The Most Effective Use Of Keywords For Google?

Seems to me like this is really the heart of the matter. And part of the problem is that Google can change the rules at any time.

It's been said here that Google looks at the descriptions and actually ignores (!) those keywords we so carefully select. That would imply that we should stuff the descriptions with keywords, mashed into grammatical sentences that Google will see as "content". I would really hate to do that. The descriptions should be for buyers to read, and should say what we want to say.

So, I'd also like to know the answers to these questions.

Jim, what you're speculating actually makes sense and you might be onto something. If Google once paid more attention to the actual keywords, then concluded that many didn't actually pertain to actual art, as in the situations where people are abusing the system by using misleading, fraudulent or plain wrong keywords to describe the actual work, it would likely shift to the description or title.

This could explain why some of our work was being found, and potentially sold for awhile, then after a change in Google's algorithm to thwart keyword abuse, the work isn't found any more because many don't put keywords in the description. I know I don't. Just title, location, my name, copyright, and main urls. None of those would be effective for indexing on Google via keyword.

You can figure this out for yourself easy enough by example and experiment. But it is title first followed by description. An exact match over both seems to get the best ranking, if other factors are not coming into play. If keywords as tags play a role it is small. But many Google searches link to FAA searches, so FAA ranking remains important.

Bradford, I didn't know that. Good to know. Thanks!

It's easy to use keywords in descriptive sentences! It is exactly what I do! Just a little thought is required to have a subject, a verb, an adjective....a sentence.......content!

Basic education! Glad Google is lifting their game.

Bradford, thank you. What do you mean by tags vs. keywords. I thought they were the same thing (here on FAA). Just trying to understand (once and for all, lol). I thought the keywords were only for searches within FAA, and outside searches were influenced by the description. Every time this subject comes up, it does not seem to get pinned down definitively. Any info is appreciated.

Do you know if an abundance of info in the description box is a good or bad thing in terms of Google search? I keep changing my MO based on advice given here.

Many thanks!!

Bradford, when you say that Google searches link to FAA searches, so that FAA ranking is important... are you saying that not only is the FAA search tweaking that favors images already sold, and heavily "faved", etc. that it's not only stacking the deck against images that haven't sold yet when searched for locally, but is ALSO stacking the deck against those images that haven't sold yet on Google too?!

If so, this really seems futile.

If true, that means since Abbie says that most of the sales come from Google searches, and if Google searches are heavily influenced by how an image ranks within the local FAA searches that favor primarily images that have already sold (as per FAA's search algorithm tweaking), that your chances of your image that hasn't sold yet, coming up in a Google search has very little chance of coming up and being seen. Is that what you're essentially saying?!

If true. That's really horrible for most of us who haven't sold volume and won FAA favored ranking within Sean's algorithm manipulation.

Please tell me I've got this all wrong.

No, you've got it right. Search Google for "waterfall prints" for example and among the results are these two links:

http://fineartamerica.com/art/all/waterfall/prints
http://fineartamerica.com/art/all/waterfall/framed+prints

Each an FAA search page with results sorted according to the FAA search. So, even if most sales come through Google, the internal search ranking still matters--a lot.

Keywords vs tags.
Here's the difference in my own words. A keyword is what a searcher will use in a search. If searching on Google, then Google will look in a lot of places including possibly the tags.

Tags are words used in a list in fields dedicated to a list of words that local search engines use to find images. They can also help programs on your own computer find images. FAA uses only the keywords in the tag field, plus a few others such as the artist name field and the media field. It ignore keywords in the title and description fields. Google can see everything but seems to favor titles and descriptions. It is important to understand the difference when reading about how Google works, because in the world of Google searches a "keyword" can be anywhere. It is just a word you use on your page that will hopefully match a word that someone searches for. For the FAA search we are concerned with putting the keywords in as tags for FAA and indescriptions for internet search engines. And titles also. And yes of course how all of this is weighted with other factors is a Google secret.

Skip you got it right.

I was afraid of that Loree and Bradford. That means the truth is, it's really not as simple as Abbie and Sean make it sound by working on our Google search results. No matter how good our work is, or how great our prices are, or how terrific our search keywords are, we're always going to be buried underneath those sellers who're favored by Sean's algorithm, regardless of whether a potential buyer is searching for us here at FAA or on Google.

And since Abbie says Google searches are where most of the sales come from, we're at the bottom of a very large mountain to climb against those favored by Sean's seller-centric algorithm.

