Get found, stay found
As a photographer, being reachable is pretty important to you. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the easiest ways to stay ahead of the curve and make sure that people can find you and your photos.
How do I do that?
- Check your Site-wide SmugIslands settings in the Settings tab of your Control Panel. Make sure both "Hello World" and "Hello Smuggers" are set to "Yes."
- Choose your descriptive names (NiceNames, Category/Subcategory names, filenames, and gallery names) wisely. Be sure to make your filenames friendly before adding your photos to SmugMug. Salt-Lake-Sunset.jpg is more readily found than IM2333.jpg
- Use words like "Fine Art Photos of Utah's Parks" as your gallery title, which will result in a very tasty URL like this: http://yournickname.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Fine-Art-Photos-of-Utahs-Parks
- Tip for Power and Pro users: Even if you don't customize your site you should add a descriptive page title in the Easy Customizer's Browser section or in the Page Title area of your Advanced Customization. This changes the text at the top of your viewers' browser window and is visible to Google, too.
Keywords, keywords, keywords. Add keywords to the photos on your site. All of them.
- Don't forget to add gallery descriptions and photo captions.
- Use social media like Twitter and Facebook and post links to your galleries.
- Start a blog and post to it frequently. Words, your photos, everything. See a great example here! Like to chatter? Contribute to online forums and make sure to link your site and images when you post.
- Register your SmugMug homepage with search engines. Help for Google. Help for Yahoo.
Not enough? There's more
Search engines pick up the information in your homepage Bio box. Use this space to enter descriptive text about yourself, your business, and what you do. You can try using more advanced tricks if you're feeling adventurous, so be sure to discuss this and other SEO topics on our forums at Digital Grin.
We advise against putting extra keywords in your head tag or anywhere else on your site. It could get you blacklisted. Instead please use SmugMug photo keywords, captioning, and other tips listed above.
Your images will be found through Google Image Search if you link them with meta info in blogs, forum posts, and other websites.
Can I put in my own meta tags on my SmugMug site?
Sorry, but that information cannot be changed. Don't fret! Modern search engines largely ignore meta tags because they are often used as spam. Just be sure to add descriptive words around your site and share your photos with the world. Keep all this information up-to-date and over time you'll see a boost in how search engines treat you.