Flickr and Google [Sitemap] - Digital Grin Photography Forum

bradpowellphoto

Feb-10-2009, 02:50 PM

I have a question and please keep in mind this is not a criticism, just need something cleared up.

Why do Flickr albums show up so far ahead of mine on Google.

For instance, I just spent a day shooting the Chinese New Years Parade in Vancouver.

I created a gallery and put in a gallery description, photo captions, and keywords.

Almost 2 weeks later I searched for it in Google.

A small Flickr album of images from the same parade came up on the 3rd page of search results.

My gallery came up on the 10th page.

I have noticed this is consistent with other Google searches for subjects I have created galleries for.

Any idea why?

Any ideas on how to improve this?

I thought I had done everything to up my Google ratings.

:scratch

ps...in case your'e wondering....I love Smugmug!!

cabinetbuff

Feb-10-2009, 08:10 PM

The reason you loose to Flickr is SEO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_optimization) -- Flickr has a lot more "rank" than your site.

Here's your gallery:
http://bradpowellphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/7257870_A2rtX#466536562_uEisX

and here's the Flickr's gallery:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sillygwailo/sets/72157613251597992/

Now, lets examine why Flickr's gallery gets higher rank and ultimately better position in the SERP (http://www.johnmurch.com/2008/06/04/basic-seo-glossary/):

1) the two most important things that any webpage page has (besides the content) are title and headers.

Your gallery's title:

<title>Pictures of Nanaimo & Vancouver Island. The Scenic Photography of Brad Powell. Tofino, Parksville, Duncan, Courtenay, Victoria, Coombs, Port Alberni, Lake Cowichan, Ucluelet- powered by SmugMug</title>

Flickr's gallery title:

<title>Vancouver's Chinese New Year Parade 2009 - a set on Flickr</title>

Which title is better targeting "Chinese New Years Parade"? Obviously it's Flickr.

Your gallery's h1 header:
n/a

Flickr's h1 header:

<h1 id="title_div72157613251597992"> Vancouver's Chinese New Year Parade 2009 </h1>

Which header is better targeting "Chinese New Years Parade"? Obviously it's Flickr.

2) By design, there are more inbound links to Flickr than your or any other smugmug site for that matter, simply because Flickr's gallery URL doesn't include a <username> subdomain:

Flickr gallery URL format: http://www.flickr.com/photos/<user>
SmugMug gallery URL format: http://<user>.smugmug.com/gallery/

Inbound links give better rank. The more number of DISTINCT inbound links point to your site the better rank you will have.

Lets say there are 3 inbound links to three different Flickr galleries which belong to three different users:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/<user1>/...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/<user2>/...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/<user3>/...

Total rank for "www.flickr.com" is 3

Now, same scenario on SmugMug -- 3 inbound links to three different galleries which belong to three different users:

http://<user1>.smugmug.com/gallery/...
http://<user2>.smugmug.com/gallery/...
http://<user3>.smugmug.com/gallery/...

Total rank for smugmug.com is initially ZERO
Total rank for <user1>.smugmug.com is 1
Total rank for <user2>.smugmug.com is 1
Total rank for <user3>.smugmug.com is 1

When you have your gallery on flickr, you, by definition gain all of flickr's accumulated rank. That's a huge advantage. Lets say there's an exact same content with exact same title and heading on Flickr and SmugMug:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/<user1>/GALLERY-ABOUT-Parade
http://<user1>.smugmug.com/gallery/GALLERY-ABOUT-Parade

Google indexes them both, and then you search for "GALLERY-ABOUT-Parade"... Which page do you think is going to show up first? It's the page from the site with higher rank -- Flickr, because it's rank is 3 vs 1 (<user1>.smugmug.com).

cabinetbuff

Feb-10-2009, 08:20 PM

shrekie

Feb-11-2009, 03:47 AM

go to google.com and put this in the search box:

site:bradpowellphoto.smugmug.com

then put this:

site:www.flickr.com (http://www.flickr.com)

What do you notice? Every page title is different on flickr and every page title on your site is the same. You can't pull rank with metatags alone -- not going to work.

Hi Guys,

Denise pointed me to your discussion here. There's an ongoing discussion in this thread as well:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?p=1036608#post1036608

I posted up my stats from Smugmug, Flickr, and Google Analytics to compare.

cabinetbuff, if what you're saying is correct, and I am suspecting it is, then Smugmug will need to revise their recommendations to users to add keywords, captions, descriptions, and hidden gallery descriptions to their photos and galleries as it won't make any significant difference.