Is that an accurate assessment?

I'm not getting how Google's searches are supposedly feeding off the results of FAA searches. I don't see why there would be any connection at all. Google indexes an image page - apparently favoring 'content' (complete sentences) over an explicit list of keywords. It also tries to rank pages by popularity, probably by looking for other pages with links pointing back to the page being indexed. But Google can't be picking up FAA's search results - they're not pages stored on a server and accessible via URLs, they're just HTML generated ad hoc in response to a client browser request. Frequent/past sellers might dominate FAA's search results but I'm not yet seeing why they'd have the same advantage in Google results.

Yes and not only that, the default search favors artists that sell not art that has sold. So even if you are a top seller in a category as I am in some, your work may be behind hundreds of other work that has not sold if you are not a favored by the algorithm, which I am not. My chances of outselling the image factories is zero unless I figure a way to become one, which I am not looking to do.

Next posts will be those telling you to just promote your AW and own web site. A solution which is the same as pretending the problem does not exist, or at least ignoring it.

The details of how FAA/Pixels really works gets more daunting by the day.

I spent half of today coming up with a way to lower my prices without disparaging those who've already purchased my work in the past, either from shows, or from me locally, on other POD sites and here at FAA/Pixels.

Ended up moving all of the sellers and images that have been inquired about at the higher rates, into one new gallery called "Collected"

Then, moved the purely decorative, or weaker stuff into a new gallery called "Pop Decor"

And, created 3 different pricing structures. One that's a lower "standard" price point, another that's a low-budget price point, and the already collected level that maintains my usual higher pricing.

It's a pain to change pricing, but this is the only work-around I could come up with. My work-around is to bulk set everything from a newly created, lower level "Standard" price list, then go back and bulk edit based on the specific "Collected" Gallery. Then go back a third time and bulk set the lower pricing to the "POP Decor" gallery. It'd be much easier if Sean gave us the ability to manage multiple price lists, but this works for now.

Also issued at 75% off discount code to see if I can get some sales over the next 48hrs to hopefully get a little better favor with Sean's tweaked search algorithm and thus stand a better chance on Google searches as well.

Other than that, I don't have any ideas what else I can possibly do to succeed much here. This is really a last ditch effort unless I can think of some other method I haven't thought of yet.

We'll see.

Jim- Google does not feed off the FAA results. It just links to them. You search for "cow art" and it links to an FAA search for "cow art". Search for "cow photo" and it links to the FAA search for "cow photo." Like that only. Try a few words and see for yourself.

In some cases it may link right into an artists sale page. That is why i am always pushing for changes in the sale page, like links to our galleries or our portfolios. Some of these changes were at the request of myself and others.

I admire your determination to come out on top of these seemingly insurmountable odds, Skip. After reading through your recent threads I feel like curling up in a corner like a weak little kitten and nodding off to sleep for a few weeks.

Well it is not hopeless. Most of the info you need is here in the threads somewhere or even right under our noses. But with hundreds of new members joining every day and many following the threads i am not going to list out all the ways to overcome the odds.

Peggy, the reality is that Sean is a programmer who saw an opportunity to provide a niche service to artists who either didn't have any alternatives, or who were grossly being taken advantage of by galleries, reps, and other POD sites.

But, Sean is an entrepreneur first and foremost and is making decisions that increase his bottom line and increase the potential selling price of his company should he choose to do so at some point in the future. He's not here to encourage us or help us realize our collective dreams of supporting ourselves with our artwork.

He's a business man making cut-throat entrepreneurial decisions, period.

When the site was smaller, the illusion that this is a service we could all love and dream to thrive in was easier to maintain. And many of us have thrived somewhat from time to time. But, things change. More competition, more users, bigger libraries, deals to favor those with name recognition, etc. all help guide and navigate this now behemoth art-cruise-ship into the treacherous and competitive shark laden waters of the internet. If Sean makes decisions that are based on fairness and loyalty to the base users, the ship will eventually not be able to compete and will sink or be swallowed up by a whale shark competitor.

So, we can either choose to not even try, and be content with simply having a decent place to have our personally generated occasional orders fulfilled through the FAA/Pixels system. Or, curl up and just forget about it. Or get angry and delete our accounts to go somewhere else to try. Or, try to build a new platform if we think we could do a better job ourselves.

