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Joseph_balson
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individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 09:41

Compared to koken, I lost ALL (as in 100%) the traffic from google image search. 
Barely 50 photos are indexed individually.

images listed in albums are simply ignored by the google robot
each image doesn't correspond to a single page 
exif keywords aren't used at all anywhere
exif title and description can be displayed on a photo when it it displayed but search engines don't pick it up.

what can be done?
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 10:16

Do you have any actual stats from earlier human visitors? Also, when you say "google image search", do yo specifically mean the "image search" feature in Google? "50 photos are indexed individually" in image search, or page search? Image search and page search will display exactly that, either "images" or "page". As for Exif keywords, Google of course doesn't read anything into keywords meta tags, so it's not like we can add any keywords tag to the document.

The difference between Koken and X3, is that X3 is made for human visitors. When you click an image, it opens instantly, and when you navigate from one image to another, it is instant. Koken on the other hand, will load an entire page (javascripts, css ++) ... Have you compared navigation between the two? I tried some time ago, and it's at least 10 x faster to navigate images in X3, which will always focus on human visitors before anything else. Koken did perhaps make a compromise to load an entire page, just for SEO purposes. To achieve a similar effect on X3, you could DISABLE the popup, in which case "click" will load- and go to the separate unique page for the image, and Google bots will therefore follow this behavior ... After all, Google is made to follow human-behavior so that it's search indexing is as accurate as possible. In my opinion, this is a very bad compromise ... you can't have both. Many users here would also claim that having individual "pages" for each image is "washing out" your SEO rank ... After all, your TOTAL SEO rank across all pages is never more than the accumulation of all links that go to your own pages (in most cases, from your own website) ... That's why we have the option to Advanced > "Prevent search engines from indexing image pages" ... Google will likely only follow links to image landing pages if popup is disabled, but it's highly ambiguous if this is productive for your total SEO (especially for general pages that aren't unique to single images).
 
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Joseph_balson
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 11:03

Do you have any actual stats from earlier human visitors?
yes. My google analytics is pretty clear. I waited a few months to allow a few full crawl, but it turns out I lost all the visits from google image search: that is on average average 200 unique visitors daily. Therefore my licencing sales went down 70%.

Also, when you say "google image search", do yo specifically mean the "image search" feature in Google?

yes, I mean specifically image search.

 "50 photos are indexed individually" in image search, or page search? Image search and page search will display exactly that, either "images" or "page". 
both indeed: the only images that are indexed and appears in image search are the images used as image title for a page.

As for Exif keywords, Google of course doesn't read anything into keywords meta tags, so it's not like we can add any keywords tag to the document.
Of course, the google crawler doesn't read the exifs in the photos. What I meant is since koken generated an individual page for each image, it could display the exif keywords, title, description, copyright status, licencing option in the content of the page, and those were indexed, showing in google image search.
X3 can read some exifs, but not the keywords. 

The difference between Koken and X3, is that X3 is made for human visitors. When you click an image, it opens instantly, and when you navigate from one image to another, it is instant. Koken on the other hand, will load an entire page (javascripts, css ++) ... Have you compared navigation between the two? I tried some time ago, and it's at least 10 x faster to navigate images in X3, which will always focus on human visitors before anything else.
yes X3 is faster, on my server, basically everything loads 2 to 3 times faster.
and I understand the philosophy behind X3.
BUT what is the point of displaying images fast if visitors don't find my images in google search? 
People who already know the website don't need google, but still, the lack of search feature doesn't help them to find the image they need and licence it... My thinking was: Ok, I'm gonna wait for a few full crawls and tell them to search in google image search, but that doesn't work.


Koken did perhaps make a compromise to load an entire page, just for SEO purposes. To achieve a similar effect on X3, you could DISABLE the popup, in which case "click" will load- and go to the separate unique page for the image, and Google bots will therefore follow this behavior ... After all, Google is made to follow human-behavior so that it's search indexing is as accurate as possible.
Well, I will try that. If each image is again indexed and people can find them in google image search, it's what I need. It would be  really helpful to have an option to display the exif keywords in the content. I use Lightroom as backend, and don't want to manually have to add keywords everytime I upload or update a batch of 50 photos.