Andy

Feb-11-2009, 03:54 AM

as it won't make any significant difference.
Not my experience, at all. Search for

westchester portrait photographer

shrekie

Feb-11-2009, 04:00 AM

Not my experience, at all. Search for

westchester portrait photographer

Hi Andy,

Yes, I know it has not been your experience, but it has been the experience of quite a few users and I have uploaded my stats in the other thread to illustrate that this is clearly the case. Is there any official word on this subject from smugmug?

Thanks,

Nelson

caroline

Feb-11-2009, 04:41 AM

Not my experience, at all. Search for

westchester portrait photographer

Hi Andy,
Those search terms work fine for your type of business, but for me and many in my situation, I want my work found because someone is searching for specific subject matter - ie landscape of blah blah, they don't need to be looking for ME, and I want my images to appear in a google image search but they don't and as far as I can tell I haven't found any of yours yet when using the title of an image as a search term, although they do when doing just a google search.

Caroline

cabinetbuff

Feb-11-2009, 10:42 AM

Not my experience, at all. Search for

westchester portrait photographer

Andy,

When you search for "westchester portrait photographer" using google.com what do you get? I get the following:

Fairfield, Rockland and Westchester Portrait Photography by Dave Blake
www.daveblakephotography.com/portraits.shtml

Portrait Photography Westchester, Portrait Studio Westchester ...
www.partypop.com/categories/Portrait_Photographers/Westchester.htm

New York Wedding Photographer Westchester NY - Bob Rothman ...
www.bobrothman.com

Wedding Photography and Bar Mitzvah Photography in Westchester, NY ...
www.ericwessman.com/

Westchester County Photographers, Westchester County, New York ...
www.photolinks.com/ResultsPage18.html?COUNTRY=United%20States&STATE=New%20York&CITY=Westcheste

Portrait Photographers Westchester :: Sentinel Photo Studios
www.sentinelphotostudios.com/portrait-photographers-Westchester/index.html

By the way, lets do another test ... search for your name and one of your gallery names -- go to google and put the following in the search box:
Andy Williams Landscapes for Sale

Here's what I get:

[#1] Moon River Photography -- Andy Williams- powered by SmugMug
www.moonriverphotography.com/gallery/634937_G88Gj/5

[#2] My favorites from Andy Williams "Landscapes for Sale"
www.ttljournal.com/g/81-my-favorites-from-andy-williams-landscapes-for-sale.html

Now, obviously your site will be #1 -- it's got your name in the title of every single page, but what do you see on the #2 position? Not bad don't you think? And it's just after two months of being online :thumb Why do you think we are #2 on this specific SERP? It's because our title/heading is very descriptive and matched the search criteria precisely and because we linked to your site which google knows is the original content.

bradpowellphoto

Feb-11-2009, 11:49 AM

I would really like to hear something "official" from Smugmug about this.

Smugmug is so head and shoulders above everyone else in things like our websites and all their features and all the great support.

But I would like to know I have an equal chance to be found out there in cyber space.

pilotdave

Feb-11-2009, 12:14 PM

Not my experience, at all. Search for

westchester portrait photographer

It's understood that there are ways to improve page rank by linking to your site as much as possible and all the other suggestions smugmug offers. But there are also ways to design websites to be search engine friendly. Smugmug looks great, but it's not search engine friendly. It's not a switch you guys can flip. It's a concious effort to improve our pages for search engine compatibility.

One of the solutions is to handle more of the page processing on the server side instead of using AJAX, which makes the visitor's browser put the page together. Maybe that's not doable at the moment because of processing power or something.

But first smugmug has to admit (to themselves, if not publicly) that they have a problem with search engine optimization. Can't fix a problem that they don't think they have.

Dave

caroline

Feb-11-2009, 12:48 PM

But first smugmug has to admit (to themselves, if not publicly) that they have a problem with search engine optimization. Can't fix a problem that they don't think they have.
Dave

And so we wait for further comment .............

mrcoons

Feb-11-2009, 03:14 PM

I am attempting to go thru the information on this site (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291) and in the PDF on this page and thought others might be interested as well.