Or... we can do as I've now chosen... and try to learn what the ever-changing terrain details are exactly, and find work-arounds to adapt. I'm running out of ideas, but I'm not giving up just yet. :)

I appreciate this discussion and will be adding more subject, verb, adjective stuff to my descriptions, a creative writing activity for sure. Thank you to all who have contributed your thoughts and to Skip for pushing the hard questions.

@ Bradford ~ perhaps a personal email with your lovely list then, ha ha.

@ Skip ~ I realize Sean doesn't owe us a thing. And I'm actually game for trying harder...after my long nap, that is. But I tend to gravitate towards places where I get better results for time spent. I do quite well on another POD. I know it's apples and oranges, but I opened an Etsy shop with my jewellery this summer and it's coming along nicely too. My stuff is at the top of lots of searches at both those places. But FAA seems like an impossible nut to crack. It's where I'd prefer to focus my attention but so far it isn't working out as well as I'd hoped for. I haven't sold a print since June. That makes me feel hopeless, it's true.

My AW is all over hundreds of greeting cards that I sell every week and of course on my business cards that I hand out. I have links all over my blog and some on social media (although I admit I'm kind of hit and miss with that). I don't really know what else I can do.

Anyway, I sure do appreciate all the questions you've been asking and I'm hoping that you can ferret out some information that will help those of us who are willing to work hard to get somewhere.

its not as much as the keywords as it is the content. google likes content. so stories or facts about what we are looking at is more important. but it can't be taken from another source.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Peggy, it does feel like the odds are getting more stacked against the majority of us here, but of all the platforms I've used, I've had the most general success with FAA/Pixels and like the overall tools provided here the best. They let me charge what I want, and don't slice off any commissions like the other POD's do. I've also got the bulk of all my edited images here and don't want to have to start over somewhere else just yet. Gotta give it all I got before throwing in the towel ya know? :)

I've never had any luck with Etsy in the past, but I know other's who sell more object-oriented products say they have a good deal of luck there.

Mike, so you're saying it's the description then... and according to Bradford, having the title words match some words in the description helps. Correct?

Do you think Sean's favored seller algorithm hurdles can be overcome with better descriptions and titles then? At least give us a better shot at being found on Google if not here on FAA/Pixels searches?

the reason google is used is because it's easier to use google and it does not rank it by whatever. google doesn't know about the hierarchy here. it doesn't know how you rank or why. it only looks for content. the way this site indexes and how google does its thing - are not related at all.

this site is based on keywords only, then it's a favoritism thing.

google wants content. they want facts. they are really intent on getting more data. they love forums, blogs, etc. stuff with meat in it. when people don't add a description or use a weak one -- this is an abstract. it won't help them much in the long run. however that said, you have to have the image up for some time, quite a few months at least. google places new images in the sandbox (websites can take a whole year). they want to make sure your link won't void out. that's why people have to just hold on, it takes a while for google to absorb things. but remember google is only one search, there are dozens of others that yield different results.

google changes its mind all the time. but i still believe that at the heart of that system is a living breathing human, hooked up beyond their control, with tubes that allow feeding and waste extraction, and he is the google. and at the very basics of it, they always looked for content, a web page should have information, and so should here.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

everything is important. keywords describe the image, descriptions do the same, you need both though. seans top picks have nothing to do with the descriptions, they only look at words. and then its a popularity thing. muffins help too. though i don't know he's getting them or not... :)



its like this

google rates it on (as far as i know)

how long its been there
how descriptive it is - title, tags, description

how long someone stays on your site (actually very important because it tells google that they found the content they wanted). but in this case they may just be reading the stories or looking at the images

and i think about 9000 other things - which includes the viewers preferences. places they've been too, where their friends have been to and looked at, links you have already clicked on. it uses data from android, people on google plus and who you have in circles and what they prefer. in many cases there is no win against google. i had to turn off my histories with them because they were tainting results. but you will never know how your rank.

like if your on google plus, and you have 10 friends on that site. and they like looking at your work, then your results will come up with the things they were looking at. it will prefer those links over other things. it gets a bit crazy.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Seans algorithm can be overcome with more and better tags. You will stack the odds exponentially in your favor and lose the featured artists when you do that. You will also lose most of the rest of the competition including artists who are better than you or even sell more. Go for the long-tail searches. That's the half of all searches that has less competition. The hundreds of searches beyond the obvious.
Beside not having a Google friendly title this file is missing the long-tail tags. A buyer came in last month and bought lots of images with the tags "Dallas, Texas" as a thing in common. They wanted to show the real Dallas I guess. Also in a search for "sunflower farm" this image will not show up. Nor in a search for "Texas farms," which this is. Buyers use 2 or three words so make sure you match the ones that apply. Also use all names for sunflower including the latin ones because some will use the scientific names in searches to get cleaner results.

