The advantage to allowing free use of images

In case they don't know the exact URL.

cdifoto wrote in post #13070379
Google just likes smugmug the way it likes POTN.

This is part of it. The relevancy of the link has a big influence on how much Google considers the link. A link to a photographer from another photography site has a ton more weight than one from a welding company.

cdifoto wrote in post #13070240
Are you sure they're hotlinking and not just snagging the pic and uploading it to their facebook?

Honestly, I have no clue. Like I said, it's a theory. But there appear to be several photogs in the US with the same business name, and for some reason I rank higher than most of them.

Mark1 wrote in post #13070339
if people know the name already, what is the point of googleing it?

To find samples of my work, contact information, pricing, packages, terms, etc. And if a client is really unhappy and uses the name when they complain about me to all their facebook friends, that might show up, too.

This is a part-time gig for me that has grown through word-of-mouth. I do not advertise, I have no visible studio and no published phone number. If a high school senior client refers me to her friend, that friend's mother will want to check me out first, and she won't have a URL.

You correctly point out that some people use Google like we used the Yellow Pages. For that purpose, search engine optimization and key words are important. But my business is not at that point.

While I believe what Curtis is saying is true, that more traffic to your site, probably regardless of hot linking vs just plain old visits, probably bumps your SEO up. And freely sharing from your site can surely bump up traffic. I, like Curtis, do my share of charity shoots especially for youth activities like dances, etc. where the youth themselves are providing free service (like hosting the dance for special needs people). When I do these I provide a slip of paper with the exact web address to their gallery on my site. And for the next few weeks traffic goes through the roof.

I've been doing these for a couple of years now and my business activity remains the same. I can only attribute one job that spun off from doing this, one. (Yes, I do know exactly how people find me to be their photographer for everything I shoot.)

The other example is that for the past two seasons I shot high school football. The first season I shot and posted images in galleries on my site to sell prints to parents. We let people know by word of mouth. Total views for the season on those galleries was a shade under 5,000. Total gross sales was about $350. The second season I shot for the same school, the same number of games but the booster club had a direct link on the high school's football web page to my page for images and we had a full page ad in the printed football program. For this my views on the galleries boosted to a shade over 30,000 and gross sales jumped up to a whopping $400. Needless to say I am done shooting football, I mainly shot there because my daughter attended there. She graduated now, so I am done.

But, through all this activity my web site when you do a search on my specific company name, Pixelcraft Photography (there are others with my same name as well) my site comes up number 1 and even shows four sub-galleries links and a link for "More results from pixelcraftphoto.com...​". Also, the next four links are links to other websites that have links to my site, so basically I am in the first 5 results from the search engine. Very cool. But, money paying gigs have stayed the same as before I was positioned this high. It has not made a bit of difference. So I am glad I never paid some company to get me higher on the SEO list.

Ron

It depends on what ur shoing up 1st for. Not all keywords hold the same value, you may show up for a keyword that is never searched on, if its a competetive keyword...kudos to you....

Dermit wrote in post #13071206
But, money paying gigs have stayed the same as before I was positioned this high. It has not made a bit of difference. So I am glad I never paid some company to get me higher on the SEO list.

Ron, thanks for the insights.

My wife and I started out shooting theatre and dance (translation = kids) and we are now gradually growing our senior portrait business. I think parents contact us to shoot their seniors because of the trust built from personal interaction at those events, and from the track record of delivering a quality product in a timely manner at reasonable cost. These relationships aren't built overnight but from years of dealing with the same people multiple times at multiple events and delivering on our promises consistently.

And I don't think I could have built these relationships if I was just the dude with the camera on the other side of the football field who has an ad in the program and a web gallery. So I think I can understand why your football venture was not so fruitful, despite the hard work involved.

I also don't think my Google ranking is going to have a major impact on the growth of my business. That's why I never worried too much about it. But it's nice to know someone can find me if they want.

Curtis N wrote in post #13071629
Ron, thanks for the insights.

My wife and I started out shooting theatre and dance (translation = kids) and we are now gradually growing our senior portrait business. I think parents contact us to shoot their seniors because of the trust built from personal interaction at those events, and from the track record of delivering a quality product in a timely manner at reasonable cost. These relationships aren't built overnight but from years of dealing with the same people multiple times at multiple events and delivering on our promises consistently.

And I don't think I could have built these relationships if I was just the dude with the camera on the other side of the football field who has an ad in the program and a web gallery. So I think I can understand why your football venture was not so fruitful, despite the hard work involved.

I also don't think my Google ranking is going to have a major impact on the growth of my business. That's why I never worried too much about it. But it's nice to know someone can find me if they want.

Curtis, absolutely on the same page.

Mark1 wrote in post #13070339
If you dont show up on the first page when you google something as specific as the company name....something is very wrong. And if people know the name already, what is the point of googleing it? Links or not. A name is a specific term, How do you do in the search query "senior photography (your city)"? That is more realisticly to be something people will use.

Yup!

Curtis N wrote in post #13067992
And while other photogs are running around all paranoid about their copyrights and trying to block external links to their images, I'm getting a #2 Google ranking because I let kids post my shots on Facebook.

That's my theory, anyway. Go ahead. Tell me I'm nuts.

It is a good theory. I think my main questions are - you watermark the images, right? And you're getting a lot of hits back to your smugmug partially because you don't have some kind of mass meme type image that people would want to post everywhere without knowing where it comes from and try to appropriate it as their own, right?

I agree that you probably shouldn't worry about the few - maybe even the large number - of uses of the image that perhaps don't link back, because you've made it easy to link back and a lot of people will do so, and even if they don't you likely have a watermark to guide any curious people along the right way without "I screenshooted some d00d'z CS spray!11"

A lot of photos don't seem to directly turn into visual memes that represent some idea or offer a banner of identity in the way that e.g. a cartoon would - but pictures of cats and dogs with goofy expressions are powering an industry all by themselves.

That last bit suggests where you should focus any extra energy in trying to make money back: Finding sites like "I can Haz Cheezburger" and smacking the you know what outta them when they inevitably try to appropriate your photo of a dog with a party hat on its head. People generally aren't making a lot of money off your photos on Facebook, but what if it was a celebrity using it as part of an informal ad campaign?

I think the lines are blurred a little bit between what looks like it doesn't generate revenue (and potentially at the expense of your business) and what actually might be. Of course, the lines are also blurred a little bit between trying to go after people who really should be paying you for your image, and jumping down the throats of everybody just because you can, and losing everybody's respect in the process - and that takes us full circle back to the OP

Edwin I confess I don't always understand your posts completely.

The pictures I post on Smugmug aren't going to have general appeal. They will be of interest only to the kids and those who know them.

If I was shooting nekkid women or pro athletes or something you'd expect to find on a humorous greeting card, then they wouldn't be accessible to the public.