In my opinion, this is a very bad compromise ... you can't have both. Many users here would also claim that having individual "pages" for each image is "washing out" your SEO rank ... After all, your TOTAL SEO rank across all pages is never more than the accumulation of all links that go to your own pages (in most cases, from your own website) ... That's why we have the option to Advanced > "Prevent search engines from indexing image pages" ... Google will likely only follow links to image landing pages if popup is disabled, but it's highly ambiguous if this is productive for your total SEO (especially for general pages that aren't unique to single images).
Well, I don't really care of the general pages: I don't make any money with these pages. I do it for fun mosty. People now landing on my website with google  are indeed looking for that general content (like a paper on some camera): they are not interested in the photos. They don't buy usage licence or prints. And if they were curious and wanted to buy some print, they have no easy straightforward way of searching for what they want. There is no search function, and my customers don't want/have time to browse through categories and subcategories and 200 images in that subcategory to find what they need.
 
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Joseph_balson
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 11:05

sorry for the stupid formatting in my last message
 
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Joseph_balson
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 11:25

So I disabled the popup and ask for a new crawl in my google admin backend. I'm gonna wait to see the effect in google image search.

For now:
- Is there a way to make the image a bit larger?
- are there any formatting options?
- when will it be possible to display the exif keywords?
- the fotomoto plugin doesn't work on the landing images pages.
- can't click on a photo to display the full size preview.
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 11:37

In conclusion, 1. no X3 does not show a page for each image. 2. if you disable popup, X3 will display a page for each image, 3. This page contains all info from the image, correctly added to the page and meta tags. Except "keywords" as you state, which might provide a tiny advantage, but it's just stuffing a few more words into an exising page. 4. There is no evidence of pure correlation between having a "page" for an image, and just having an image.
Of course, the google crawler doesn't read the exifs in the photos. What I meant is since koken generated an individual page for each image, it could display the exif keywords, title, description, copyright status, licencing option in the content of the page, and those were indexed, showing in google image search.
So, you can enable unique image pages by disabling popup. The unique pages will contain all meta data, except keywords, but there is no way that would make a massive difference itself. Copyright and licensing would of course mean absolutely nothing to a page that might compliment information about the image available for search.
what is the point of displaying images fast if visitors don't find my images in google search?
Well, most would not agree with you, and we don't need to agree either. The number #1 important factor for most users of any website, is the actual user experience of the visitor on site. Besides, for those visitors that DO come from search in the first plafe (which is usually an extreme minority), they would normally come from searches to pages themselves or about the author or topic of images. The user-experience comes first bar none ... you build a website that you can show to customers, and they will want to use it without waiting, and have high expectations about high the UI performs. That would normally apply also for visitors that arrive on your website via search also.
Well, I will try that. If each image is again indexed and people can find them in google image search, it's what I need. It would be  really helpful to have an option to display the exif keywords in the content. I use Lightroom as backend, and don't want to manually have to add keywords everytime I upload or update a batch of 50 photos.
I'll add them to next release, but it would of course just be a listing on the image's own page "keywords: key1, key2, key3". In theory, this is not a recipe for good SEO, because Google emphasizes human-readable sentences so that it can calculate data that is written for humans, so that it can lead humans to the right pages ... For instance, humans have little or no interest in reading the keywords for an image, why would they? Keywords are mainly for the author to search/find their images through apps.
Well, I don't really care of the general pages: I don't make any money with these pages. I do it for fun mosty. People now landing on my website with google  are indeed looking for that general content (like a paper on some camera): they are not interested in the photos. They don't buy usage licence or prints. And if they were curious and wanted to buy some print, they have no easy straightforward way of searching for what they want. There is no search function, and my customers don't want/have time to browse through categories and subcategories and 200 images in that subcategory to find what they need.
Never heard of that to be honest. Humans searching for images, but not interested in the photo on the page? That's absurd. If it's mostly for hobby (and not for business/income) one should assume that the very most important focus, would be the human visitors user experience in viewing what they are searching for, or what they are on the website for. I haven't been to many photography websites where I was interested in much else than viewing the actual photographs ... That's the first thing I am looking for, and likely the only thing ... If the photos and experience wake further interest, then I might study more information on the same website, but this does not happen often.

