[djpadavonaParticipant]

@chromaco wrote:

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.

You nailed it Chromaco. I believe a valid way to increase exposure to your images is to create things which people need, and promote them through social media sharing (rather than spamming your business card all day like some people do on Twitter). Some people are good at making Apps. Others are experts in graphic design and can offer information and services. And others are article writers. We all need to pick what we do best, and provide something that people need.

For instance if I write a blog article on how to use a Gimp tool, it had better be good enough that I would learn from it if I read it somewhere else. Get enough material out there, and people will link to you organically. That will bring up the rank of your entire page, including your images.

As if it were this easy, however. It is a lot of hard work, and you need to do a really good job at it, share it, grow a social network, and stay patient.

[djpadavonaParticipant]

@shazamimages wrote:

@djpadavona wrote:

…if a list of sites suddenly pop up, all pointing to each other, but few people outside the network is pointing at them, Google devalues the links and considers them a poor quality network.

How would Google determine if a site is in a “network” or not?

It’s pretty simple. You have 100 or so new sites pop up, and they all link to each other. That’s red flag #1. New sites shouldn’t have so many incoming links in most circumstances, and why are they all linking to each other?

But almost nobody outside of this loop is linking to them. Red flag #2. If there were real interest in these sites, more established sites would link to them.

There are some people on SEOMoz and ProBlogger who refuse to link to their older sites when they start a new one. The rule of thumb is to wait 3 to 6 months, so that it isn’t interpreted that you are starting new sites just to create incoming links for your old ones. It’s possible that they are being paranoid, and there is no definitive proof that Google looks that closely. My guess is that they do, and it is a real problem for this model.

[djpadavonaParticipant]

@Imago Borealis wrote:

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.

I am in it for the long haul, but I diversified my income stream. First off, my networked site is a disaster. Organic search has all but died, and I don’t even get referrals from other sites anymore (which tells me that they aren’t doing well either). I signed a 3 year deal with Bluehost. If I hadn’t I would certainly let the site die after Year 1.

So I stated a second site and decided to not network it, just for comparison purposes. I am following the same pattern – blog, promote, upload. Interestingly, this second site gets considerably more organic search volume than the (first) networked site.

I utilize Google Adsense on my blog pages. It won’t take too much more volume until the advertising from the blog literally pays for the hosting costs. Any image sales would then become icing on the cake. If I can get to that point, then I’ll keep the site indefinitely. The networked site isn’t worth saving, in my opinion.

[djpadavonaParticipant]

I am going to suggest something rather controversial, and that is that the network effect of Symbiostock may have hurt many sites. It has been theorized within the SEO community for years that if a list of sites suddenly pop up, all pointing to each other, but few people outside the network is pointing at them, Google devalues the links and considers them a poor quality network.

That’s not to say that linking together is a bad thing in the long run, or that my theory is the least bit correct. However I noticed with my site, and heard from several others, that search volume faded with time rather than grew despite the network.

I think it is important to get your name out there beyond the confines of the network, and (hopefully) generate some organic links back to you. If Google perceives that the only people who care about the network are people within the network, we aren’t going to rank. I’d be interested in any thoughts on this.

[djpadavonaParticipant]

One word of note. If you have applied rankings to your images, they will be erased by running the above procedure. In my case it wasn’t a big deal as I only had maybe 10 to 20 images with “1st” rankings. Just be aware of this, in case you have done a lot of image ranking.

[djpadavonaParticipant]

@Semmick Photo wrote:

On the Author tab, Just set it on disabled and then update all images. Update ALL existing images with new values? Caution!

It will apply all other settings as well though.

Yes, this is the correct procedure. Comments on all images are now turned off.

I have two lines of thought regarding SEO for image pages –

1) Active Comments will send a positive message to Google to rank the image page higher
2) Additional Words on the page will reduce the Page Focus

Honestly I believe #1 is more important, but since the comments are Spam then the debate becomes moot. Thanks Ron.

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