Adding the right text in the right place will make your pictures visible on the Internet

Since there are so many photographers and photography websites it is very hard to get your pictures noticed on the internet. You may really be a very talented and experienced photographer and you may indeed have many great pictures. But how to you get the word out on the internet? How do you get your pictures noticed? What do you do to have your pictures show up in an internet search like Google, Yahoo or Bing? Fortunately there are some steps that you can take so that your pictures become “visible”. Read on and see what I have found out about making my pictures “visible” on the internet.

Without text your pictures are dead on the internet

This is the basic principle about making your pictures known on the internet. I realized pretty quickly that search engine robots have no idea what is in the pictures I publish on the internet. I can have a gorgeous sunset picture in Monterey Bay, and it can be the best sunset picture in the world (well…not really). However, software agents that come and scan your website where your picture has been published, well “they” have no way of interpreting the pixels and knowing it’s a great sunset picture. In order for this great sunset picture to become “visible” to software robots is to have text around the picture. In addition, it’s not any kind of text, but meaningful text that will make your pictures “live” well on the internet.

Unless you have meaningful text around your great pictures, your great pictures will remain “dead” on the internet.

With that being said, what kind of picture meta data do you have to add on websites where you publish your pictures?

If you publish your pictures on your own website the following things are the most important things that you can do to get your pictures noticed on the internet.

Add meaningful and specific description of your picture in the img HTML tag.

Have proper HTML tags for your images. This means that you fill in the alt and title attributes of the img tag. This is very important to the search engines when they index your pictures. So, make sure the text in your alt attribute really represents your pictures. On the other hand don’t overload it with keywords either because it will look like spam to search engines.
Example

<img src="https://somewhere.com/images/image1.jpg" 
  alt="Storm clouds gathering at sunset time in Monterey, California."
  title="Sunset can be an awesome time during a storm in Monterey, California."/>

Add specific description of your picture around the img tag.

While the alt attribute of the img tag is crucial for search engines, the text around your images is also very important. Make sure you have some text directly before the image or after the image. In addition, this text has to also be meaningful and it should describe the image in more detail. You can reuse the text in the alt attribute, or make small changes to it to add more details about the image. Make sure that the two texts do not contradict each other :) .
Example

<p>
Storm clouds are slowly gathering at sunset in Monterey, California.
<img src="https://somwhere.com/images/image1.jpg" 
  alt="Storm clouds gathering at sunset time in Monterey, California."
  title="Storm clouds are slowly gathering at sunset in Monterey, California."/>
</p>

Flash sites will keep your pictures dead because they are “closed” to the search engines.

After this discussion about having meaningful text around your pictures, Flash sites do not make much sense. It is very true that Flash sites look a lot better than regular HTML sites. It is also true that Flash sites will make your pictures look great and very professional. However, if your goals is to get your pictures indexed by Search Engines, then you have to leave your Flash sites alone, or create a regular HTML site in addition and point to your Flash site from it.

In summary, creating textual descriptions of your pictures is good not only for your readers but also it is extremely important for search engines. In essence, you are creating metadata about your image and placing it around your image on an HTML page.

Use a good photo gallery generator.

For best SEO results for your images use an HTML based photo gallery instead of a Flash gallery. I know I have already said this, but it’s very important. I use a gallery generator that gives me the flexibility to add descriptions for my images and also meaningful alt text. I love using Extreme Thumbnail Generator. I have looked at many other gallery generators, but this one is by far the most flexible. I can insert meaningful descriptions and Google ads as well.

Essentials for organizing your digital photos

Here are the essential products and services I have come to rely on for many years to keep my media collection organized and safe. Even though these are affiliate links, I wholeheartedly recommend them.

Excellent Lightroom and Picasa alternative. If you need a cheaper and simpler photo manager then ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac (save 20% until Feb 15) or ACDSee Pro for Windows (save $20 until Feb 15) is my preferred solution for organizing all my media. It has a very fast browser, great image editing and it's simple to use.

If you do a lot of image editing like I do, I recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC via the annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom has best photo editing capabilities even though it comes with a steeper learning curve. If you do image editing, Adobe Lightroom is my favorite.

I recommend Backblaze Cloud Backup for affordable & reliable unlimited cloud backup. I have been using Backblaze for backing up all pictures & videos for more than 5 years now. All my invaluable digital memories are safe and secure. This is the best solution especially if you have a large quantity of media files.

Use a reliable & affordable external hard drive for backing up everything on your computer. It is absolutely essential for keeping all your memories backed up and safe.

Start organizing now using detailed, step-by-step instructions and videos:
Personal Coaching (closed) Independent Course Private Lessons
Reference book Basics book Picasa book

YOURS FREE! 10 crucial steps most people miss when organizing their digital photos

Most people want to just organize their digital pictures and ignore these crucial steps right at the beginning...when they are shooting and transferring their digital pictures. Then they wonder why they can't organize their digital photos! Avoid most people's mistakes and start on the right track!

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