I know there have been a lot of threads on this topic generally (including an active one from earlier today), but I haven't seen one directly on point so here comes another one: 

Apparently, many ZF users have been able to get their sites indexed by the major search engines, but many other users have not.  I have not had success to date getting my ZF site (www.eaglerockphotography.com) indexed, and would prefer not to have the create and update a blog, facebook page or the like in order to accomplish this.  I'd be more than willing to submit a sitemap to the search engines as well, but ZF isn't there yet (a point well documented in these forums).

The ZF staff advised me that posting on external websites would speed up the process, and I've been doing this for awhile now on forums like photo.net (including links to my site with my posts) but obviously it hasn't worked yet.  I'm wondering if anyone has been able to get their ZF site indexed solely by posting on other websites, and if so, which ones you've posted on.  

Thanks in advance!

eaglerock:

I know there have been a lot of threads on this topic generally (including an active one from earlier today), but I haven't seen one directly on point so here comes another one: 

Apparently, many ZF users have been able to get their sites indexed by the major search engines, but many other users have not.  I have not had success to date getting my ZF site (www.eaglerockphotography.com) indexed, and would prefer not to have the create and update a blog, facebook page or the like in order to accomplish this.  I'd be more than willing to submit a sitemap to the search engines as well, but ZF isn't there yet (a point well documented in these forums).

The ZF staff advised me that posting on external websites would speed up the process, and I've been doing this for awhile now on forums like photo.net (including links to my site with my posts) but obviously it hasn't worked yet.  I'm wondering if anyone has been able to get their ZF site indexed solely by posting on other websites, and if so, which ones you've posted on.  

Thanks in advance!

 

Interesting! I read your post and thought about the new MS search engine, Bing. Just a while ago I typed a query in Bing, George Jones Fine Art Photography, and my Zenfolio site was returned as the very first non-sponsored link on the page! The next two links were for my blog which I established per suggestions from Zenfolio support. Unfortunately I have a rather common name and there's a substantial celebrity with the same name so that may influence my success, or lack thereof, in finding a place in the first pages of returned listings.

Bing has only been 'live' for a couple of months maybe but they've already crawled Zenfolio. Now I'm more confused. Is the 'problem' with Zenfolio or Google? Maybe it's just that Bing is most likely still building the initial index. I am really happy they have found Zenfolio so soon! Lot's of people will probably be trying it out so that can only be good for our community. Here's a link to the results page that was returned from Bing.

As many others have I asked about Zenfolio members getting access to the metatags for their pages and have been told by Zenfolio support that there is more to getting search engine hits than the right metatags. I don't doubt there are many issues involved that are way beyond my expertise in this area but it seems a bit odd that the first 'hit' I got on my name and photography returned a link to a Zenfolio forum post I made barely 48 hours prior. It would still be many weeks before I'd get a link to my site via Google.

Hopefully the next Zenfolio maintenance scheduled for the 25th of this month will bring some improvements in this area and more visitors to our sites!

Thanks for your time!

George Jones Gallery

foto graphically fine art

eaglerock,

Here's your starting point.  go to google and type (without the double quotes) "site:eaglerockphotography.com" and that will show you every page on your site that is currently indexed on google.  (actually, as of this writing, you are not listed at all).

So, go to www.google.com/addurl/ and enter your website information there.  That will submit your site to the google search engine.  won't happen immediately, but this is the starting point.  Then go to yahoo.com, aol.com, msn.com and do the same.  You'll probably find the site submission pages easier if you do a search like 'submit site to yahoo.com' or similar.  Sometimes you will see a link at the bottom of the search engine pages.

Once your page is indexed, then all the linking, posting on forums (searching for eaglerockphotography.com now will show your posts on zenfolio forum) will start to pay off for you.

Thank you both for your replies.

Kevin - I submitted my URL to the search engines, so hopefully some of my pages begin to get indexed in the next few weeks.  Also, thanks generally for all your feedback in these forums.  ZF should have you on its payroll (if they don't already) or at least comp you a Pro account.

Bill

Bill,

Thank you!  ZF doesn't have me on the payroll, I just mainly enjoy helping people whenever I can so I do this in my free time.  And with the job market such as it is everywhere, especially for those in manufacturing in Rockford, IL, I have plenty of free time lately.