Anyway, these are just "opinions", and you have the right to yours of course without anybody being right or wrong.

If interested, you could compile a Google report for me with analytics showing any extreme drop in incoming human visitors. Personally, I have never come across a private website that has much juice in terms of image search. Most image searches for ANY topic, will go to websites like Flickr, 500px, pinterest, stock-photo website, topic-specific forums and other popular public resources.
 
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Joseph_balson
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 12:05

The number #1 important factor for most users of any website, is the actual user experience of the visitor on site. Besides, for those visitors that DO come from search in the first plafe (which is usually an extreme minority), they would normally come from searches to pages themselves or about the author or topic of images. The user-experience comes first bar none ... you build a website that you can show to customers, and they will want to use it without waiting, and have high expectations about high the UI performs. That would normally apply also for visitors that arrive on your website via search also.
That is not how my koken worked.
2/3 of the visitors came from google image search, looking for something very specific most of the time, like "napoleon spider with dew". Whatever was doing koken with SEO, it seemed to work: google image used the keywords, title and description. It also showed if the photo was copyrighted, available for licencing, etc... on average: 200 unique visitors a day.
Then some of those visitors bought a licence, rarely a print. And then some of them kept coming back for more.

1/3 were visitors who already were customers: coming back and using the search engine in koken to find what they needed.

finally, a very marginal fraction of visitors came from somewhere else, another website, or some google search that was not specifically related to a photo.

I'll add them to next release, but it would of course just be a listing on the image's own page "keywords: key1, key2, key3". In theory, this is not a recipe for good SEO, because Google emphasizes human-readable sentences so that it can calculate data that is written for humans, so that it can lead humans to the right pages ... For instance, humans have little or no interest in reading the keywords for an image, why would they? Keywords are mainly for the author to search/find their images through apps.
keywords were actually used by google image search, and in koken search fonction. Indeed, visitors don't really need them as is: but in koken, clicking on any keyword was displaying all the images with that keyword.

Never heard of that to be honest. Humans searching for images, but not interested in the photo on the page? That's absurd. If it's mostly for hobby (and not for business/income) one should assume that the very most important focus, would be the human visitors user experience in viewing what they are searching for, or what they are on the website for. I haven't been to many photography websites where I was interested in much else than viewing the actual photographs ... That's the first thing I am looking for, and likely the only thing ... If the photos and experience wake further interest, then I might study more information on the same website, but this does not happen often.
I wasn't clear.
Humans searching for a specific image can't find me in google anymore: my images are not indexed.
People who find me on google are NOT looking for specific images. They are looking for some content they can read in a few paper I wrote just for fun. Those people aren't potential customers buying licences.


If interested, you could compile a Google report for me with analytics showing any extreme drop in incoming human visitors. Personally, I have never come across a private website that has much juice in terms of image search. Most image searches for ANY topic, will go to websites like Flickr, 500px, pinterest, stock-photo website, topic-specific forums and other popular public resources.
Well, my photos were not always in the first 10 photos in image search, but that was enough. I was occupying quite a niche. When you typed "Orthetrum cancellatum on a red flower"  I came first. And people searching something that specific usually were looking for a photo that would be used for something requiring a licence.
 
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Joseph_balson
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 13:00

So I disabled the popup and asked for a new crawl in my google admin backend. I'm gonna wait to see the effect in google image search.

For now:
- Is there a way to make the image a bit larger?
- are there any formatting options?
- when will it be possible to display the exif keywords?
- the fotomoto plugin doesn't work on the landing images pages.
- can't click on a photo to display the full size preview.
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 13:27