Hopefully someone smarter than me will find this educational.

jfriend

Feb-11-2009, 04:06 PM

It's understood that there are ways to improve page rank by linking to your site as much as possible and all the other suggestions smugmug offers. But there are also ways to design websites to be search engine friendly. Smugmug looks great, but it's not search engine friendly. It's not a switch you guys can flip. It's a concious effort to improve our pages for search engine compatibility.

One of the solutions is to handle more of the page processing on the server side instead of using AJAX, which makes the visitor's browser put the page together. Maybe that's not doable at the moment because of processing power or something.

But first smugmug has to admit (to themselves, if not publicly) that they have a problem with search engine optimization. Can't fix a problem that they don't think they have.

Dave I believe that search engines see non-ajax pages already.

cabinetbuff

Feb-11-2009, 06:09 PM

I believe that search engines see non-ajax pages already.
google can definitely parse AJAX generated content -- just check their cache. The issue here is the way SmugMug pagination is currently setup -- the page titles don't change so google considers your paginated content to be duplicate. Here's an example:

go to google and put this in the search box (we are searching for a specific gallery key "2880990_X5ooT" which has multiple pages):

site:bradpowellphoto.smugmug.com 2880990_X5ooT

here's what I get:

[#1] Pictures of Nanaimo & Vancouver Island. The Scenic Photography of ...
The 2007 Nanaimo Empire Days Parade Nanaimo boasts the oldest annual
continuous celebrations of Victoria Day without a break in the entire
Commonwealth!

bradpowellphoto.smugmug.com/gallery/2880990_X5ooT - 35k - Cached - Similar pages

In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed.
If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.

The key problem here is this:

"In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 1 already displayed."

Now click on "repeat the search with the omitted results included." link and what do you see? At least 10 SERPs of duplicates! Except they are not really duplicates are they? These are distinct paginated pages of the gallery and pages of large versions of images but the way the site architecture is setup google doesn't see it that way.

I will say it again (for SmugMug) -- you can't pull rank with metatags alone -- it's not going to work especially for highly competitive markets -- sure you'll pull your name but when you start competing with SEO optimized sites that target the same competitive keywords as you do -- you'll loose.

Each page (i.e. document) on the Internet must have a unique title/header -- that's just a basic common sense and that's what google bases their engine on. They are #1 and whether you like it or not they attribute to the bulk of the search-engine generated traffic so you have to play by their rules.

SmugMug has SEO issue - there's no doubt about it, it needs to be fixed. But you also have to realize that you cannot compete in SERPs with a social networking site such as Flickr or Youtube.

Both Flickr and Youtube DOMAINS have an enormous page rank which you on your own can never compete with. It's just not physically possible to have as many distinct, reputable inbound links to your personal domain name as Flickr or Youtube already have.

There's a reason why content providers go directly to YouTube and Flickr -- it's to get exposure to the enormous traffic that these sites get. Flickr and YouTube are so big now that they don't even need search engines -- they generate their own traffic!

SmugMug is great for establishing your identity on the Internet by having a good looking site. SmugMug is not the right tool to compete in the SERP with Flickr or Youtube or any other social networking site.

You want traffic and exposure you go to social network, you want identity and face recognition you go to SmugMug. Different tools for the different jobs. It would be nice to have it all in once place so you don't have to duplicate your pictures on different sites and that's what we are working on at ttljournal.com ... But we need your participation to make it work. :thumb

bradpowellphoto

Feb-11-2009, 06:25 PM

So if I'm reading this right. One of the best way to bring traffic to my site might be to have a Flickr site with links to my Smugmug site?

cabinetbuff

Feb-11-2009, 07:03 PM

So if I'm reading this right. One of the best way to bring traffic to my site might be to have a Flickr site with links to my Smugmug site?
That depends on what the purpose of this traffic is. If you want to sell your images through your SmugMug site then yes, today that would be the best thing to do. They'll find your sample images on Flickr and if they like what they see they'll know how to buy them from you via the link to SmugMug. It's going to be very tedious work on your part to duplicate your images and create links to your SmugMug galleries but yes, it's possible.

If, on the other hand, you want to increase direct, search-engine generated traffic to your site, having your images on Flickr is not going to help you. That's because any link you put to your site on Flickr will have a 'rel="nofollow"' tag to prevent search engines following it. This is done to prevent spam.

At ttljournal.com (http://www.ttljournal.com/) we don't place 'rel="nofollow"' because we know who our customers are - they are SmugMug fellows. Not only that, but we actually generate links to your original images automatically and pull the original SmugMug image caption so that you don't have to duplicate your efforts in two places.

