a bit for it with good keyword searches. Basically, from what I understand, metatags are only of limited use now. The very best thing you can do is have a lot of good text content for bots to index. Any 'tricks' you might want to cook up should probably be based on this fact.

Get a Google Analytics account (this will tell you what your search results are, when you're coming up, and under what keywords, etc...) - it's free. And, if it's worth that much to you, you can PAY Google to make you more visible (disgusting, I know - but true) and get a Google (I forgot what it's called - Google Keywords? - can someone help out here) account.

[QT Luong]

if it's worth that much to you, you can PAY Google to make you more visible (disgusting, I know - but true)

Google doesn't mix "editorial" and advertising. Search results and sponsored links are clearly separated. You cannot buy a higher placement in the former.

[Frank Petronio]

Write more, ditch the meaningless entry page of your website, and get linked and hit upon from other websites. There is no trickery and mystery, just have good content.

[Doug Dolde]

Dale Proctor claims to have found a way to be at the top of the search list with his site California Pictures. He never would tell me exactly how he did it but he seems to have done it. His site is chock full of keywords though.

http://www.californiapictures.com/

[Brian Vuillemenot]

Dale Proctor claims to have found a way to be at the top of the search list with his site California Pictures. He never would tell me exactly how he did it but he seems to have done it. His site is chock full of keywords though.

http://www.californiapictures.com/

Jeeze, that site is just a few photographs in the midst of thousands of keywords! I thought the Google spiders were more sophisticated than to fall for that...

[Doug Dolde]

Crazy huh?

[Mike Boden]

Jeeze, that site is just a few photographs in the midst of thousands of keywords!

I'm glad I'm not the only one to feel that way.

[QT Luong]

It's not that difficult to get visitors to land on your pages by search engines. It is more difficult to get them to stay, come back, and buy something. Sometimes that's conflicting objectives. I chose the later, yet I still get plenty of traffic.

[JW Dewdney]

Google doesn't mix "editorial" and advertising. Search results and sponsored links are clearly separated. You cannot buy a higher placement in the former.

I didn't say that you could buy higher ranking... I said you can buy 'higher visibility'. I was referring to the latter.

[QT Luong]

So what's "disgusting" if sponsors links are clearly labeled as such ?

[cyrus]

The hottest thing nowdays for Search Engine Optimization is "quality in-bound links"

The more people link to your site, the better. But thats not all. The quality of the inbound link counts too. If the in-bound link is from a "poor" quality site - like a linkfarm whose purpose is merely to create fake inbound links -- then your site's placement will suffer. On the other hand a high-quality in-bound link is from a well-regarded site (an "authority site") that provides an inbound link to your site within the context of a keyword-rich portion of text. How do you get that? Well, the first "trick" is to have a site that provides a lot of relevant, original content which will attract visitors and in-bound links. So, we go back to square 1. THe best SEO technique is simply good content and hard work.

[JW Dewdney]

So what's "disgusting" if sponsors links are clearly labeled as such ?

Well, in my opinion, search engines and 'advertising' are a poor mix, morally speaking. Just like magazines and advertising. Just like the evening news and advertising. The advertising tends to infect everything after some time. To me, this is called a 'conflict of interest', as far as the user is concerned - and leads to extremely misleading content. But that's one of the things I respect about this site and why I prefer it over apug & photo.net, for instance.

[Kirk Gittings]

I think the important thing is to generate "quality" visits to your website not just volume.

[Greg Miller]

Jeeze, that site is just a few photographs in the midst of thousands of keywords! I thought the Google spiders were more sophisticated than to fall for that...

One primary thing he has done in this regard is having placed key text descriptors of his site as high on the home page as possible and repeated them often on the home page. For example "Stock images" is on the very first line and is repeated 30 more times in the text on the home page. The word "California" is also on the first line and appears a total of 348 times on the home page. This works wonders for SEO but is a disaster for readability. Since he is a stock photogrpaher I don't think he cares too much about readability.

[Frank Petronio]

If it works so well then why aren't the Getty or Corbis sites a sea of keywords?

To me it reeks of cheap hackiness and borders on sleaze.

Quality = Results

[Brian Vuillemenot]

If it works so well then why aren't the Getty or Corbis sites a sea of keywords?

To me it reeks of cheap hackiness and borders on sleaze.

Quality = Results

I agree, what's the point of getting visitors to your website if it looks like crap once they're there? Don't the Google spiders took into account "keyword stuffing", and, for example, penalize someone for repeating the word "California" 348 times?

[Greg Miller]

If it works so well then why aren't the Getty or Corbis sites a sea of keywords?

To me it reeks of cheap hackiness and borders on sleaze.

Quality = Results


Getty & Corbis are known entities. People go directly to them (not through Google). THis guy is trying to pick up the scraps that are left over.

I'm not sure why he dressed up the text to look customer friendly. It's so blatantly intended to pick up spiders that its offensive that he even bothered trying to dress it up.

[paulr]

Well, in my opinion, search engines and 'advertising' are a poor mix, morally speaking. Just like magazines and advertising. Just like the evening news and advertising.

I don't like advertising either, but before you banish it you'd better find another way to pay the bills. google is a great search engine, and is paid for 100% by advertising. what i respect about them is that there's a firewall between the keyword ads and the search results--both visually and under the hood. you'll never be fooled into thinking one is the other, and one will never influence the other.

