Website and wording in search engines???

[zoeryan]

I Have just made my lightroom website, It's on Line now but the wording is not read by Google, So if searching under myname and clients nothing is read by the search engines! Anyone Know the answer?

[61Dynamic]

That is the major downfall of flash galleries. The solution is to use HTML. You should have an HTML web page that tells about you and then links to the galleries at the very least.

Can you give a link to your site?

Tip, Google may see your site with HTML, but it won't rank well if you don't have links going to it. Market your site if you want it to be relevant.

[peterhandley]

You also need to give it some time... no website will show up automatically on Google, or any other search engine until it has read your site and indexed it.

If you have built a flash-based gallery in lightroom (or html-based), it has also built a simple html (index.html) page that 'encloses' the page's flash components. You can include invisible metadata in this html page that search engines will read... ie your name, your location, whatever words are appropriate that you think people will key in to find you through the search engine they use. You can edit the meta data using any html editing application like Dreamweaver or with MS Word or any simple text editor. Using Word or a text editor, it won't be quite as easy or as simple as if you used an html tool...  but if you know what you're looking for... it's easy enough to do.

To help speed up search engines finding you, you can also submit your URL to the search engine and that will put you on their list (along with a million other sites) to index your page. Be patient... it takes time and unless you're willing to spend some money (it isn't cheap) - it won't happen overnight.

I hope this helps!

[61Dynamic]

You can include invisible metadata in this html page that search engines will read... ie your name, your location, whatever words are appropriate that you think people will key in to find you through the search engine they use.[{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Bad advise. That may have worked in 1999, but these days---due to people abusing that ability---search engines no longer consider keywords in meta tags, nor to they consider hidden text. In fact, if Google detects hidden text (not the meta tags, it just ignores those) they will degrade your rankings and in worse cases not even index the site.

For what to do and not to do, look no further than [a href=\"http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/]Googles Webmaster Blog[/url]. I'd also recomend setting up Webmaster Tools on your site which will show you how Google is indexing the site, it's ranking and help guide you on optimizing it.

[peterhandley]

well, I'd be inclined to disagree with you on that being bad advice - when it comes to the invisible text end of things - I was not referring to coloured text that is the same colour as the background - that has long since been overused and is definitely ignored by engines now. The days of driving traffic to your site by embedding numerous 4 letter explicit words in colour in the background of your site is long gone. I was referring to the metadata that is invisible to the viewer of the page. (I had no idea if the term metadata would be over the head of the original poster)

As to metadata no longer being read by web crawlers, I completely disagree on that one 61dynamic.... it is a starting point for any site optimization project. If you Google 'web site optimization' you will see that everyone and their uncle has an opinion on it and is offering the perfect way to do your site to get the maximum number of hits. Lots of them are a lot of crap and just use plain simple logic and overuse of keywords in the body text of your site and use automated engines to resubmit your url over and over again to useless search engines... trust me on this one, a lot of those sites are like snake oil salesman.

Quite frankly, the best way to market your site isn't through a search engine like Google... it's through word of mouth, through good old tried and true direct marketing - either snail mail or purchasing quality mailing lists and sending tightly targeted html email and by joining nationally recognized associations that offer online galleries that are targeted at the people who are looking for the work you produce. Sure, you can get traffic coming to you through search engines, but I for one would not want to rely on that as my only method of marketing. In the end it really ends up what you're trying to do, and who you're trying to sell to. I know many nationally recognized and top level professional shooters who don't rely on their site for business generation... it's a tool that get's people to see their work... they use traditional methods for the bulk of their initial contact with new clientele and it works... and as a purchaser of photography (I'm a creative director/designer for a living - as well as a shooter when time allows) that's what I rely on...

[61Dynamic]

What made Google the most popular and effective search engine when it came out was the fact it ignored meta tag keywords and built search results based off a sites popularity. So you can disagree with me all you want, but to quote Google:

Don't fill your page with lists of keywords, attempt to "cloak" pages, or put up "crawler only" pages. If your site contains pages, links, or text that you don't intend visitors to see, Google considers those links and pages deceptive and may ignore your site.

From How can I create a Google-friendly site?

( On that note, here is a third resource from Google: Webmaster Help Center)

Your last paragraph is dead-on. Search engines simply let people find you on the net.  They should not be looked at as a promotional tool.