I can't guarantee that you'll be able to compete with Flickr just because you create a virtual gallery on ttljournal.com (http://www.ttljournal.com/) but you will certainly increase your chances at getting a shot at it. And if more of SmugMug'ers get on ttljournal.com (http://www.ttljournal.com/), eventually we can build up the rank of ttljournal.com domain to the level of Flickr.

So if you want a social network around your SmugMug images -- come to ttljournal.com (http://www.ttljournal.com/) and help us build it -- it's free and you get all the benefits I described above. :thumb

jfriend

Feb-11-2009, 07:30 PM

google can definitely parse AJAX generated content -- just check their cache.

I don't think you understood what I meant. I believe that when Smugmug sees a search engine crawler, they feed it non-ajax pages (like the viewing style "Smugmug Small") to make sure it sees all your content in a straightforward HTML format.

cabinetbuff

Feb-11-2009, 07:38 PM

I don't think you understood what I meant. I believe that when Smugmug sees a search engine crawler, they feed it non-ajax pages (like the viewing style "Smugmug Small") to make sure it sees all your content in a straightforward HTML format.
If they are in fact switching content for the sole purpose of feeding it to the search engine crawler it's considered spamdexing (http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aspamdexing) ...

jfriend

Feb-11-2009, 07:42 PM

If they are in fact switching content for the sole purpose of feeding it to the search engine crawler it's considered spamdexing (http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aspamdexing) ... Look Smugmug has lots of different views of your data. It's actually a client-side cookie that determines which view they serve (whatever the viewer last requested) unless the gallery is locked to a style. When no cookie shows up (as would be the case with a Google crawler), it's up to Smugmug which of their normally served up views to give it. This is not special content just for the search engine - it's one of their views that already exists. Also, all the views serve the same basic data, just formatted differently - hardly much different to what a search engine finds to index (same captions, same titles, same image filenames, same keywords, same gallery names, same category names, etc...). I also believe that they cleared this with Google when they first introduced the ajax view.

You seem pretty quick to condemn Smugmug here. I'm sure things could be improved (can't they always), but there has been some thinking done on this.

cabinetbuff

Feb-11-2009, 07:46 PM

cabinetbuff

Feb-11-2009, 07:50 PM

actually now that I think about it further ... the content stays the same so it's probably OK ...
if in doubt -- read this --> Cloaking, sneaky Javascript redirects, and doorway pages (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66355)

bradpowellphoto

Feb-11-2009, 08:56 PM

I have to say that I have not understood much of what has been said here.

It is all wayyyyyyyyy over my head.

I love my Smugmug site and since I have started it several members of the photography club I belong to have started their's as well.

But if anyone from Smugmug would like to take a look at my site and give me some easy to follow suggestions that might help some of my galleries do better with the search engines I would be ever so grateful.

I thought I had done everything I was supposed to to make myself as visible as possible.

On Google Analytics I see I get around 7% of my visitors from search engines.

I hope this thread hasnt caused any problems, it wasn't meant to.

cabinetbuff

Feb-11-2009, 10:57 PM

I have to say that I have not understood much of what has been said here.

It is all wayyyyyyyyy over my head.
These last few posts John and I made -- they really have nothing to do with your issue, it's more of a logistical "how" the page is being fed to the search engine.

The issue you have, competing with Flickr, in the same keyword space, still stands and I tried to explained it in plain English without much of the technical mambo-jumbo in my first and few other posts I made on this thread. If you have any other questions -- fire away I am glad to help!

And as to SmugMug being great -- yes it is, I just convinced my family member to join because I consider them #1 photo archiving and sharing service. :thumb

caroline

Feb-11-2009, 11:45 PM

So does all this info we are now aware of mean that the limit in keywords of 30 in number is of little consequence because of the other factors acting against actually being found by google for anything other than my site name/url ?

