Google SEO Antics - Revenge of The Algorithms

Well, Google's at it again! Back in September of 2008 (here), I wrote all about how the good people in the bowels of the Googleplex, in an effort to improve peoples' search results, had tweaked the algorithm just enough that a number of photographers websites fell off the radar. This was happening to a number of photographers across providers, platforms, and hosting companies. This is akin to a "rolling blackout" where whole areas of a geographic region get hit with a loss of power, in a coordinated manner to reduce the load on the power grid. However, in this case, entire sections of the web are getting lost in Google purgatory while the algorithm experts decide if you should return to your "little spot of heaven" or be banished to the hell that is beyond page 3 in the search results.

If you're in that purgatory right now, you're feeling the heat in the form of a fear that you will lose clients, and perhaps never return to your previous search-engine-return-position (SERP). Know this - you are not alone, it's just your time to feel the pain of the "rolling blackout" of Google's dominance.

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Make no mistake, friends, about you marketing efforts - SEO is definitively not a "set it and forget it" effort. Get out there and build quality links from relevant places to your website. Switch out your images with new ones - all of these things (and others) are what makes Google happy - fresh content that has inbound links from trusted sources.

If you did a half-hearted SEO effort with your provider, regardless of who they are, and have just let it go - you have little to blame but yourself. If you did a decent SEO effort, realized the results, and rested on your laurels - you have little to blame but yourself. SEO is an ongoing effort that you must stay on top of if you are to experience good results over the long term. Blaming Google or your provider isn't a solution. Am I aware of users of certain providers (NeonSky, liveBooks, etc) experiencing this? Yup. Are they to blame? Nope. Just like some crappy self-built-by-your-college-age-nephew website can rank #1 and then fall off the map, so too, can a $3,000 premium-brand website that was ranked #1 vanish. Your success is up to you.

Since both Rob Haggart's sites, along with those of liveBooks (disclaimer - liveBooks advertises here on PBN) have "shadow" sites showing an HTML edition to be more easily spiderable than a Flash site, let's discuss the concern about what some are worried about called Google's "duplicative content" penalty. On the face of this, it's a flawed argument, because if Google could spider the Flash edition of the site, then there would be no need for the HTML version, right? Thus, Google is blind to the Flash version of a tricked-out site and only sees the HTML version, so how can Google see, for example, celebrity portrait photographer Brian Smith's flash site (here) when it can only read his html version of his site (here)? The answer is, they only see the HTML version.

If you're looking for someone to handle your SEO for you, I encourage you to contact two people I trust on SEO matters, William Foster (a Sacramento-based photographer who does SEO consulting), or Blake Discher (a Detroit-based photographer that also does SEO consulting).

Lastly, unless your name is Richard Avedon, Annie Liebovitz, or some other celebrity photographer, no one is searching for you by name - they are searching for you by geographic region/area, or by your specialty - maryland portrait photographer, or maryland wedding photographer, for example. So, don't go gauging your visibility by a vanity search, unless you're vain.

Related:
Search Engines And Your Website (9/26/08)

It's Google's World, You're Just A Small Part Of It (11/28/07)

SEO - Wild Wild West or Reason and Logic? (3/4/08)

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Deliberate Practice With the Intent To Fail

Today on an assignment, I had a chance to hear David Shenk talk about practicing your craft to succeed. Shenk, author of the new book, The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong, talked about cellist Yo Yo Ma, and his path to success. The importance of the 10,000 hour rule should not be under-estimated, but Shenk had more to say.

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Shenk talked about the notion of practicing with an intent to push yourself to the point of failure so that you can embrace and learn from failure, and what it feels like. Further, you can press on, and perhaps not fail at the same point, the next day, or the next day after that. Eventually, much like the pre-concieved notion that no human could run a mile in under four minutes (here) you can break through and past failures, to succeed like no one else has before.

So, just when you think that you have practiced you craft (whether lighting, negotiating, framing an image, and so on) hard enough, press on. Know that there are other photographers out there, pressing on, again, and again, and again. When you're practicing push, push, push. That said, when it's show time (on an assignment for example) is not the time to push to the point where you fail in your deliverable. However, once you've got the deliverables you promised in the bag, there's nothing that says you can't take some additional time to do something even more fabulous than you had previously produced, and maybe blow the client out of the water.

