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I realize my last post might have been interpreted the wrong way. Just to be clear I am all for the Analytics. It is foolish for anyone who would like their site to start getting regular sales not to want/use this tool. Information to gauge what is and is not working is hugely valuable and necessary. I would have my site turned on. I just think that there should be an option. Make the default position “on” so someone has to decide to turn it off. Also I think you should only be able to access this information through your own admin and only if you have it turned on. I agree that if you do not participate in the information gathering that you should not have access to the information. If it is tied to the networking than there is an opt out which solves my only issue. However, if it really is tied to the networking than this poll is unnecessary because both options are the same aren’t they?
I voted for on/off simply because if there is no opt out the conspiracy theorist will jump all over this small issue and turn it into the end of the world. It is a shame that trust and common sense can’t rule but that does not seem to be the case. Requiring everyone to participate is the type of thing that will explode into some huge unnecessary mess and create more unneeded misinformation and negative energy. Just my two cents.
Yeah its working. Problem is that the default color is actually supposed to be red not blue. For some reason the red is being replaced with blue. Not a real big issue except some of my image pages have red already set up and now those pages look like a christmas tree with green, red, white, grey and now blue. I would love to remove the shadow boxes and leave everything else as it is.
Hi all I am trying to remove the shadow boxes around the image by editing my child theme. I am adding this.
.panel {
box-shadow: none;
border: 0;
}It works but when I add it, the color of my search box changes color. I would like the color to stay red as in the “simplex theme” however when I add this text the search box and the links on my site turn blue. Can someone please help me figure out what I am doing wrong.
I thought it was an ad to sell the book. Either way I made some changes to incorporate some of these ideas.
No doubt my subject matter helps. There is also a lot of really bad imagery out there. So at least for me (assuming mine is better) getting into the battle is very important. Also you can’t just option click a vector file. This is one of the main reasons that illustrators are having more success. In your case it might be professional buyers who are most likely to buy your images. This puts you in direct competition with the micros and this is much, much harder. That is why it is even more important that the symbiostock network starts getting an almost flawless reputation. Leo is diligently working on the bugs and polishing the product and Michelle is doing a great job with the Social Networking. I think we as a collective are completely blowing it on MSG because we can’t stop arguing about ridiculous little issues and get pulled into stupid arguments with people who have no idea what Symbiostock really is about. We as site owners can do our part by avoiding the negativity that so easily creeps out and when we do get a sale make sure that the customer experience is top notch. If we start doing these things right the buyers will start to show up. Maybe two years from now these types of conversations will be so obsolete they don’t even exist any more.
I’m pretty much just guessing too. Educated guesses but guessing none the less. Here is my thinking. If your image shows up on the first page or so at least you have a chance to make a sale. Whether you do or not depends on the image itself, the competition, and the buyer. But at least you are in the contest. If your image is stuck on page 35 it doesn’t matter how good it is. I would say if your image is showing up as 3 on image search then who cares what “Yoast” or this other site says. In my mind what you are doing is working for that image. If it were me I would be looking at why that image is where it is and why the others aren’t as high. If it were as clear as Yoast would like to make it seem everyone would be on the first page. I think these systems are using general assumptions as well, but it’s better than nothing.
Part of the reason I started this thread is because I wanted to hear other opinions. You can learn a lot by stepping out of the box and other perspectives are very helpful in doing this.@Imago Borealis wrote:
This is a very interesting discussion with many bright ideas and good points. 😀
I wonder how important it actually is to get Yoast all “green”. I mean the plugin evaluates just the image post content. But Google sees it then embedded on the image page. On my site, there’s also 12 similar images on every image page with, well, similar metadata that the google crawler sees. So does it really improve my google SEO when the crawler also finds a small thumbnail minipic version included in the description underneath the big watermarked preview? (It should if it could measure my sweat to get it there
)
I think it is a good idea to add more text than just a short image description. However, when I test an image page that I made all happy green in Yoast I still get some, hmm, mediocre evaluations on SEO test pages such as http://seositecheckup.com.Well, I guess in the end it all boils down to trial and error. 😕
I don’t know anything about Yoast and this “getting green” all might be a waste of time. But I do know this. When I first started my own site (non-symbio) I spent a lot of time searching for my images on Google images. I noticed two things that really stuck out at me.
