Attention fluther SEO experts... Does current Google read photo metadata and does my plan of action help natural SEO?

) April 16th, 2014

Hope someone can steer me in right direction…

First, how important is it that photo based web sites have full metadata embedded within in each picture? Let’s say a site with a couple thousand images on a couple of hundred Wordpress pages. If it would help, can the meta tags all be the same, or should they be different?

But the big question is about my plan of action, as described here:

I have, up and running, currently three web sites that fit the description above. I do not wish to share them here. They are client based. So each client has a photo thumbnail on front page, and half a dozen extra photos inside the posting.

I want to initiate a cooperation with each client to begin a linking campaign. So here’s how it will work, with the desire to promote natural SEO…

My company will create for each client, a Facebook page, and a Google+ account, in my company’s name. Yes, each will have an individual email account. That process will be part of the contract my clients sign with me. The client will have no control over the Facebook/Google+ account I create for them. My company controls it completely. Those accounts will have links to each client’s individual post on the Wordpress site. Don’t worry, these clients want, and are paying me to do this for them.

The clients, as a vested partner, are required to send notices out to their friends and family that they have new photos posted on our Wordpress site. New clicks are initiated from the Facebook/Google+ page and linked over to the Wordpress site. Each Facebook/Google+ account will have copy with keywords designed to teach the web where to go when those words are linked.

So assuming each client sends their FB/G+ links out, and that initiates clicks to the Wordpress site, would that help teach the web what my site is about, and naturally rise the SEO for those keywords?

Everything on the up and up. The clients understand completely what I’m doing and want me to do it. Nothing hidden. And this has nothing to do with their own personal FB/G+ accounts. My account will not be linked to theirs. But theirs may be linked to mine, at their option.

Any ideas?

Thanks.

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2 Answers

Hi,

I think this is several questions in one.

Firstly. EXIT metadata in images I believe Google can and does read but does not currently contribute towards page ranking in any way. Alt tags and text on the same.

Other meta data or rich snippets that help Google to understand the content on your page will have more of an effect on page rank or how your page appears in listing though. For example on the WordPress site if you have metadata that indicates who the author is and links it with their g+ account.

Inbound links will help improve page rank as the more inbound links the more important your website will seem, however, there are a few things to consider.

1) Google has to be able to see the link – must be on a public all viewable page that requires no login and Google has to be indexing that page
2) The ranking of the page linking to you. If it is also a newly formed page with no credibility it will have much less value than a popular well established site. You do not gain Facebook credibility or page rank for a page you put on there.
3) the text on the destination page is more important than the text that links to it. If the link text says “best holiday home deals” but the destination page is totally different topic or doesn’t use any of those words do not expect to rank highly for those keywords or search term.

The best thing you can do is make sure that the text is visible to Google and your users (so spamming keywords in metadata won’t help) and marked up semantically and with more detailed meta data that help identify the content of your page rather than just adding in keywords.

Hope this helps

kullervo (785

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