Joseph_balson wrote:That is not how my koken worked.
I'm not speaking of Koken specifically. I'm speaking websites in general. There is no tool in the world that can just make stuff appear in Google without having quality content and incoming links.
Joseph_balson wrote:2/3 of the visitors came from google image search
This would in such case be specifically for your website, not Koken in general. No websites work like that no matter how or what backend/app you are using.
Joseph_balson wrote:Whatever was doing koken with SEO, it seemed to work: google image used the keywords, title and description.
I don't doubt that Koken has a very "correct" setup for SEO, although apart from unique image landing pages (which as mentioned, X3 does not use without disabling popup), there is very little difference in the underlying technicalities.
Joseph_balson wrote:It also showed if the photo was copyrighted, available for licencing, etc...
That's fine, but of course this has absolutely no benefit either way for SEO. Your image doesn't get indexed if there is a copyright or license, and this is not part of any users search.
keywords were actually used by google image search
Yes, it's possible they would be part of the search that displayed the specific image. My only point was, Google does NOT read <meta keywords> tag, as you can easily find for yourself. And if you search SEO basics, Google puts low priority on "keywords" listed on a page, because it's not part of readable sentences meant for humans. But yes it could be beneficial listing them on an image page.
and in koken search fonction. Indeed, visitors don't really need them as is: but in koken, clicking on any keyword was displaying all the images with that keyword.
Thats a nice feature of Koken of course, and it has been requested in X3, but it has nothing to do with SEO providing internal search/tag/filter mechanisms.
 
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Joseph_balson
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 13:36

I'll see what happens now with an individual page for each photo. There are still differences in the URL, X3 uses the file name, koken was using a mix of exifs that i could set up. Doesn't really matter for now: any incoming visitors would be better than none.

Still:
- Is there a way to make the image a bit larger?
- are there any formatting options?
- when will it be possible to display the exif keywords?
- the fotomoto plugin doesn't work on the landing images pages.
- can't click on a photo to display the full size preview.ll: 
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 13:40

Joseph_balson wrote:So I disabled the popup and asked for a new crawl in my google admin backend. I'm gonna wait to see the effect in google image search.
This is still not clear. In Google image search, are you now expecting the image to appear as an image directly in the search? Or to the page that represents the image? Yes, Google will be able to index the pages that represent the image of course.
Joseph_balson wrote: - are there any formatting options?
Formatting is VERY limited for image landing pages, because they are primarily meant only for search and sharing, to have a landing page for the image that displays all data available for SEO, share and search. Not for humans, as they don't generally see this page.
Joseph_balson wrote: - Is there a way to make the image a bit larger?
To upscale the image, it could probably be done with some custom CSS, I would need to look into it tomorrow.
Joseph_balson wrote: - can't click on a photo to display the full size preview.
Because the popup has been disabled unfortunately.
Joseph_balson wrote: - when will it be possible to display the exif keywords?
I can add it to next release, but I can't give a specific date on that right now, sorry.
Joseph_balson wrote: - the fotomoto plugin doesn't work on the landing images pages.
Sorry no it doesn't.
 
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Joseph_balson
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

13 Jun 2021, 13:50

mjau-mjau wrote:
Joseph_balson wrote:So I disabled the popup and asked for a new crawl in my google admin backend. I'm gonna wait to see the effect in google image search.
This is still not clear. In Google image search, are you now expecting the image to appear as an image directly in the search? Or to the page that represents the image? Yes, Google will be able to index the pages that represent the image of course.
I'm just expecting for thing to get back to what they were before X3: when someone looks for something in google image search, and I have it on my website, the image would show up in the results. When they clicked on that image, they landed on the image page.

I also noticed the sitemap generated by X3 doesn't list each image. It was in koken. Don't know what effect it can have.
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

14 Jun 2021, 01:26

Joseph_balson wrote:I'm just expecting for thing to get back to what they were before X3: when someone looks for something in google image search, and I have it on my website, the image would show up in the results. When they clicked on that image, they landed on the image page.
Just for reference, when you click search an image in Google image search, it shows the image. It only goes to the parent page when clicking further.
Image

I would have liked to see any stats report before/after where it's implicit to see how total incoming visitors from search has dropped to such an extent, if I am to properly quantify the effect.
Joseph_balson wrote:I also noticed the sitemap generated by X3 doesn't list each image. It was in koken. Don't know what effect it can have.
Normally, I would have said it has no effect since Google will find whatever is linked anyway (sitemaps for "pages" are not really necessary). However, in the case of X3 and the javascript popup, it could be an image sitemap would assist Google in locating images, without disabling the popup. I'll look into it for next release.
 
