Better results in Search Engines, better META-Tags!

[Connie]

Did you know that you can enter some PixelPost-Tags into the header-data of your template? By that, you will get better search engine ranking, I am sure, because you will have a very flexible page-header with dynamic, contextually meta-information!

Add the following lines to the header-part of your image_template.html:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" name="keywords" content="PhotoBlog,<SITE_TITLE>,<IMAGE_TITLE>,Pixelpost" />

<meta http-equiv="content-type" name="description" content="<SITE_TITLE>-PhotoBlog: <IMAGE_TITLE>, <IMAGE_NOTES_CLEAN>" />


and here you go!

I got these header-meta-tags created with the actual photo at www.photografitti.de:

<meta http-equiv="content-type" name="keywords" content="PhotoBlog,Photografitti,Fussgängerzone, samstag morgens,Pixelpost" />
<meta http-equiv="content-type" name="description" content="Photografitti-PhotoBlog: Fussgängerzone, samstag morgens, eine neue Bildergallerie ist fertig: Fussgängerzone, samstags
" />

this is valid HTML and there is only one irritation: because the <IMAGE_NOTES_CLEAN> ends with a line-break (result of markdown syntax), the line looks a little bit crumpled... but it is valid and ok

[jimtron]

Thanks! I've been thinking about adding meta tags to my pixelpost blog. I pasted the tags as you suggested and it seemed to have worked flawlessly.

It would be nice if there was an add-on to add meta keywords when initially posting an image or editing one.

[blinking8s]

i have various theories about SEO for sites, meta tags seem more important for listing reasons these days, I forgot to include mine in the template after the last update...but as you can see http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Will+Duncan%22&btnG=Google+Searc h I dont really have an issue with googles placement of my name anymore :)

[Joe[y]]

same. 'joseph spurling' works just hunky dory these days! numero 1!

[jimtron]

I was thinking about manually adding keywords for individual entries, but realized that there are no individual html files per entry (right)? Is there any way to add entry-specific keywords?

[Connie]

no, there is no special html page for each image. The html is generated dynamically, that's why there are templates..

in the moment you can create some posting-relevant meta-information modifying your image-template.html in the way I showed here

but we think about the idea to set some keywords when uploading images and these keywords could be used for the meta-information

but this is still an idea

so, if you use my suggestion, you will get some adaequate information in your postings.

[jimtron]

Connie:

Thanks for the response. The meta tag code you posted was helpful.

[steff]

thank you Connie, great idea! :)

[japanwindow]

It seems that the typical site has 3 pages: main, about and archives. Each of these pages can draw hits from search engines, and that's ok. You can improve the SEO of those 3 pages, or however many pages you have, and that should bring in some traffic. However, my 2 cents, if you name the site after yourself you're not going to get much SEO out of that. How many people are searching for Joseph Spurling on Google? No offense, but I doubt many. If you only have 3 pages to work with, then you should title them using keywords that are relevent to your site AND relevent in terms of what people are looking for.

On another note, it would be nice if every single post could be viewed as a separate page with it's own title. Assuming you are adding a caption with the photo, making this change would increase each site's visibililty greatly in search engines. There would be more targets to hit, and you could use a great variety of keywords (as varied as the photos you take). I don't suppose it's easy to re-engineer Pixelpost to work this way, but what do I know?

As for me, I've sort of given up on SEO. Before I changed to Pixelpost, I was (and am) gettting loads of traffic on my former photoblog. But MOST of those people were attracted by my photo galleries. Most are just looking for a picture to download, and they will not stick around as regular visitors of my blog. And many are searching for "Japanese girls" and variations on that theme. I'm sure when they arrive at my site, they are disappointed to find everyone fully clothed. In short, many of the people who come to my other blog because of it's great SEO are not the type of people I want to attract to my photo blog.

Now that I've taken this in a circle, here's my point. For me, as I venture into more pure photo blogging, I want to attract people who are interested in photography and blogging -- people who will form a community at my site. I don't think I'll find those people via Google, but via places where those people congregate online. Places like Photo Friday for example and Photoblogs.org. I'm trying to hang out more in those places.

Eventually I want to add a list of blogs that I'm reading. Not just add a list, actually, but I want to visit them, comment on the photos, and build up a community of similarly minded photoblogs that I'm interlinked with.

[Connie]

On another note, it would be nice if every single post could be viewed as a separate page with it's own title. Assuming you are adding a caption with the photo, making this change would increase each site's visibililty greatly in search engines. There would be more targets to hit, and you could use a great variety of keywords (as varied as the photos you take). I don't suppose it's easy to re-engineer Pixelpost to work this way, but what do I know?
thank your for these interesting thoughts and suggestions.

To get the Site-Title more precise, it is very easy to achieve, you just need to modify the templates, as I did for instance at http://www.photografitti.de:

in the image_template.html, change this:
<title><SITE_TITLE></title> to
<title><SITE_TITLE>: <IMAGE_TITLE></title>

in the comment_template.html, you could change this:
<title><SITE_TITLE>- Comments</title>
<title><SITE_TITLE>: <IMAGE_TITLE>: Comments</title>

and you will get better information + results!

the next step would be the functionality to get page-links like this:

http://www.photografitti.de/2005/05/30/242.php
instead of http://www.photografitti.de/index.php?showimage=242

this will be a feature for one of the next releases

[jimtron]

Connie:

Thanks for the site title trick! I like it.k

-Jim

[busychild424]

Those ideas are great, but they don't work well if you have separate header and footer files for all your templates.

For example, my image_template, browse_template, and about_template all use the same header and footer code, so that I only have to change it in one place. If I include <IMAGE_****> tags, they don't get processed on the about and browse pages.

So I'm thinking of writing an admin add-on wherein you could go and enter the META keywords, META description, and Page Title (<title> tag) for your site, and based on whether or not the page being viewed was an image_template, the various image-specific data would automatically be added to the META keywords and site title. If on the other hand the visitor is looking at an about or browse archive template, the image-specific data would be stripped out of the META tags and site title.

If there are eventually keywords associated with individual images as they are uploaded, those could easily be included in the META information as well.

Thoughts?

[rodique]

Connie:
Quote:

the next step would be the functionality to get page-links like this:

Quote:
http://www.photografitti.de/2005/05/30/242.php
instead of
Quote:
http://www.photografitti.de/index.php?showimage=242
this will be a feature for one of the next releases

I'm very interesting in it! Can you please say us how to make it?

[jaywilliams]

There are a few hacks available for Pixelpost v1.5 that will do something similar to that. But we are in fact working on adding this type of functionality into future versions of Pixelpost.