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Seliger - Art With No Strobes

Sometimes, for even the most talented of photographers, no strobes are necessary. Heck, not even added continuous light sources (besides the sun). Such is the case in this video from GQ behind the scenes with Mark Seliger.



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Speedlink: Stop the $200 Assignment!

Usually, I wait to post a bunch of speed links, but this one's worth standing on it's own!

• Stop Accepting $200 Assignments! - This article is spot on and worth the read!

Now go! Check 'em out, and come back soon!

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First Amendment - Highly Overrated?

Below is a video clip that's 22 minutes in length, but don't bother watching it all. Advance to 15:37 and watch 5 seconds of it, where White House Chief of Staff tells a reporter for Washington Life Magazine "The First Amendment is highly over-rated" while he arrived at The White House Correspondents Association Dinner in 2009. Over-rated? Really? Was Rahm joking, or is this what he really believes?


(Apologies that apparently you have to wait for the entire video file to load before you can advance to that point in the video.)

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Reminder: NPPA's Northern Short Course THIS WEEK!

For the last decade, I've supported the National Press Photographers Association Northern Short Course as a presenter. This year, for three days, we'll be in New Brunswick, New Jersey (exit 9!) March 11th through 13th. I present on, what else? - the business of photography. Here's the entire program, which includes William Foster on social marketing/websites, Paula Lerner on multimedia, Tom Sperduto on lighting, courses on audio, Final Cut Pro, and portfolio reviews, and more!. Check it out! (I blogged about it last year too here).

Come for a day, or really treat yourself and come for all three days - it is, HANDS DOWN, the most cost-effective solution to learn all about lighting/multimedia/Final Cut/etc.

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CoolTech - iPhone Emergency Solution

How many times have you been without a much-needed recharging solution with your non-battery-swapable iPhone? For me, it is all to often, and I just can't risk losing a call because of a dead iPhone. So, friend and colleague, virginia corporate headshots photographer Mark Finkenstaedt had a solution. Mark did all the hard work doing this testing, and here are the results.

This battery, by ebay seller scr-boya (other listings here) lists the following features:

-Capacity:1900mAh
-100% Brand New
-Dimension:67mm X 62mm X 15mm
-Input:5V 0.8A
-Output: 5V 0.5A
-Charge time: About 4 hours
-Colour: Black only

At right is one of the four of mine that I won, on eBay, for $0.99 each, plus $8.99 shipping (each!) from China. So how long does it take for the battery charge to fully charge?

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When the 10% battery warning indicator came on, the battery was installed, and below is the timeline for it to charge:
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At $10 per unit (including shipping, and I tried getting more, but no response), I can justify buying several (which I did) and now I have a backup in my car, camera bag, and two rotating on chargers in the office. The seller shipped both to Mark and I (from China) without any problems, so if you're looking for a great solution, this one one gem that has already saved me from a dead iPhone battery. There are other sellers on eBay with variations on this item, so you might find others that work just as well, but so far so good with this seller!

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World Press Photo - Disqualification of Image

For World Press Photo 2010, the bar has been raised to a high level with the new requirement of the submission of RAW image files for review alongside any image that the judges suspected were excessively manipulated. Below is the collection of images for review:

The DQ'd entrant, Stepan Rudik wrote over at PetaPixel (here) in part "...I do NOT argue the decision of the jury...." and then he goes on to attempt to justify the alteration he made, and then hopes " I believe this explanation is important for my reputation and good name as a reportage photographer."

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Doubtful.

A quick search on Google for "Stepan Rudik" turns up all manner of listing regarding this issue, so, good luck getting your good name back.

Rudik cannot hold out this image as reportage, but rather, as an illustration. He created digitally what he wanted to see and not what was actually captured. Did the manipulation change the content of the image? No, I think that the crop did (yes, allowable), and he really mis-treated the image with the excessive vignetting, over-contrast, and so on. Frankly, I think he did more of a disservice to the honesty of the image with the over-manipulation than he did with the removal of the shoe, but, unfortunately, that over-manipulation seems to have been allowable.

Rudik damaged not just the integrity of the image, but of himself and his honesty, but also the integrity of photojournalism.

Digital manipulation is going to be a very slippery slope, and the honesty of what we capture must be a paramount consideration, not chasing the self-aggrandizement in a photo contest.

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