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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Getting your photos onto Page 1 of Google search results
Phillip Davies, Photographer
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Garden City | NY | US | Posted: 1:34 PM on 11.02.09 |
->> This works for sporting event shooters as well as those shooting daily news stories they are trying to market.....
Over the past few months, you may have noticed that Google started putting news results into their page 1 search results. So if your content is indexed by Google News, there is a good chance you may show up on page 1 of Googles' regular search results as well.
If you have an independent Web site or are selling content on photo services like SmugMug, or other sites that don't get indexed by Google news, you may want to consider increasing your traffic (and hopefully sales) by getting your content into Google news.
As an example, If you do a search for [ Pope Milton football ] on Google, you will get 3,470,000 results, but the photo at the top of the first page (as of 12:30PM EST Monday) is from the October 30th game between Pope and Milton. The Sports Shooter photographer that posted this has included a link pointing back to his site from the news release. That photo will remain on page 1 of Google search results for that term for anywhere from a day to several weeks, driving customers and traffic back to the photographers Web site.
Here is one from a playoff soccer game I shot on Saturday, http://bit.ly/WdJo7 . For the term [Garden City Soccer] out of 29,800,000 results on Google search, ( as of 12:30PM EST) our photo is on page 1 and the news release links back to the rest of the photos on Newsphoto.com . In one day that release has been viewed 90 times with most of those referrals coming from Google and yes, we did get sales from the opposing team because they found us from a Google search.
There are a number of variables that make this work. Sometimes you have to tweak your release a bit to get it indexed. A few help tips..
1. Include two good keywords in the filename of the image.
2. Submit the image in JPEG format with a maximum height or width of 300 pixels at 72 dpi. Sharpen it and keep the file size under 50 pixels.
3. The copy for the release needs to contain at least 175 words or Google news won't pick it up.
4. If at all possible, include the rosters for both teams. Yes this does count towards your 175 words. People search for their names, so this gives them another way to find your photos. You DO NOT need to include the #'s if you feel that there are possible privacy issues running names and number on your Web site.
5. At the end of the release, include an outline about you and your business and contact info. You can see what I use at the end of this release: http://bit.ly/45zqWa
If you want to give it a try, post your news release along with a photo to Bignews.biz. There is no charge for this service. You can create an account for free here: http://www.bignews.biz/?go=signup
Drop me an email (phil@newsphoto.com) after you post it and I'll review it for you and if it needs some SEO work, I'll let you know before I publish it.
Phil |
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Phillip Davies, Photographer
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Garden City | NY | US | Posted: 2:15 PM on 11.02.09 |
| ->> woops, in #2 above it should say "keep the file size under 50Kb" not 50 pixels :-) |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | US | Posted: 4:13 PM on 11.02.09 |
->> Dude...just seems like a lot of effort (???) to sell some prints from a game. I'm guessing the players already know who you are right? Seems like it would be more effective for them to friend you on facebook or for you to just collect email addresses and send them a link to your site.
Unless you think that Uncle Larry in Seattle is sitting around googling his nephew (in New York) and just wishing that he could find a picture on google that was available for him to purchase. Not likely.
If you say you've seen an increase in sales, I believe you. But direct marketing seems to work so much better for us.
Delane |
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Phillip Davies, Photographer
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Garden City | NY | US | Posted: 6:30 PM on 11.02.09 |
->> Delane,
The players on the teams we cover know us very well. We are all over their facebook pages and tweets and I would not be surprised if most of the varsity teams we cover have our watermarked photos as their cellphone wallpaper. For these kids we're a way to illustrate their social networking.
Over the years we've found that it's important to maintain a good relationship with the kids, but it's their parents, relatives and the schools that make the majority of the purchase decisions.
Yes, we do direct marketing too. We hand out cards and display banners at many of the events we shoot, but this web marketing thing goes a bit further. The idea here is to reach the buyers who were not at the game and the parents, relatives and friends of the players on the opposing team who are not familiar with us. And if for some reason they lose our card or can't remember the name of our Web site all they have to do is type in the event or their kids name and they find us.
We often get calls from dads and moms at work who are browsing the Web and found pictures of their son or daughter on our site. They were not at the game and their kid did not show them the card we handed out at the game.
In regard to the time involved in posting these releases/stories for each game, what I outlined above sounds daunting, but I can probably put one up in 15 minutes or less. We keep the rosters for the schools we cover in a digital format. So all we need to do is copy the opposing teams' roster and a few stats from each game into the caption/release and were done.
To make things even easier, I've got Newsphoto.com automated so that the server automatically feeds the captions/releases from each event we cover, to BigNews.biz and Google news.
Like you and everyone else in this business, I'm just looking for one more way to increase my sales. :-)
Phil |
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Phillip Davies, Photographer
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Garden City | NY | US | Posted: 2:15 PM on 11.03.09 |
->> Here is another photo from an SS member that was fed to Google News from Bignews.biz. If you do a search for [Milton Football] on Google search you get http://bit.ly/U28t8
His photo is the only photo that comes up on page 1 of the search results (as of 1:56PM EST Tuesday) out of 4,970,000 results. He's also placing well for the term [Milton Eagles Football], also on page 1 with a photo. http://bit.ly/49EkOn
As you can see from his article/release, he's produced some unique content and has a good photo to illustrate the article. I'd be curious to hear how long this took him to post.
Another point of interest is that if Google News sees two or more articles with photos on the same topic, Google will test the images against each other to see which one gets a better click thru rate. The more popular image will then become the default image for that story.
Phil |
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