the most important thing to remember is - your not trying to impress the google. your trying to impress the buyer. the stories keep them on there longer. the tags help get them to you, and of course the picture does its part.

and yet another factor i think panda 4 (google) does. it also looks at the social sites as well. if you have a presence on facebook, google plus, twitter and the like, and it ties all of that into the search results as well. how or why, i don't know. but it's also a factor. you have to advertise beyond the google.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Wrote a big long example but couldn't get the links to work, so erased the whole thing.

because google likes content and they like forums - we could have a conversation and posting images, mentioning what the images are. that's something google would see much faster.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Alright, I'm a little too far into my adult sippy cup of Malbec ;) but this thread is getting even better. Mike and Bradford sound like they've almost got this beast by the family jewels.

So glad the FAA/Pixels forum moderator hammer hasn't dropped yet. Selling on FAA/Pixels is now looking more like a slayable beast at this point, and maybe Peggy can wake up from her curled up kitten nap to start taking notes along with me. :)

Bradford, yeah... all of my images are keyworded in the "keyword" area as opposed to the title or description. Unfortunately. That comes from my history in stock image involvement.

Back in the day, the title or description weren't that favored by the spiders and bots. It was all about the keywords... no treble. ;)

@Mike

"google changes its mind all the time. but i still believe that at the heart of that system is a living breathing human, hooked up beyond their control, with tubes that allow feeding and waste extraction, and he is the google."

Magnificent Sir! :)

It seems that Sean is promoting his own gallery pretty good.

I just searched Goggle for the title on my best selling image (The 18th At Pebble Beach Barbara Snyder) and this is the first three things that came up in the search:

The 18th At Pebble Beach Greeting Card by Barbara Snyder
sample-gallery.artistwebsites.com/.../the-18th-at-pebble-beach-barbara-sn...
The 18th At Pebble Beach Greeting Card by Barbara Snyder. All greeting cards are professionally printed, packaged, and shipped with 1 - 2 business days.

That exact same thing came up as the top three results. When you click on it it takes you to Sean's sample gallery and that image is not there.

I wonder if Sean is one of the big sellers here? lol

That is pretty funny stuff.

Bradford,

Yikes. I see what you mean and it's even worse than I imagined. Search Google for 'cow art' and Google just pulls up the FAA site, with 'cow' in the search box. And FAA shows you the 'Cow Collection' ahead of all the actual search results. So Google shows you what FAA wants you to see, and FAA wants you to see Collections. Sweet.

I guess I admit defeat at this point. The whole FAA/Google thing is now highly optimized to bring up not just the FAA best sellers, but Collections of those best sellers. There's no point blasting out tweets, hoping Google brings in buyers, unless you have a totally unique subject. Yes you might make some sales via extensive tagging of highly specific subjects for the 'long tail' but that's going to be table scraps - and fewer all the time.

I printed up a bunch of greeting cards of my stuff and got them into 3 small-time craft shows this season. I sold a surprising number of them, and I learned a lot about what to shoot for next year. I think that's where my future efforts are going. Selling photos to people is fun. Getting aggravated about the lack of online sales opportunities is not fun.

I just Googled the secon best selling image and the same sample gallery came up but this time it was fourth under two pinterst and my image on the FAA site. But the problem with that is there is a whole page of Lone Cypress images of which mine is only one of.

Now it seems to me that if you search on Lone Cypress by Barbara Snyder, that only lone cypress images by Barbara Snyder should come up.

But then again, this is exactly why I don't worry about the search. It is what it is and I can't do a dang thing about it.

On that we agree, Floyd. There's nothing we can do about it.

On to other things.

@ Floyd, I seriously doubt Sean cares about his own ranking. I know you meant that in jest. :) But, I'm guessing Sean is just doing the very same thing we're trying to do, ie. figure out the puzzle and find ways to capitalize on potential buying eyeballs.

@ Jim, yes... it does look bad for most of us... but it doesn't look completely unplayable. Some of the homies like Mike and Bradford are revealing some good info that should at least give us an inkling of hope. I'm leaning toward Mike's assessment that Google doesn't really care about Sean's seller favoritism, but I bet Bradford is correct in that his (Sean's) algorithm tweaking IS in fact at least attempting to deliver the higher performers toward the top on Google as well as FAA/Pixels.