(Actually Zen has been begging me to join the team, but I've told them I HAVE to have an Aston Martin DB9 as a company car... in charcoal grey...  so talks have 'stalled' a bit.)  hehehe  (just kidding!  all of it!  just kidding!)

I do want to say though that I feel ZF is an excellent company serving up an excellent product.  There are other options out there, and everyone has their strengths and shortcomings, and a person has to decide what is best for them, but I am extremely happy with the service I have seen given and that I have received from zenfolio, and am very happy to give my support to the company and the community here.  :)

(remember Alex and Vitas... charcoal gray, and lets go with the full-leather interior!)   :)

Kevin Thompson:

Thank you!  ZF doesn't have me on the payroll, I just mainly enjoy helping people whenever I can so I do this in my free time.  And with the job market such as it is everywhere, especially for those in manufacturing in Rockford, IL, I have plenty of free time lately.

Hi Kevin,

I just want to add my thanks to you for sharing your experience with the Zenfolio membership. Not only on this topic but many others.

It sure helps because you can't have too many sources of useful information in tackling web marketing in times like these.

May you have continued success!

George Jones

George Jones Gallery

foto graphically fine art

 I hope you're successful with the Aston Martin because I think you have answered every question I have posted thus far.........so here's another one for you:

Do we have the ability to verify our  zenfolio website with Google webmaster tools? If so, HOW do I paste the tag or add the HTML? I quickly verified my other web site    and am very frustrated with the inability to verify the zenfolio site.

Thanks

scalderbank

http://www.naturalimagesbyscalder.com 

Google webmaster tools is an oft requested feature and not available at this time.  Something i would like to see as well.  I believe it is something that will be implemented at some point but if, I don't know when.

You can implement google analytics, which will help you to see what is going on with people viewing pages on your site however... you can find that in edit view by going to preferences, and then visitor tracking.

and I think if I got the Aston Martin, well I don't know how much trouble I'd be in...  I'm sure I wouldn't be getting any work done!  hehehe

I found you an Aston Martin ZF might make a compromise on. Click Here

 I don't know if it's much help but I submitted my site to http://selfpromotion.com/

firedog:

I found you an Aston Martin ZF might make a compromise on. Click Here

ya know.. I kinda like it!  give up a little on 'clean lines' but make it up in gas mileage I'll bet!  :)

I'm having a similar, but slightly different problem.  I have my Zenfolio pages at prints.stephen.com and my website at www.stephen.com.  I also have my Zenfolio home set to www.stephen.com.  This apparantly makes Google upset and causes none of my prints.stephen.com pages to be indexable and at the same time damages the Google Page Rank of www.stephen.com

I think I probably need to find a solution, or eventually give up on Zenfolio.  Not increasing my visibility is one thing.  But actually hurting it is a deal breaker.

right now, "prints.stephen.com" directs to your site at www.stephen.com, not to your zenfolio site.  so if you submit http://prints.stephen.com to google for indexing, it will be unable to index your zenfolio site because it will not be directed to your zenfolio site.

you have something setup wrong in redirecting the domain.  once you correct that, then I'm sure it will work better for you.

Nothing about having and using a Zenfolio site will keep google from indexing your site.

I have it setup correctly using the feature of Zenfolio that lets me use my own homepage as Home.  So it is natural that Google will not index prints.stephen.com.  However, Google will ALSO not index prints.stephen.com/all or prints.stephen.com/2009, etc.

In addition, Page Rank has been bleeding away from www.stephen.com since I set it up.  Because of the timing, and the fact that nothing else has changed, I've concluded that this is because Google is skeptical of prints.stephen.com

It appears that when I use a Custom Homepage, Zenfolio does not send visitors to that page when they click my name or 'Home'.  Instead, ZF appears to send visitors to the root page of my subdomain and then send a redirect telling browsers that page hase been permanently changed to the page I selected as my custom homepage.  This has the effect of telling Google that my ZF subdomain is deprecated and no longer valid.  A side effect of this is that Google holds it against any site that links to my ZF subdomain. Google crawls my ZF pages, tells me the number of pages crawled and then reports that there are no pages on the site.

ZF should simply send visitors to the desired Custom Homepage without sending them first to the root of the subdomain and without the 301 redirect.