Caroline

ashishpandey

Feb-12-2009, 04:42 AM

Not my experience, at all. Search for

westchester portrait photographer
I don't know Andy if you intentionally ignore others' point about this topic, but I kind of don't seem to get the point you are making. Here is what I get when I search for your suggestion

http://photography.ashish-pragya.com/photos/472313087_HZfrX-O.jpg

Note how the titles are playing their part. Google is showing the searched keywords from titles in bold, reminding all of us what a title means
At least what you have experienced is not very reliable. If you can tell us the links you get in your search, we can compare how many of those consistently come up in both your and my search

In any case, we cannot defy the experience of the original poster of this thread.

ashishpandey

Feb-12-2009, 05:01 AM

You seem pretty quick to condemn Smugmug here. I'm sure things could be improved (can't they always), but there has been some thinking done on this.
Sure things can be improved, provided someone tries to do that. You do seem to suggest that someone is doing that. If true, that is indeed the first step in the right direction. However, following the earlier threads; the request for an official response in this thread; and some of the responses from Andy on this particular topic - at least I don't get an indication that someone is looking at this as a problem
I know smugmug is a great service, and I have seen them responding to customer needs in a very nice way (including Andy participation here, which I mostly find quite helpful), and they are innovative. But they are not always right (just like everyone), and sometimes I have seen them ignoring (not acknowledging) issues - a prime example being this topic

DrDavid

Feb-12-2009, 05:04 AM

Just for fun... Try REMOVING your custom page-title text from the site-wide-customization screen and go into a gallery.. See what happens.. :D

David

Andy

Feb-12-2009, 05:11 AM

sometimes I have seen them ignoring (not acknowledging) issues - a prime example being this topic
We don't ignore anything. We've 45 people at SmugMug and still we can't possibly reply to each and every posting. But we sure do read everything :deal

digital faerie

Feb-12-2009, 05:12 AM

Just for fun... Try REMOVING your custom page-title text from the site-wide-customization screen and go into a gallery.. See what happens.. :D

David

I'm too chicken! Show me a screen shot! :lol3

caroline

Feb-12-2009, 05:12 AM

Just for fun... Try REMOVING your custom page-title text from the site-wide-customization screen and go into a gallery.. See what happens.. :D

David

David,
Can you please explain what you mean here ? Is this a helpful suggestion ?
I don't have time to play games with my site and haven't a clue what you are implying.
Sorry for sounding grumpy :-)
Caroline

Andy

Feb-12-2009, 05:14 AM

Hi Folks, good stuff in here. We take great care to do as much as possible to get high results for our stuff on Google. This is a great discussion, and I'll make sure that some key folks get directed to it.

DrDavid

Feb-12-2009, 05:15 AM

David,
Can you please explain what you mean here ? Is this a helpful suggestion ?
I don't have time to play games with my site and haven't a clue what you are implying.
Sorry for sounding grumpy :-)
Caroline
Wow.. Crabby...

Do I really seem like I would be trolling? Perhaps.. Just perhaps, after something like 100 sites that I've customized, that I've picked up a few easter-eggs along the way? :)

It's really no fun if I tell you exactly what will happen. Let's just say it's an undocumented feature, and one that you'll probably like. :)

David

Andy

Feb-12-2009, 05:18 AM

Hi Andy,
Those search terms work fine for your type of business, but for me and many in my situation, I want my work found because someone is searching for specific subject matter - ie landscape of blah blah, they don't need to be looking for ME, and I want my images to appear in a google image search but they don't and as far as I can tell I haven't found any of yours yet when using the title of an image as a search term, although they do when doing just a google search.

Carolinewhy wouldn't 'landscape of mendip' be found in the same way? There's tons of stuff that goes into the google pot to be cooked - are you doing it all?

DrDavid

Feb-12-2009, 05:20 AM

Delete EVERYTHING from this box:
http://www.wolfsnap.com/photos/472325029_CA4U3-M.png

Then, check out a gallery, and look at the page title...

David

p.s. People sure are crabby before their morning coffee.. :rolleyes

bradpowellphoto

Feb-12-2009, 06:24 AM

caroline

Feb-12-2009, 06:39 AM

why wouldn't 'landscape of mendip' be found in the same way? There's tons of stuff that goes into the google pot to be cooked - are you doing it all?

Hi Andy,
Thanks for looking -'landscape of mendip' returns a result in google, yes, but I'm damned if I can find anything of mine ever on google images.
Yes, I think I'm doing nearly all the recommendations but I draw the line at putting any more than a couple of images on picasa.

Of course it's not all bad :-) I just had an enquiry this morning for calendar images for 2010.

Best wishes,
Caroline

cabinetbuff

Feb-12-2009, 07:32 AM

Thank you Dr. David!

I see what you were talking about.

Every gallery has its own page title.

Google should like that better...right?

I don't think that was the case when I started my Smugmug site a few years back.