Definitely a battle for sure, but not necessarily one we can't collectively find a way to at least creatively compete.

From my experimental searching, etc. I've also found that utilizing Pinterest is significantly underrated.

Skip - go to Google.com right now and type in 'cow art' like Bradford said. It's pretty depressing.

I have a cold. I'm going upstairs now for a shot of Irish whiskey.

@ Jim, yeah... I know. Not sure why the late Marion Rose still gets so much love on this site via Sean's algorithm, but as long as we focus on what's going on here, even with regard to what Sean's doing in his algorithms, I think there are ways to work around this. I think Mike's speculation on all this is very much on target and hopeful. Bradford has great stuff to be considered in the battle plan as well.

Slam that Irish whiskey and meditate a little on how we can beat this. I think it's doable if we all put our heads together... and... aren't too drunk. ;)

To be clear I didn't say that Sean was trying to push certain artists on Google. On FAA yes. But the net effect is that Google thinks this whole site is about a few people. Keep in mind aslo that there are lots of results in a search. So you can get lucky once in a while and somehow a link right to your files gets to the top.

One thing I have to say is that getting seen here is a lot harder now then it was when I joined in 2012. Jim now you brought up another thing to worry about. I am beginning to get apathetic myself and this is my liver day off so no wine.

Bradford, don't give up! Once we get a clear idea what's going on, I think we can find backdoor ways to thwart it. Yes, Sean appears to be gaming this in favor of a very few... but he doesn't control Google and thus we should be able to find a way to circumvent the favoritism hurdles. Like Mike said, Google is a beast hooked up to tubes for excrement expulsion, etc. and we can find it's achilles if we persevere.

Don't cave to the vino monkey beast like I did. Stay strong. We need you in this fight! :)

Sean is certainly a gatekeeper here with the golden keys, but we artists are legion! Rise UP!!!

Yes, I'm definitely taking notes, Skip. Just woke up from my nap and finished a bowl of milk and now I'm feeling refreshed.

I want to thank everyone for their input. It helps a lot. The fight hasn't gone out of me just yet and I'm an optimist at heart.

"Rise Up"...always liked that song. The last words are "everybody's time has come". Check it out...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcC-SbcihKI ...there's even moonwalking!

I'm still reading. Good stuff here. I have to agree with Skip about Pinterest being under rated. When I google some specific images in my collection, Pinterest links come up before the FAA and AW. The sample galleries for FAA don't lead to my images, but the Pinterest links go straight to my AW and they rank first. Not sure what all of it means, but quite interesting.

I just love telling people, "just google Lisa Kaiser Abstract Paintings." I'll be in a class on craning and rigging or chemical fire fighting and someone will actually Google me and show the entire class my work. It's such a happy thing that happens. Of course ignoring the phone calls and emails the following week kinda makes me feel bad, but I like Google, don't you? Being famous is fun. Seriously, let me answer the question. Use any and all words to describe your art. If you can't think of anything...create poetry of your work. It's easy...say anything. Get people interested. It's fun, and if I can do it anyone can. Check out my poetry...it's just anything I happen to think at the moment.

"because google likes content and they like forums - we could have a conversation and posting images, mentioning what the images are. that's something google would see much faster.

---Mike Savad "

Yes Google does like to index forum discussions.. But they really like an exact match of thread title to what the searcher is putting in. So if you title a thread, say "cow art" it will show up better then a title like "promotion thread- theme is cows". Anything you do after that is gravy. Have a conversation about cows. Change the Alt and Tile from 'Prints for sale" to cows art for sale" if you like. If some of the group admins are listening this is a good idea for them as well. If the title does not match a likely Google search or something very close then the thread is worthless. No need to put "themed image thread" in the title. FAA members have never been shy about dumping in a thread and need no further encouragement than the subject. In the intro just start it as a discussion. What you want to encourage is words. Google can't tell a cow from a tractor without words.

So if, hypothetically speaking, we had a discussion on "Cow Art", and we all jumped in and posted our photos of cows - Google might index it and show that thread to someone searching for Cow Art. I have a feeling though, that the second time we tried this, some one from FAA would jump in and gently suggest that this isn't really the intended use of the forum...

Thank you to all posters in this discussion.