1) A lot of the images showing up in the search were coming from places other than the micros. The micros were also well represented but I was surprised at what kinds of sites also showed up high for these images. Personal blogs and sites having almost nothing to do with the actual image were showing results very high in the search. Sometimes my own images were showing up on blogs and other websites above the same image on my own site. This made me really wonder why and all I could conclude was that Google liked their content better for whatever reason.
2) Frequently I would have a subordinate image show up higher than the primary image on a particular search. Sometimes that image wouldn’t even relate to the search term. EX. Searching for Viking and a Pirate would show up. I had to conclude that content had to have more to do with the results than the actual image meta data. I could find the page on my site where the Viking was and sure enough there was a small image of a pirate in the similar section.
This is why I add a thumbnail to my pages. It is possible to get to green without it, so from a Yoast perspective it is just extra work. But my opinion is that this image offers me one more way to get found by Google and it is very possible that it might show up in front of the primary image.
Well, now I am just sharing opinions. They aren’t really based on anything other than what I think is common sense. Give them as much credit as they deserve. Just to be clear I am no different than anyone else and I have my own agenda. I think we need to break our dependence on the micros and a healthy community of linked personal sites seems like the best idea I have heard in about 4 years. Also I know that the more effective the other symbio sites are, the better mine will perform. It’s still about selling images and making a living. My site is linked to yours and everyone else’s whether directly or indirectly. The more respect other symbio sites have from the buyers the better mine looks. It’s that simple. I don’t want a bunch of unhappy site owners posting how it’s a waste of time and a con, or some other unhelpful information. I am invested in this and your site functioning for you is helping my site function well for me. I would rather there be 200 high functioning sites than 2000 build it and dump your photos sites.
@shelma1 wrote:
I agree that this needs to happen. However, the big microstock agencies *do* offer this. Shutterstock has a blog that offers helpful tips and current trends along with marketing. They and iStock offer lots of helpful stuff and post it on Facebook and twitter as well as on their sites…..
We’ll I have to admit I don’t spend any time on the micro sites at all. My comments might have been phrased poorly, showing my own ignorance about the big guys. Maybe this is some of what everyone liked about IS in the years before I started contributing. Either way it does show what symbiostock could grow into being. I think too many people think that all you need to do is build a site and upload and it will be all roses and sales. When you go in with this expectation you are doomed to be disappointed. Most of us who have already built a site realize this isn’t the case. I think it is time we started changing the notion or conceptual idea people have about symbiostock because I think in general it is simply wrong.
I believe results show up for your network plus sites your network is networked to. Once removed. I might be wrong but it seems like this is happening.
Jo Ann. Some great ideas there. I wish I could write like that. I was thinking it might be interesting if you would track some of these images. For example, where are they right now on Google Images for the focus keyword versus where they are a month or 60 days from now. You have an opportunity to actually test whether any of this does in fact work. I for one would be very interested in the results.
ThanksMichelle, thank you for this post. Its amazing how we overlook some of the obvious things. I just went and checked to make sure my sliders actually link because I wasn’t sure that they did. Not real happy with where they link though. Looks like I need an update. Thanks!
Great examples of nice sliders too!I think there is something to this. Also I understand that the quality of content that you link to and are linking to you has some affect on your results. If your partner sites aren’t showing up as quality related sites that may be causing some of the issues. Jo Ann has put together some pretty great ideas for improving the quality of your links. You can find it here http://www.digitalbristles.com/symbiostock-image-pages-go-green/
Dan, I really think that your comments are something people should consider. We need to collectively start a quality network. Not just a hap-hazzard network of sites. Smart blogs with interesting content and a conscious effort as to how things are being presented may be what the next step for symbiostock should be.
If you are using a Mac it might be unzipping your download automatically. This has happened to me. You need to rezip the files and name them accordingly. Then you should be able to upload the way Leo described.
