Comments on: Any IPTC/SEO/Photoshelter experts out there?

By: beccawahiteside

beccawahiteside — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 17:04:40 +0000

Phil is an SEO specialist and consultant and will always help out

Becca x

By: matthewoldfield

matthewoldfield — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 17:37:53 +0000

Hi Tom – Thanks for posting the link, I'll be checking out the site… Be great to read your views on the whole SEO/Social media shebang!
Matt

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 00:43:24 +0000

Hey Guys,

Sorry this is a brief post but I thought you may like to take a look at my photoshelter site/SEO Blog/Photo Blog/Social Networking for Photoshelter Blog!

It’s at the below address
http://thomasjupe.visualsociety.com/

I am sure you will finds it useful, its young, new and being updated regularly! Any requests for content please ask!

Tom

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 08:54:23 +0000

Steve – Such a shame you cannot dive! Have you gone back to your doctor recently? A couple of colleagues of mine have burst their eardrums but have returned to diving…
Alan hit the nail on the head, particularly about not using spam – I think google punishes sites/links that use spam keywording, really not worth it.
One thing I have yet to solve is having the headline appear in the pop preview box of the image in Photoshelter. That would be very useful for image buyers in my opinion but changing that seems impossible at the moment.
Matt

By: Steve Lents

Steve Lents — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 19:35:27 +0000

Allen has put it succinctly. I too am not a programmer but what he elucidates above seems to be spot on. I have to tell you that your photos are outstanding. My dream was to become an oceanographer and on my first dive my ear drums burst. The doctor told me to “NEVER” dive below 8 feet. What fun is that? Anyway I am doing a link back on your site so I can dream about what could have been.

Keep shooting.
Steve-

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:38:58 +0000

Hi Alan – Thanks for this, certainly helped me understand things a little better. Its quite ridiculous but the ins-and-outs of SEO makes my blood boil!
I actually found out that you can customise the image display in PS so that it does display the headline. This is important for people browsing the images, rather than SEO of course. A lot of my photos have some sort of behaviour, or are of a rare species, and I suspect it will help any potential buyers if this is made very obvious from the word go. I agree with you about putting in spam keywords and ‘Stock Image’ as a headline – it is not something I would want to do.
I have been talking to a photographer/web designer about a new site and bouncing around a few emails has really helped clarify my thoughts. He runs an SEO crash course for photographers which I am contemplating doing – I think it will be well worth the money spent in the long run. Particularly as I would like to be able to sell stock through my site, as well as using it to highlight my portfolio.
Have you ever tried Clicky rather than Google Analytics? Seems to be a little simpler…

Matt

By: Alan Dean

Alan Dean — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:10:04 +0000

Hi, I set a PS site up a couple of weeks ago, but the SEO issues are the same for any site. I am not an expert by any measure, like all of us I’m trying to keep up! But, one key thing to think is that not everything a search engines looks for is or needs to be seen by a viewer, so it does not matter that headlines aren’t seen in the preview. All the info is there for the image to be found. So, a headline that just said it was a stock photo would be pointless – no one would ever search under those terms as they would get millions of returns, and then they would have to …… So, the headline should be one sentence that gives a clear indication of the image. A caption can say much more, to help narrow the returns, but it must not spam, not include irrelevant info. Only things that describe the essential character of the image should be included (everyone, including us, gets annoyed at spurious returns from searches).

When I choose keywords, captions, headlines I try to think about how I would search.

PS uses Google Analytics, I find it eccentric and unreliable when compared with other site monitoring, so wait some time before you draw conclusions.

I’m not a techie, but I think the headline might be the most important tag, but it is anyway, an important SEo factor.