I don't feel so bad now about having so few visitors now I've read this topic. Be careful of how you do your SEO though. (Search Engine Optimisation). If Google thinks you are trying to bypass one its many rules, you will get de-listed and it takes a lot of work to get re-listed. My previous sites have had many more hits.

I started a blog as well, not that I have much to say but to add another link to my Zenfolio site.

My Zenfolio page is listed by Google but you have to be very specific about what you search for, meta data seems irrelevant to Google.

I would be interested in suggestions on how to get the titles or subject matter into search engines from my Zenfolio site.

Thanks for starting this thread.

 There's nothing wrong with your pictures.  Have you let you friends and family know of your site?  Have you asked them to share the link with anyone they think might be interested?  Do you include the URL in your email signature?

 All these things helped me generate traffic to my Zenfolio site and I've been a member about a month including the free trial.  You don't have to make a pest of yourself but I'm sure there are people in your life who would visit your site if they knew about it.  Give it a try!  You do realize of that posting here got some visitors for you. I couldn't tell you your pictures were high quality if I hadn't paid a visit to your site.

I've spoken to the Zenfolio support team about search engine visibility and I have every confidence things WILL improve.  The issue trancends metatags and such.  The very first posting I made to the Zenfolio forums showed up in a Google search within 24 hrs of being posted.  I was astounded.  No such luck on my Zenfolio site however but I'm sure that will improve.  A forum like this and a hosting site are different animals and I believe that has something to do with the length of time it takes to be 'discovered' so to speak.

So don't give up.  I picked Zenfolio because I think my pictures benefit from the presentation here and I'm thinking most members feel the same way.

Thanks for your time!

http://georgejonesgallery.zenfolio.com

foto graphically fine art 

Zenfolio never said anywhere when I signed up that they were going to provide marketing for my page and work.

I've seen this misconception before. I have a friend who has set up websites for other artists and they seemed shocked that the interent didn't bring millions to their footsteps, as if being online was some sort of 24-hour worldwide commercial just for them.

It's not that easy guys and gals. YOU have to promote your work and website. The website is just a place to display your work to those you can attract. I use former client lists, list of visitors to my booth at shows, etc. I don't expect much in online sales really. Very few people sell photography from the web and then it's the low-end smaller prints. People want cheap.

Try selling original paintings online. I did...HA! Would you buy giant wall art of any form from a website? Anything over a certain size and dollar point they want and need to see in person.

Be more realistic.

Bart

stickware:

 Zenfolio is not designed to attract people to your photos. It is designed to sell your photos to people who are interested.  (ie clients, parents at sporting events you shoot, models...)

 If you want hits, put your photos on Flickr and upload to many groups.

or Zenfolio could just fix the issues with our galleries not being index correctly by search engines, implement all the normal features that most other site/script provide, like meta data, tagging images etc etc

People have first got to find your site and images before they can be interested to buy!

I hope they are reviewing this topic as its been discussed in a few different threads. 

 Somebody, please kill this thread!

I am the OP, and cant stand seeing it anymore!! 

We are reviewing all thread, and I think I've mentioned that all of the things mentioned here on our radar. It is true, that you have to dedicate effort to marketing your site if you want to get some meaningful traffic from search engines. This involves buying keywords, promoting your work on blogs and forums, partnering with other sites, and so on. We will improve keywording, metadata, and indexability of photo pages, but this will not be enough to get enough exposure. 

With that, let me close this thread as it became defocused. 

I post my new web URL on my busniess cards, backs of prints I sell and on every image I load on PBase, Flickr, etc.

Good luck!

 Your photos are absolutely beautiful

Vitas [Zenfolio]:

We are reviewing all thread, and I think I've mentioned that all of the things mentioned here on our radar. It is true, that you have to dedicate effort to marketing your site if you want to get some meaningful traffic from search engines. This involves buying keywords, promoting your work on blogs and forums, partnering with other sites, and so on. We will improve keywording, metadata, and indexability of photo pages, but this will not be enough to get enough exposure.

I'm new to zenfolio, but not building web sites. Beyond driving traffic to ads, and specific approaches zenfolio staff can improve its ultimately the "content" of your page is still the most important thing for both people finding getting past your main page into your images and for "SEO". There's a lot of voodoo and magic behind "SEO" and getting good rankings in search engines, but when I see galleries linked to by various people in this thread that are relying on "keywords" on your images or galleries alone I think a lot of the opportunity for people finding your work is missed and its an area you can help out directly.

Make sure to use descripting image, gallery and collection titles and captions. Fill out a good bio and use all the places you can to drop keywords and synonomous words into real context in the pages [without being obnoxious of course]. You're not likely to ever be the top Google result for "sunset"... but if you have some legitimate text content for the galleries maybe you'll find you start making the top few pages for more seemingly random phrases like "orangey sunset" or "atlantic ocean sunset"

Sorry about kicking this dead old horse...

I'm new here and I'm a bit surprise that my zf uploads wheren't showing in google. My flickr uploads normally show up with in hours (and they are a Yahoo company!)

What I think zf should do is start by providing a sitemap to google.

And fix whatever it is that stops google from crawling the site.

For now, I add a few shots from every session to flickr and add a link to zf. Works okay, but shouldn't be nessesary...

Your pages will be eventually indexed by Google. However, we have a few things in mind that will improve indexability and searchability of visitor pages. These enhancements are on our schedule.

Hmmm... I have been a Zen Users for 3 years and I have galleries that have been up since the beginning.. all with keywords on both the gallery and individual photos. Yet, I don't find them with Google. So what is "eventually" ??

Personally, I think this is probably more about bandwidth...  I think Zen wants to focus on visitors whom have a higher likelihood of buying prints via there partners like Mpix. Sure there are tons of visitors who view the photos online and never buy a print... but my guess is, this is small by comparison to the amount of bandwidth that would be used if every Google, Yahoo, Etc search produced Zen results based on a Keyword search.
 
I quit holding my breath a long time ago…

I dunno.

From where I sit it looks to be a lot more about page construction then it is about bandwidth or some other highly devised visitor shaping scheme.

A lot of the 'fancier' stuff they do like image pagination that flows an item count that perfectly fits your browser window size is done dynamically with javascript. This has presentation benefits, but the fact that there are no images in the initial gallery HTML document that gets sent back is where some of the spidering gets choked up [check out a gallery page like this: view-source:http://shop.placenamehere.com/new-jersey-landscape-photos ]. This too is a little bit of a simplistic explanation, but it does hit more to the heart of the matter and why re-engineering these pages [perhaps to have a default number of items or to link to some other index page] is a bigger task then some might think.

I think placenamehere maybe on to something. I've wondered about why facebook couldn't find a photo on my pages to show as thumb when I tried to link to my galleries here.

Showing a simpler pages, with direct display of images, to spiders and scrapers, may be the easiest way to do it. But it may be a good idea to discuss it with google, as they aren't to crazy about presenting them with a different page when normal browsers get. But it should be okay, as long as the contents is the same. And is doesn't have to be pretty, as nobody will ever see it (unless they choose "show cashed" in google).

I've joined zf for two things (about five minutes after the announcement of the photobox print service): Private Events (weddings etc) and Public Events (concerts etc). Search Engine indexing is not an issue with Private Events, but for Public Events it's crusial.

I can post links to the Public Event galleries in all kind of places, but most people will simply go into Google and search for "faith no more roskilde photos". There where my gallery of those photos needs to show up...

I too am concerned about the amount of hits my site recieves on ZF, there must be something, I have 4 pages and this (ZF) is at the bottom of the list for hits, it doesnt even show when I do a google search at least not in the first few pages. Ross