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Joseph_balson
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

14 Jun 2021, 03:55

PM sent
 
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mjau-mjau
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Re: individual images SEO is terrible

14 Jun 2021, 05:58

Thanks for taking the time with the stats. Indeed in your case, this seems to be rather unsatisfactory. Slightly new to me, as I haven't earlier come across anyone with such volumes of image-search results or such a dependency on image search results. Based on the info gathered, I think it comes down to a few things:

First of all, as noted earlier, it's likely Google is not finding the image pages, because click opens "popup". X3 actually has the link to the image page in the HREF tag of each popup link, and many years ago, Google would index the link. However, in modern days, Google simulates human behavior and therefore understands that "click" does not actually go to the image page (when popup is enabled).

There is really no "magic" solution to this. Should click go to a page that is emphasized for search engines (like Koken)? Or should it simply display the image in the most optimal way for humans (X3 popup)? There may be some ways to optimize for both worlds, although I will need to consider that for a future release.

For now, you can of course disable the POPUP, but let it be clear that X3's image "landing page" is VERY limited. It can perhaps be slightly customized (visual style), but this page is primarily generated for sharing and search, and not for humans. I can't get additional features and plugins working here without scheduling for an update.
Joseph_balson wrote:I was using koken automatic RSS to automatically post my photos on various big or small website with direct links to the image: I can't do it anymore, X3 rss is not about photos, and the atom format is not recognized by those websites. Therefore I lost my backlinks, making everything worse in google.
Yes this is likely indirectly related at some level, although it's unclear how much. Also worth noting, is that this would likely mean that you could keep "popup" since the image pages are linked to from elsewhere anyway (clearly indexed by Google).

This of course is a separate feature in itself, so I would need to consider it.
Joseph_balson wrote:I also noticed the sitemap generated by X3 doesn't list each image. It was in koken. Don't know what effect it can have.
Just a note on this again. With images in sitemap, it's likely you wouldn't need the popup disabled either, as the sitemap notifies Google about the images and their container pages.

I could perhaps create a custom script for this prior to any X3 update, if you want to try the effect?
Joseph_balson wrote:X3 uses the filename to create a page for a photo. Koken was using the exifs title or description if no title, or keywords if  no title or description: I'm pretty sure that helped the SEO.
Probably, although it wouldn't make a huge difference if the FILENAME used by X3 contains the search phrases wanted for the image. If it doesn't then yes it will have an impact, because the url should contain the search phrases you want for the image. Keep in mind, all this is related to the fact that Koken uses database, and also changes (and controls) the filenames of all your images (because they need to be managed by the database). Amongst other things, the database can then create and store abstract url's for each request, linked to each image. In X3, when a request comes in /path/some-file/, it will look for /page/some-file.jpg ... It can't relate an abstract path (for example from EXIF) unless all this (and images) are managed by database. All this would require a massive shift in how X3 works, using a database, and images and paths would not be physical, but controlled by database (like Koken).
Joseph_balson wrote:I keep gettings emails from my existing customers complaining about my website, and just asking me to do the search and send them the previews of the photos they want. 
As of now, X3 is fast, pretty, and in the end almost useless: the only new visitors I get are not potential customers, and my existing customers can't use it.
As you must understand, I can't attend to these complaints, as they are not from flaws or bugs in X3, but requirements from some specific users who are used to and expecting some specific website behavior that does not exist in X3. Yes I am open to new features in the future, but the above is not something that I can resolve for you in the short term.

What I can offer now:
I can create a custom script that adds all your images to sitemap. This will likely bypass the need to disable the popup, which really is not productive I think.

Next release:
- Keywords in image page
- RSS feeds for sharing on other websites

I can't quantify the value of the above, but all logic says that images should be available in search again. It's unclear how much SEO-effect the RSS sharing from other websites has, because it could be huge or very little (depending on the rank of the other websites). I doubt "keywords" has much effect being "visible" on the page, unless they are part of the search and NOT already part of the image name / url (in which case, it's redundant). Having image URL's generated from IPTC is useful, but only if they contain the search phrases, and only if they contain words not already in the file name / url. In other words, in X3, the file name is crucial to emphasize what searches the image may show up for.