Well lets see what happens to my search engine traffic

gracias mucho:thumb

You are in better shape now than before but it's not optimal yet. There are only so many "prime" characters that matter in the title of the page and they are ALL in the beginning of it, everything else after those first 65 or so characters becomes a "..." in SERP. Now, lets examine your new and improved page title:

|---------1---------2---------3---------4---------5---------6---|
Brad Powell : photos : Henry the Blue Heron- powered by SmugMug
Brad Powell : photos : 2009 Chinese New Years Parade in Vancouver- powered by SmugMug

The above grid represents the first 65 most valuable characters, what do you see? The first 23 characters are always the same. What should be happening is the reverse of that -- all repeating patterns of a page title should go at the END of it not in the front of it. The way it is now you are wasting away 35% of your title realestate.

And you still have an issue of missing headers (h1, h2).

-HTH!

digital faerie

Feb-12-2009, 09:59 AM

:wxwax Delete EVERYTHING from this box:
http://www.wolfsnap.com/photos/472325029_CA4U3-M.png

Then, check out a gallery, and look at the page title...

David

p.s. People sure are crabby before their morning coffee.. :rolleyes

hmmm, well, I'm not so sure that's not the greatest solution actually. Now the page titles turn from "Digital Faerie Photography" {which is what I had before} to:

digitalfaerie : photos : Brookgreen Gardens - powered by Smugmug#456112006_usEUR

:wxwax

I just really wish meta data was customizable for every single page and gallery.

Open to hear your suggestions though! :ear

mbrady

Feb-12-2009, 10:46 AM

Another curious things about page titles and Google- apparently they're pretty important to the Google index, yet in their own Chrome web browser, page titles don't even show up at the top of the browser window. Instead they are put in the tabs at the top, which only show about 20 or so characters before truncating. You have to hover your mouse over the tab for the full title to pop up.

onethumb

Feb-12-2009, 12:43 PM

If they are in fact switching content for the sole purpose of feeding it to the search engine crawler it's considered spamdexing (http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3Aspamdexing) ...

It's not spamdexing. We're not sniffing for search engine crawlers, we're sniffing for any user-agent not capable of AJAX'ed pages, including mobile browsers, older versions of browsers, etc.

Google and the others happen to get caught up in this net since they also can't parse JavaScript. But we know plenty of people at Google who say this is the right approach and we're clearly not being penalized.

Spamdexing, FYI, is intended for when the *content* changes, not the method of displaying the content. Since our pages are very similar, and contain the same essential content, we're not spamdexing even we didn't have Google's blessing.

cabinetbuff

Feb-12-2009, 12:50 PM

It's not spamdexing. We're not sniffing for search engine crawlers, we're sniffing for any user-agent not capable of AJAX'ed pages, including mobile browsers, older versions of browsers, etc.

Google and the others happen to get caught up in this net since they also can't parse JavaScript. But we know plenty of people at Google who say this is the right approach and we're clearly not being penalized.

Spamdexing, FYI, is intended for when the *content* changes, not the method of displaying the content. Since our pages are very similar, and contain the same essential content, we're not spamdexing even we didn't have Google's blessing.
Yes, you are absolutely correct -- content stays the same = legal, content changes <> legal. I actually said the same thing last night after I read the official doc on google webmaster portal:

actually now that I think about it further ... the content stays the same so it's probably OK ...

:thumb

cabinetbuff

Feb-14-2009, 01:32 PM

There's a reason why content providers go directly to YouTube and Flickr -- it's to get exposure to the enormous traffic that these sites get. Flickr and YouTube are so big now that they don't even need search engines -- they generate their own traffic!

SmugMug is great for establishing your identity on the Internet by having a good looking site. SmugMug is not the right tool to compete in the SERP with Flickr or Youtube or any other social networking site.

You want traffic and exposure you go to social network, you want identity and face recognition you go to SmugMug. Different tools for the different jobs. It would be nice to have it all in once place so you don't have to duplicate your pictures on different sites and that's what we are working on at ttljournal.com ... But we need your participation to make it work. :thumb

This past week's SEO discussions prompted us to move ahead with developing more Social Networking features on ttljournal.com (http://www.ttljournal.com) -- we already handle User Comments on your Virtual Galleries (http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1034766&postcount=60) and last night we launched a "Feature My Gallery on TTLJournal Homepage". This is a really cool way to get your story and images out to the world and to get real-time feedback through user comments.