I have gone from discouraged to hopeful to confused!

But I am still reading, thinking, learning and "hanging in there". :)

Skip I feel your pain. I have 37 million views on my Google+ site but am totally unknown because the mainstream photographers there didn't like me. On FAA views are a lot harder to come by, but I still have over 50,000 in less than 2 months as a member. But still virtually invisible on the Google Search Engines. As the old saying goes "It's not how good you are it's who you know. I almost vomited when an Art Collector bought a sketch of a roll of toilet paper from one of the inner circle here. Maybe someday America will once again be the land of opportunity, but it's not right now from what I see.

Hey, Skip, wrong thread, I know but didn't I just see a sale for you today? Maybe your efforts are paying off already?!! That would be way cool :) Congratulations.

eta Make that two sales :)

Thanks Nikolyn!

Had a few with my current promo, but so far a bit disappointing considering I both lowered prices AND offered a 75% off discount code.

I'm having very mixed feelings about this whole heavy promotional, deep discount bargain approach. I'm thinking I'll continue to tweak my pricing, but I think I'm going to go back to pricing higher. This whole race to the bottom to move volume I'm thinking will lose in the end. Before you know it, you'll be selling large, fine prints for the price of a common greeting card.

Where did you get idea that lower price get image up in search?

The thinking was lower price = potentially more sales = better ranking in search engine alogorithm

It is happen only if one is regular seller. If your sales are random this equality doesn't work. MHO.
Keep your pricing consistent or go up = no disappointment from former buyers.
In general we must admit that our buyers are upper middle class at least.

I remember at FAA beginning all talks were about art, community was so small.
Later words game come to play and later image quantity added to pool.
Now description,tags, and Goggle in to do list.
What we need to please next and when quality of art itself gets in favor?

Victor, I'm getting some sales doing this but it was really an experiment for me to see if much lower pricing via discount works. I'm not finished with my promo yet, but I think when its finished, I'll not try that again and stick with higher pricing. I do agree some of my pricing has been too high, but going for budget level isn't the right move either for some types of work.

If you've got the sort of work that has more general mass appeal, then that model makes sense. For me, very few of my images would fall into that category with the exceptions of maybe my landscapes for example.

I'm going to continue with multi-tired pricing though. Just not sure if I'll keep it 3-tier like I'm doing at the moment, or move to 2-tier.

Decided that for me, trying to win at getting to the FAA favored level may be futile. I'll instead focus strictly on refining my artist website and finding creative ways to drive traffic there myself. I simply don't have the kind of work or pricing that can effectively compete in the current FAA environment.

I don't mean for that to sound depressing or negative at all. Just coming to terms with the current FAA/Pixels landscape and deciding that alternate pathways may prove more effective for me in the long run.

Also Victor, I think I'd rather spend time cultivating a smaller niche audience of patrons who are willing to pay a little more, rather than chase the fickle moods of the general marketplace. I also would rather spend more time making new stuff, writing more, and exploring other creative areas instead of devoting most of my waking hours to self promotion & trying to figure out the constantly changing social networks, etc.

Going for volume with creative marketing makes sense for others for sure. Just not for me.

I did mike and edward advices, 'put description' , it works. Thos images i put descriptions are more possibly or possibility (sorry im not sure in my english lol!) to appear on google. Very thnks again!

So after reading through all the comments I am still a little confused as to which Google looks at first/most in searches? The Title, the description or the tags? What is the final prognosis decided by everyone?

google wants content. so its everything. but the only content you can control is the description, it should be informative to some extent and describe the image in some way.

the final thing is - you have to impress and sell to the buyer, and not to google. so many make the page really dry looking, that it might impress a search, but it would bore a buyer. everything is important.

a nice image
a good title,
a good description (not from wiki)
good tags

then advertise. google will look for back links, blogs, social media your in and rank you based off of that. if your not active google puts you aside.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Thank you for your help :) I've been quite active in Facebook, Pinterest, Etsy & FAA but don't seem to have much luck so I guess I will get a little more extensive in my descriptions.

i think they look at twitter and g+ more. since most of facebook is private. but they really pry into your life. mostly you want people to stay interested, google wants accuracy and to know that you found what your looking for you stay on that page. and it keeps an eye on you using other google things - analytics and such. the longer they stay on your site, the better you will rank. so if its a story of some kind and people take the time to read it, or they like the work, they will stay longer and it may help.

retention i think its called.

