Shozam Community

As far as I can tell there is no way to add metatags to each image in my gallery. Does anyone have an idea on how to do this? I thought perhaps the camera tags would work but they dont.

Hi goo166,

I'm assuming because you know what a meta tag is, you know a little about a web site structure. I believe there are two ways you can do this, 1. go to the index.htm of your "Web Site" an with notepad enter the meta tags into the Index.htm file. Do this Only If you know what I'm talking about. 2. You could open the Index.htm in Shozam and enter the data there. If you have multiple galleries you would have to do this in the Index of each gallery. I prefer to have them in the index for my site rather than the individual galleries. Again I caution, if your not familiar with HTML programing disregard this whole message.

Hi Ted. Thanks for your nice reponse. I am very aware of metatags, HTML, and web design and I am an expert at the use of tags. But putting them on the index page only tells google about the home page,

If you want to get the actual images indexed (which I have done at my site www.whatbird.com so I know how to do it) you need metatags on each page that shows an image. So that is what I want to do, add tags to individual image pages. I know its possible becuase Shozam lets you add camera tags to the image pages, and it should allow metatags but apparently they did not see a need for them, probably did not anticipate people would want to index there individual images.(I can't be the only person wanting this).

The only way I see how it might be done is to write a program to go through my entire gallery and find each page and insert the meta tags, keywords and descriptions, which would be a lot of work.

 Mitch

Goofy166, There is another thread on thr forum just 2 lines down that addresses this i think. You can add the meta tags under tab 5.

That thread is full of a great deal of mis information. I added my response at the bottom to try and bring some clarity to the subject. Bottom line is you cant add unique keywords or unique descriptions to indiviual pages and that is what Google needs to index your images. I would be very suprised to find a single Shozam image indexed highly by google given the way the program is set up.

Goofy,

You can enter for each image:

• Short caption (in Step 2 --> Text tab)
• Long description (in Step 2 --> Text tab)

You can enter for each album:

• Album description (in Step 2 or Step 3)

You can enter for each gallery:

• Description meta-tag (in Step 5 --> Tag tab)
• Keywords meta-tag (in Step 5 --> Tag tab)

Shozam generates the following page types:

• Intro
• Index
• Slideshow
• QuickView
• Large
• Details
• Details All
• Map (image)
• Map (gallery)
  

Here is how Shozam is set up to automate the optimization with the information users have already entered into the program. For each page, here is what the program uses to fill in the Description and Keywords meta-tags:

I believe the spec calls for the Album description to be used for the Description meta-tag in "album pages" like Details All and Slideshow but it looks like the Album description is not currently used; if so this is a bug. I will look into it. If you have a feature request on how you would like to see this functionality supplemented, please add it to the Wishlist forum. Maybe have a Keywords box in Step 2 --> Text tab. Note that Google doesn't pay attention to keywords any longer since these have been abused so widely but I think Yahoo rankings may still be affected by them. Also be aware that it may take a while for a Web site to be ranked properly. Google pushes down artificially new sites that do not have a "history"; it can take up to 6 months for rankings to follow their regular ranking algorithms.

We have updated the appropriate program help file with this information:
http://www.helpconsole.com/Shozam/default.aspx?page=5Gallery-Tag.aspx

Thank you for posting this description of where things are used. I am doing an extensive analysis of the files to see if things are as you describe and to find out exactly how the description, short caption, long description and keywrods are presented. I am doing this because I know what Google looks at and what it ignores.

Can you please give the file names and locations for these page types so I can make sure I am looking at the right files?

You said Google doesn't pay attention to keywords any longer. That is not my understanding. Can you tell me what proof you have this is the case? From what I can tell empirically keywords are still very important for Google, as are ALT tags. For ranking its relavancy that is important to google and that is determined by many factors, such as where keywords are found in text on the page, how many times, etc. Its there so called secret sauce. It does not appear we have any control over these factors in Shozam. There are sites that will help you make sure your pages are set up to be Google friendly, the best is webceo. Run the index.htm file that Shozam generates though there analysis - it finds lots of issues that make it less likely Google will index your Shozam site.

Your are correct that Google can take a long time to index a site - but once it does its extremely important that you have your metatags done correctly.

Where may I ask is the title metatag? I could not find it.

Thanks

Mitch

Mitch,

The latest Shozam update version 1.0.1.15 now uses the Album Description as intended. Highlighted in yellow are changes from the previous implementation:

I read about Google not paying attentions to the keywords tags in several places though I do not have a specific reference to cite. My understanding on the "secret sauce" (which as you know, is a moving target) is that Google parses the actual readable text and based on that it creates its own map of "keywords" that is more relevant than what the user stuffs in the tag. So one would be served by inserting the keywords they care about in the actual text of the page. In any case, the keyword tag probably cannot hurt either...

I don't have a mapping of the various page types in teh file structure but it is pretty obvious if you look at the tree structure. For quick verification I find it easier to navigate in the Web browser to each page type and just do a "View source" from there.

I am talking about the page title tag (rather thna meta-tag) that is between <title> and </title> in the Html Head.