Here's how to get your Virtual Gallery featured on TTLJournal front-page:

1) First sign-up for TTLJournal account (http://www.ttljournal.com/ttlnusr.php?pnext=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ttljournal.com%2Falblst.php) if you haven't already! It's free. Then create a virtual gallery using your SmugMug images.

2) Set your Gallery to be Featured on TTLJournal:
http://content.screencast.com/users/ttlj_vitaliy/folders/Jing/media/834ac741-5585-4c70-aa6a-8d77bcc064a4/2009-02-14_1314.png

3) Write a Story (at least 256 characters long):
http://content.screencast.com/users/ttlj_vitaliy/folders/Jing/media/7d97b36f-2177-4185-b9ac-9f9f99bf74f8/2009-02-14_1316.png

4) Your gallery will be featured on TTLJournal Home page within next 15 minutes:
http://content.screencast.com/users/ttlj_vitaliy/folders/Jing/media/7744d9e4-0f96-437d-907c-32192a20ccef/2009-02-14_1312.png

We have developed an algorithm to rotate featured galleries to get them even exposure on our homepage -- so don't worry if you don't see yours right away -- it will eventually show up just refresh the page :D

As we get more and more requests for featured galleries we'll be adding a rating system where galleries with higher rating will be given more exposure on the home-page so make sure to write good story and use your best images! It will count in the long run! Good luck and have fun! :thumb

Edit: fixed sign-up link and instructions ...

mrcoons

Feb-14-2009, 04:39 PM

This works really well Cabinetbuff! Well done. :bow

I created several galleries and what do I see but one of them in the featured column! :barb

http://musicman5.smugmug.com/photos/473675133_XuDM8-L.jpg

I have linked a couple of them on my Facebook page and will watch to see what happens next! :thumb

Velvet-Art

Feb-14-2009, 11:34 PM

mrcoons

Feb-15-2009, 03:03 AM

Hey hey!! There's mine too!!! (the bottom one)

Tim

:clap

shrekie

Feb-15-2009, 04:25 AM

We have developed an algorithm to rotate featured galleries to get them even exposure on our homepage -- so don't worry if you don't see yours right away -- it will eventually show up just refresh the page :D

As we get more and more requests for featured galleries we'll be adding a rating system where galleries with higher rating will be given more exposure on the home-page so make sure to write good story and use your best images! It will count in the long run! Good luck and have fun! :thumb

Edit: fixed sign-up link and instructions ...

Hi cabinetbuff,

Thanks for your posts about ttljournal. I have signed up and it is a very easy to use and well designed site. As your site is set up as a service solely for Smugmug users, I was just wondering if you'd be able to help me clarify how different this is to duplicating our images in Picasa? I think the featured galleries with stories is a good idea. However, in an ideal world, if I were to write stories for my photos, wouldn't it be better to have all those in a blog that is either directly linked to my website or within my Smugmug website instead?

I see that you have incorporated some specific algorithms and make good use of keywords to help Google find the images which is great. As I mentioned in the other thread as well though, according to Google's Best Practice guidelines:

Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"

...so if I had a blog and a Smugmug website which allowed Google to index my photos correctly, what would be the benefit of duplicating my photos into ttljournal? Thanks :)

cabinetbuff

Feb-15-2009, 09:58 AM

...so if I had a blog and a Smugmug website which allowed Google to index my photos correctly, what would be the benefit of duplicating my photos into ttljournal? Thanks :)

Blogs, forums and other venues are all valuable ways of getting your story and images out in the world for real people to see. TTLJournal (http://www.ttljournal.com/ttlnusr.php?pnext=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ttljournal.com%2Falblst.php) is just another such venue -- designed specifically for SmugMug users to share their stories and images. Think of it as another exhibit for your work.

I've had SmugMug pro account since 2005 -- TTLJournal is the result of my own need to have a better way of sharing my stories and images with the world. I also have a blog and I used to post my images there but it was a cumbersome way which required duplication of my work (copying URL's and image captions, worrying about formatting etc..). I wanted a simple way to use a subset of my SmugMug images so I could create a web-page and attach a story to it -- that was the basic premise that started TTLJournal ... It has nothing to do with google, but everything to do with people you want to share your Through The Lens Journal with ... :D I just happen to know SEO principles and made sure to lay them down in the foundation of TTLJournal framework.

:thumb

-HTH!