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Can you update on Github, please? – I can’t just upgrade from within WP because it’ll wipe out my code modifications…
Did it! – What’s my ID?
So at least when the user makes a choice not to share, it allows the hubs sites the choice whether or not to evaluate the site, as well.
That’s only fair and should be as you say IMHO.
Yes. I hope you are right. In any case, I am willing to keep up the effort for a prolonged period of time. Let’s see where we get in a year or two and how our discussions will go then. If I don’t die I will be around
.I was sold right from start when Leo began discussing his Symbiostock idea on MSG about a year ago. It’s quite amazing how far it all has developed. I had a Photoshelter site before for about 5 times the cost and with about 1/5 the traffic compared to my Symbiostock site today. Okay, with at least 10 times the effort as well. Even with too few sales so far I find Symbiostock rewarding and promising. And this community is a big part of it, too. I don’t think the negativity over at MSG can hurt Symbiostock in the long run. I agree that flawless buyes’ experience is one important factor that counts. I think the Symbiostock theme is up to this challenge, although there will be always room for improvements.
Collecting data about our network can hopefully provide some insights. It might prove helpful in finding what works and what doesn’t. However, site owners should voluntarily provide their data because they are convinced it helps them and the network as a whole rather than being forced to do so because the theme doesn’t let them OPT OUT.
I generally believe in the freedom of options and I could much better stomach what’s going on with the agents if they just would let us OPT OUT of every ugly detail of their schemes. So I hope Symbiostock will be better than them.Oh, wait: I will OPT IN given the option.
@chromaco wrote:
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.Dennis, I was just venting my confusion over this whole SEO thing. It was in no way meant to criticize what you are doing for SEO or otherwise. I have nothing but great admiration and respect for what you have achieved.
I think when it comes down to making sales one has to take into account the whole picture (no pun intended) and SEO is just one part of it. I imagine that your sports related illustrations have a great number of potential buyers that never even heard of (micro)stock and would never think of using Shutterstock or so for finding of what they want. So part of your success, in my eyes, is that you knew, or at least suspected, that and did very well in accommodating this market (niche). Of course, without decent SEO it wouldn’t have worked for you.
I believe for us less successful Symbiots it is important to remember that there is a lot more to it than just SEO. SEO gets us “in the contest”, as you said. But is it the “right contest”? Is it there where our potential buyers are? How can we learn about that? Unfortunately, there is no Yoast or online score test for that important part beyond SEO.It is just too bad that there is only assumptions and guesswork available for all those SEO issues.
Take this image for example: http://www.imagoborealis.com/image/northern-lights-at-morning-dawn/
Yoast shows green allover with 3 single items left yellow or orange.
Focus keyword is: “Northern Lights morning dawn”
I get an allover “B” on http://seositecheckup.com. Some test item results are definitely wrong. Others seems plausible. What strikes me is the
“Most Common Keywords Test”. It says:Explain This It appears that you can further optimize the density of your keywords above. Various sources indicate that a safe keyword density should range between 2-4% for your targeted keywords.
license – 19 times – 2.42%
photo – 16 times – 2.04%
borealis – 15 times – 1.91%
photos – 13 times – 1.66%
yukon – 12 times – 1.53%That doesn’t look at all as focused as Yoast would like me to believe.
Yet, when I google “Northern Lights morning dawn” I see rank 2 in image search and first on page 3 in web search.
What conclusions should I draw from this? What “How to fix” recommendations should I follow?
And most important: will it lead to sales? – Images like this sell reasonably well on the micros, but on http://www.imagoborealis.com nothing so far…
So is it wise to just push SEO further or would a simpler license, a simpler site, paid adverts, a blog, [fill in any idea] make the difference? – Even after this very interesting and constructive discussion here I still feel mostly lost 😕 .
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
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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. 😕
No, I think my account got transferred from the old forum. Only thing I noticed was that I lost my avatar in the transfer.
Are you sure it was a space sign in Ron’s username? – I have a space in it, too. Everything seems (?) to be fine. Should I be worried, now? 😕
Well done, Dennis! Your post is very inspiring. Your success is proof that SEO and providing images for a market niche in demand can work for individual artists.
Leo has done a tremendous job providing us an online sales platform with top-notch SEO build-in. Now every Symbiostocker who wants to be successful has to use its SEO power. Unfortunately, that’s a lot of work. I try hard with my photography. All of my uploaded images show at least yellow and an increasing portion of currently around 10% green on Yoast. I can see results in google search ranks and increasing incoming traffic from google and other search engines. However, it looks like that my images that sell best on the micros (my niche) meet the fiercest competition in search ranking (and I am not even talking about the agencies!). It looks to me that I’d have to up my SEO even more to make my most marketable images being found, seen and hopefully bought as well.
Your post and this discussion provide some good pointers. Thank you all at lot!As I said over on MSG, please use http://www.imagoborealis.com. It’s all fresh
I am into Symbiostock for the looong haul. We can’t change this game in a few month. If we can at all it will be a marathon. So better save some breath and strength for later.
Sounds good to me! Let’s try that 😀
This random broadcast doesn’t make any sense at all. If this forum must twitter it should be something like “the post of the day”, which of course means someone has to look after it. Or maybe it’s possible to implement a voting system, like “Vote for the post of the day award” or something like that, and the post/threat with most votes gets send out automatically on Twitter. – Just brainstorming…