---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com

Thank you Mike :) Sounds like you've figured this all out. Good luck to you this Holiday season!

After going back and looking at most of my art pieces I realized that at the time I posted them I did not include descriptions. Ultimate fail on my part! We will see if they get any more views after I put their "life story" on them. Thanks again for all the help on these discussion pages...I have a lot to learn!

After reading this thread and - more importantly - trying some actual Google and FAA searches, I have to agree with Skip.

An FAA keyword search on a common keyword shows you Collections, followed by a mashup of images from top selling contributors, many of which don't even match those keywords and have nothing to do with what you were searching for. And Google's results lead off with a link to the corresponding FAA keyword search, yielding the same results. So there you are.

Supposedly Google is indexing my individual FAA image pages based on descriptions; but I can't stuff all those keywords into the description, in grammatical sentences. So forget about getting 'long tail' sales on unusual keywords by that channel.

I don't know what would happen if you actually spent (a lot of) time promoting direct links to your images on FAA, via Twitter etc. Would you eventually get close enough to the top of a Google search to make a difference? That link to FAA's keyword search is always going to be there, right on the top, ahead of you. You can only fit a few keywords into a tweet - but Google's direct link to the FAA search funnels in ANY keywords, a direct short circuit of your SEO efforts.

What's left are those small, vanishing 'niches' and ''long tail' keywords. But, gee, that sounds a lot like "stock".

Bottom line - if you don't already have a sufficient FAA search rank to make some sales, the only way to get it is to make sales by outside channels, but still direct those buyers to FAA for print fulfillment. But it seems you'd get better results stapling ads to phone poles trying to work through Google.

This isn't a rant. If I'm wrong, jump in.

I'm very frustrated right now. Not sure if I have reason to be but here's what's happening. I have close to 100,000 views but still nearly invisible on the Google Search Engines. Do Keywords mean anything? Last night I made 4 sales. Thought for sure that would help, because I thought each sale gets announced to all members here. Obviously that's not the case because I did not even get one congratulations from anybody. NOT EVEN ONE! Finally a long time friend and follower registered just to congratulate me on my sales. Yes, my sales were also to a long time follower. I'm sure the art collectors who do the purchasing here still haven't heard of me. I guess I'm really being a whiner now, but what's the purpose of keywords if they don't do a thing?

Okay, I think I get most of this. Titles are definitely my weakest point and that's because for painters (or at least me) titles are part of the art; it's like changing the name of a pet or person. But for FAA and google purposes we probably have no choice.

How do the FAA search page sponsors work in all this? Do those backlinks we put on our sites show up in google? Or does page sponsoring not help us outside of the FAA search?

I have also started keeping track of my visitors counts on each image and other stats like tweets, promotions, contest entries, etc that I do each day trying to find correlations between my marketing and changes in activity on the image level. You quickly realize how buggy the only stat we get from FAA is, the visitor count. Probably around half of my buyers have never visited the page of the image they bought. I'll, by number count, have 35 visitors one day, but only 5 list as recent visitors for the day. Is there was a way of determining your search ranking and results better than this?

@Ron, congratulations on your sales. Each one is a clue for you to figure out what worked. We just have to stay stubborn that we're going to figure this out.
-- mary ellen anderson

I checked out your site Marry Ellen. You do fabulous work.

One question I can answer for you: Buyers cannot find your page unless you're high on the Google Search Engines. Unfortunately I'm finding out the hard way that views or "hits" are no longer effective with Google. I had 37 million views on Google+ but was also ignored there by their Search Engines with one exception. Google "World's Most Underrated Photographer" and I'm high up there. But whatever you're doing is working well. And, until I get a buyer I don't know I won't feel any special satisfaction.

I suspect that those that use google advertising also display more prominently in google searches. Like most here, I've probably got thousands of my images online in different places going back more than a dozen years.

But doing google image searches for "michelle wrighton artist" and "michelle Wrighton paintings" pulls up a whole heap of other unrelated images. Yes, mine come up for the first page or so, but clearly the google algorithm includes other things otherwise all of the images would be relevant to the search words.

For $30 a year, as much as it would be nice if it did, I've never expected FAA to drive sales to my work. And the sheer volume of work here now means that its going to happen by 'chance' even less than what it did when I started here. I believe the key is as Mike has described, combined with use of twitter, google+ and probably pinterest. Unless you already have a huge following, facebook is pretty useless, especially with their continual changes to visibility of non-advertising pages.