photo hosting sites? (best for SEO) 2016

Looking at moving my website from Photoshelter and am looking for insights on other options. The three main ones I've narrowed it down are PhotoDeck, Squarespace, and Format. Anyone using these? What are your opinions?

Three that I'm not looking at are Smugmug, WordPress, and Zenfolio. I've used both Smug and WP in the past. I had a horrible experience dealing with Smug and will never go back. WP would be an option but I found it rather time consuming (trouble shooting etc.) And when you figure in the cost of hosting plus a subscription for a decent theme it doesn't seem worth it. Zenfolio seems expensive for its offerings.

PhotoDeck seems to have a lot of functionality but I'm not so sure the designs are being kept up, Squarespace has old rumors of not being SEO worthy? (not sure how to say that) But a company that's both modern and strong enough not to disappear

Format is a good price, not sure of their longevity though.

I guess I was hoping to have a website that showed my portfolio (services I provide) but also one that allowed me to self host my stock collection. Although I'm not sure that's the best plan anymore as most of my stock are utility images not aesthetically pleasing. Primary I want a website that shows off my portfolio and has good(easy) SEO editable features to tweak for good placement within search.

Any insights or opinions would be very welcome.

thanks, jeff

Hi Jeff,

I can assure you that PhotoDeck designs are actively maintainted

For instance: https://www.facebook.c​om …000573686/?type​=3&theater

Feel free to drop us a line (support@) if you have any question!

Kind regards,
JF

JF Maion
Founder, PhotoDeck

I don't use any photo hosting site, but I am curious. What is SEO? Thanks.

Bassat wrote in post #18172715
I don't use any photo hosting site, but I am curious. What is SEO? Thanks.

Hi Tom, not sure if you are being serious as you have over three thousand posts on this forum suggesting you've been around the internet for a while. The internet and mass media have been littered with articles on this subject even this section has a sticky relating to SEO.

its the optimization for ranking in the results when you do a search (google, bing, yahoo)

Hi JF Maion, thank you for chiming in and posting that link, very much appreciated.

thanks, jeff

Thanks. Search Engine Optimization, got it. I have heard the term, just didn't recognize the acronym.

I switched from Smug to Squarespace earlier this year and have been very happy with the switch. As for SEO, whenever I Google my home city, state, and Senior Photographer (my specialty), my site is number one. And that's without having a blog riddled with keywords, which many SEO gurus say is necessary to be at the top. Mind you, I'm in Oklahoma, not NYC or LA, so YMMV.

Also glad to hear that I'm not the only one who got sick of Smugmug!

Bassat wrote in post #18172715
I don't use any photo hosting site, but I am curious. What is SEO? Thanks.

Snake oil, mostly. SEO "gurus" come in two varieties: Black hat and white hat. Black hats try to trick the search engines into assessing your site as more prominent than it is. A popular way is to sell you access to link farms. They set up many web sites that have links to yours and others who pay them money. Having more sites linking to yours was an early algorithm that Google used for placement. That is until they found out about link farms. Now if it is discovered that your site is using a black hat SEO, it's more likely that you'd end up on the bottom of the list than at the top.

There's nothing mysterious about White hat SEO:
1. name your files by their subject.
2. Put keywords in your photo file exif data.
3. use appropriate meta keywords in your web file headers
4. longevity: your site stays in one place and has a long history.
5. Go to Google's web advisor for code to put in your pages that assists search engines. https://www.google.com​/webmasters/tools

Some more to add:
If your services are regional. Put your location, zip code, maybe even latitude/longitude in your pages' metadata. In the mobile world, searches correlate the searcher's location with nearby services.

I m surprise by this. As far as I know, squarespace is simply a hosting site with a set of template you can use. How your site is ranked is dependent on the content of your site. I am curious as to how hosting on squarespace can have an impact on your google ranking...

My question is in relationship how easy it is to adjust elements and content behind the scenes to effect one's ranking. Nothing blackhat not even sure why Joe posted that. But with images not being text, work needs to be applied to metatags, page titles, alt text, etc..

One of my big complaints about Photoshelter is only half of my content is helping my custom url's ranking. The other half, the url and therefore any of the content is actually a photoshelter.com url so wether I go through all the keywording, meta tags, etc. Not to mention google only sees my site as a 30 page site not a site with 90 pages of content. So I am only helping Photoshelter's google rank not my own. Google also doesn't see me updating my content (keeping my site fresh) if I am uploading content to areas of my site that have the Photoshelter url.

My other problem is if I build an html page from scratch I am allowed to put forth any and all the effort into meta tags, link names etc. With hosting sites you are dependent upon what Squarespace, Photoshelter, or Format will allow you to edit. And this is the basis of my question, wondering about real world experience from actual photographers using them.

Any additional insights are very welcome.

thanks, jeff

I was surprised (pleasantly) too when I saw it at number one. Mind you, it was in the top five when I was with Smugmug, and one of my worries about switching was whether it would affect the ranking. But, within just a couple of days it was at number one and has been there consistently for months now.