Google would provide an even better experience without the keyword ads, in my opinion. Except that google wouldn't exist at all.

[QT Luong]

> I think the important thing is to generate "quality" visits to your website not just volume.

> If it works so well then why aren't the Getty or Corbis sites a sea of keywords?


It's like hunting by shooting at random. It doesn't work that well. The ratio buyers/visitors is dismal, and "good buyers" are even more rare. Getty and Corbis have an advertising budget that makes it possible to rearch good photo buyers with targeted campaigns, which the individual photographer doesn't. However, if you reach enough people, you will end up reaching some good clients.

[Frank Petronio]

If you check out a guy like Doug Plummer, you'll see that he gets quality stock and assignment customers from his website because he does quality work and also writes original, intelligent content about his work.

http://dougplummer.blogs.com/dispatches/ is one of the entry points to his web presence (not the only one... he has a mini "web empire").

So rather than join into the other ten jillion landscape photographers trying to sell stock photos of rocks and trees, you will do better if you write about all the fun and hassles involved in photographing those (often generic) rock and trees. In an W3C standards-based XHTM and CSS properly built website (no Java, Flash, Dreamweaver BS).

Gabeesh?

[400d]

If you check out a guy like Doug Plummer, you'll see that he gets quality stock and assignment customers from his website because he does quality work and also writes original, intelligent content about his work.
Off topic, but this guy, Doug, is an arrogant dude.

[Frank Petronio]

who sells more photos than you... ;)

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

who sells more photos than you... ;)
How do you know?......

[paulr]

Here's an interesting case ... can anyone figure this out?

I've always wished my site would be easier to find with searches for things like "urban landscape" + "brooklyn" + "photograph" .

But I'm always burried pages and pages down. I just did that google search, and the first individual phtographer's site that came up was http://www.jenniferneal.net/.

I've snooped around her site a bit, and the only place I see any of that text (except for "urban," which shows up once) is in her meta tags.

Meanwhile, I've put a fair amount of stupid text on my site primarily to make it searchable. I'd rather get rid of most of it!

What does Jennifer know that I don't??

[Greg Miller]

Here's an interesting case ... can anyone figure this out?

I've always wished my site would be easier to find with searches for things like "urban landscape" + "brooklyn" + "photograph" .

But I'm always burried pages and pages down. I just did that google search, and the first individual phtographer's site that came up was http://www.jenniferneal.net/.

I've snooped around her site a bit, and the only place I see any of that text (except for "urban," which shows up once) is in her meta tags.

Meanwhile, I've put a fair amount of stupid text on my site primarily to make it searchable. I'd rather get rid of most of it!

What does Jennifer know that I don't??


Her "Title" (in the head section of the HTML) is "Jennifer Neal Contemporary Urban Landscape Photography" - that helps a lot here by including the words "contemporary urban landscape". You could update your Title in a similar way. Your Google page rank (4) is higher than hers (3) so eventually you should be able to get above her in the search results. Unfortunately the Google spiders can be very slow in getting back around to your site so it may be a while before you see any results.

Also, text that is high on the page counts more so strategically placing menaingful text as high as possible on the page will hep you too. So (just an example) if you changed your top line of text to "Paul Raphaelson - Photographs of Brooklyn's Urban Landscape" you would eventually receive a higher position in the results for the search that you mention.

[paulr]

Your Google page rank (4) is higher than hers (3) so eventually you should be able to get above her in the search results.

interesting ... where does that information come from?

[Keith Laban]

interesting ... where does that information come from?

http://www.prchecker.info/check_page_rank.php

[400d]

Ah ahahaha can we start making fun of people's website using the page rank system?!

[paulr]

Ah ahahaha can we start making fun of people's website using the page rank system?!

Finally a purely objective way to critique photographs. And economical ... no tedious essay, just a number.

[Jack Brauer]

It is important to have keywords for each page, repeated in the title (top of the browser), in the meta keywords, and of course in the text itself. The keywords MUST be in the text on the page. Putting keywords in the meta description and image alt tage couldn't hurt either.

I think it also helps in search engines if you have a narrow focus of subject matter, because you then end up having lots of related keywords that get repeated over and over again throughout your site.

The biggest challenge I find, as a photographer, is that I would prefer to let my images "speak for themselves", and don't want to go on and on blabbing about the photos, how they were taken, related stories, etc, etc. However as far as search engines go, the more text the better.

[Frank Petronio]

That may have BEEN the case but I know the search engines are much more sophisticated. Your entire site needs to be popular, not just that one image of "Populars in SnowStorm, Northern Montana" or whatever. And nowadays the search engines really rather read real text in sentances -- objective, real writing -- than anything that seems like keyword spamming. Of course brute force will work to a degree, but you sacrifice credibility and higher quality visitors in the process.

Also, the title of your site is very important to people who bookmark your site -- so if it is a bunch of add keywords it makes it harder for people to revisit your site when they scroll your bookmarks. And it is another good reason not to do that "Welcome to XXX" or "Photos by XXX" and instead just be literate and objective.

[Jack Brauer]

I have found from experience that positioning your keywords correctly (i.e. - in the title & meta tags & hidden tags) DOES matter, at least with Google. For instance I decided a while back to add a certain word to my keywords, and now it's one of my top search words for search engines, even though it's hardly in any of the text. Go figure.