Latest version update 1.0.1.16 does also fix the Image Map Page to have the image's 'Long description' used for the page's 'Description' meta-tag. So here is where we are:

The corresponding help file has been updated accordingly:
http://www.helpconsole.com/Shozam/default.aspx?page=5Gallery-Tag.aspx

I've heard that theory about keywords as well but there are so many sites that score positioning based on the keywords you select that I am not sure what to believe. Google themselves say that keywords are important, but Googlespeak has become a somewhat imperfect source :)

Nice to see such a fast update, and I am glad I was able to point out some short commings and what I guess was a bug.

I am not sure what has changed in the QuickView, I see the yellow highlight on messages and they looks the same.

Can you tell me where <title> tag gets its contents for the various possible sources.

Mitch

Mitch, no change to the QuickView Page. As detailed in the help files "Page Title tag: the program automatically uses the Gallery title that you entered in the Generate tab field, for the title tag for all your gallery pages."

I really want/need keywords on each page. There is no point to create easy/ways to sell unless you have visitors to your site.

Most other site builders offer the capability to add your keywords and meta-tags description to each page. Obviously shozam developed for images did not made into a priority. This improvement would make shozam a much more powerful sitebuilder.

So you are telling that at this point there is no way to code properly each page?

My thoughts on keywords:

I  believe that nothing else matters more then keywords  to bring in interested traffic. I have several sites, those with no keywords have no traffic, those with the proper keywords are pulling in visitors, business and money.

(Off course Goggle uses over 200 parameters which are guarded secrets, but they tell you the content is key)

Each page needs to have keywords for the search engines, compelling description for humans and content to match it.

 Okay, I'm no HTML wizard, SEO expert or anything of that nature but here's my thoughts on Search Engines like Google and Yahoo and what I've found out by a lot of trial and error. Over the amount of time that I've been using Shozam (which was from early beta) Google has indexed most of my gallery pages, Yahoo has indexed most of them and MSN, well what can I say, it's Microsoft (they don't seem to have done much of anything with it). For about a year I have been able to get #1 listing on Google with one of my keywords although it's not a search word many people use. In fact that term (scenescapes) fairly consistently fills most of the first page and second on a search. BUT, it changes all the time. The keyword Northwest has also gotten me first page rankings on Google along with Northwest Airlines who consistently get high rankings.

What I've learned about Google, all by trial and error, is nothing seems to be consistent. I track all my traffic, keywords, etc. with Google Analytics. I've found out some very strange things. First is the keywords people use that find my website although I'm not sure how. (Example: what do eagles eat, photograph mexico northwest railway) I have no clue what eagles eat, nor do I photograph mexico's railways). Single word searches seem to be a thing of the past so trying to figure out how people search is a real headache. I've read a lot of articles by "supposed" SEO experts and followed some of their advice and my rankings went down, traffic slowed to almost none, so I went back to my own way. I also use Google Alerts so I know when someone links to my site, or Google has picked up on new additions to my gallery, etc. From my own trial and error what I see is that keywords are important in a way, but more so, the title and description seems to be the big thing Google is after, along with backlinks, etc. I know that links I've gotten on other websites does bring a lot of my traffic, along with people who already know it's there. When I first got online with my site, Yahoo indexed it within a few days while Google took almost 6 months. Now Google appears to be indexing or at least picking up on new pages almost on a weekly basis. I know when I search on Google I get thousands of irrelevant links come up.

The main thing I've learned is that I'm tired of the migraines trying to get and keep #1 rankings on Google. With the millions of pages they index monthly it's kind of a losing battle. I guess my point is, at some point, Google and Yahoo will eventually index all of the Shozam pages.

 Just my thoughts.
 

I should point out that Google does not pay attention to keywords, that is the explicit ones in the meta-tags. These were and are too easy to manipulate so most search engines have given up on that aspect. Google use a 'black-box' algorithm to determine relevance and ranking so the exact formula is indeed not known but empirical testing can identify basic rules of thumb and reveal that Google has not paid any attention to meta-tag keywords for a long time. However, it does rely on the Title and Description meta-tags.

Google creates its own keywords extracted from the visible content on the page. That is why the most important thing is to have 'keyword stuffed' text on the page, using the short caption and long description in Shozam (Text tab in Step 2). Shozam also smartly uses those in the image pages for the Title/Description meta-tags.

If you want to go beyond what Shozam can do automatically and fine-time each page, the best thing to do is to use the HTML tab in Step 2 and add some pertinent headings that are again stuffed with the right keywords and placed in heading tags. For example:

<h1>Collection of Eagle Images</h1>
<h2>Birds in the wild - nature stock photography</h2>

This is what Google says:

• PageRank Technology: PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

  PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

• Hypertext-Matching Analysis: Our search engine also analyzes page content. However, instead of simply scanning for page-based text (which can be manipulated by site publishers through meta-tags), our technology analyzes the full content of a page and factors in fonts, subdivisions and the precise location of each word. We also analyze the content of neighboring web pages to ensure the results returned are the most relevant to a user's query.

Our innovations don't stop at the desktop. To give people access to the information they need, whenever and wherever they need it, we continue to develop new mobile applications and services that are more accessible and customizable. And we're partnering with industry-leading carriers and device manufacturers to deliver these innovative services globally. We're working with many of these industry leaders through the Open Handset Alliance to develop Android, the first complete, open, and free mobile platform, which will offer people a less expensive and better mobile experience.