It’s late, the trick-or-treaters have stopped ringing the door bell, and the zombies have left for the evening….
Happy Halloween from the FocalPower Team.
(The above image was a remix that I did a few days back based upon some images from Sam Javanrouh. Felt it was the perfect thing to post tonight!)
Photographers that are seriously engaged in doing business online should know what their website’s Google page rank is, especially if you are doing any sort of advertising on Google.
A few days ago, Google tweaked their page rank algorithm. If you haven’t checked your page rank recently you should, there is a good chance that your rank has changed. This latest tweak appears to have primarily closed a loop hole in the algorithm that some sites (specifically blogs) were using to inflate their ranking. Some sites would accept payment to have multiple links to your site placed on theirs or create a network of similar blogs and cross link to them all, also know as a link farm.
Before, Google would count these links toward your page rank. This latest tweak doesn’t count them. So sites that were artificially high because they payed others to link to them, will see their Page Rank corrected to a more realistic level. But, other sites might also see their Page Rank increase as a side effect of these changes. (The above detail of the tweak is most likely just one of many aspects that were adjusted in the algorithm).
How Do I Check My Page Rank?
The easiest way to check your page rank is to install the Google Toolbar (you probably already have it installed) and then visit your website. When the toolbar is visable you will see an icon labeled “PageRank” that will show you the ranking of the page you are visiting–hover over this icon to get the specific rank number (x out of 10).
I also recommend that you create an account for your website on the Google Webmaster Tools. This is a set of tools that will help you understand how Google sees your website. You can use this information to fine tune your site for an increased page rank.
What Does This Have to Do With Photography?
For those who are making their living with photography, their web presence is a required aspect of their business. If you are doing advertising to draw in new customers to your website, then you need to understand Page Rank. The faster and easier you can capture new customers, the more time you can spend doing what you enjoy…photography!
Managing photos online has been a challenge since the start. The one thing that the online photo sharing sites did right was to keep the organization of photos simple (the old KISS principal, Keep it Simple Stupid, still rules). When sharing photos online, you need to be able to upload a photo once and then use it where ever you want. This is the beauty of the flat storage structure. Rather than deciding first how you want to organize your photos, just dump them into a big bucket and organize them later. Even better, configure smart tools to auto organize them based upon the meta data contained within the photos.
Being a Professional Photographer today means wearing many hats; many hats in the operation of your business and, even more importantly, in the way you present your business to the world. Unless you are well known for a specific type of photography, you will need to follow the concept of multiple streams of income and offer your services into multiple vertical markets. Thus, a portfolio that showcases your work for each vertical is needed. However, many times a single photo can fall into multiple portfolios. This is where the power of the flat storage structure shines…after you upload the photo once, you can place it into as many portfolios as you want. The organizational structure is virtual and lives side by side with the actual photos (versus the photos physically living inside your organizational structure).
Likewise, just being a photographer—professional, semi-professional, or enthusiast—requires fun and creativity to keep the spark alive. Many times this means creating something new or just capturing a moment as it presents itself. And many times this also means having a photo or two which are worth sharing but don’t fall into your organization structure (or at least not yet). Again, the flat storage structure allows you to just toss it in the bucket and share those photos just by themselves. Damn the organization….full speed ahead!
Ahh, but the pain of manually organizing hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands of photos! Technology to the rescue…to the rescue of time wasted doing something manually that computers can do much faster and dynamically. Smart tools that allow you to create portfolios on the fly based upon meta data contained within the photos. This is where the investment in a strong and consistently executed work flow comes in. Always keyword your photos. Always add as much IPTC meta data possible about where the photo was taken, what the photo depicts, etc. Once that data in there, it can be leveraged in the future to save you time and give you dynamic control over your images. A portfolio that dynamically changes as you add new photos to your bucket. The ability to quickly create new portfolios to display your work in new and fresh ways. This is when the fun begins!
Make sure that the photography tools you choose are flexible and utilize technology to save you time and not lock you into something that can’t be changed easily in the future. Your time is the most valuable asset you have…closely followed by your skill and photographs!
In the past few days, I have talked with a number of photographers who share a common trend. They are all striving to save time. Either by streamlining their work flow, more carefully managing the time that they spend online, or by reducing their amount of community participation. It has become too easy to loose track of time today in the inter-connected electronic photography world we all live in. Especially with all the wonderful advancements in photography online.
And I’m just as guilty as the next person. Notice the time stamps on a lot of my blog posts…I find myself posting late into the night (or early morning). With all the work that’s required to launch FocalPower my own photography has taken second seat. But I’m not upset about that at all, because one of the corner stones behind the designs of FocalPower was a realization that the technology has not kept up with helping photographers optimize their time. There are now all these great ways to share your photos on line and channels to increase the awareness of your photographic brand. However, there are few ways designed to help you utilize these with the minimal work.
During the research conducted before starting work on FocalPower, I sensed an undercurrent of frustration over how much time was spent just managing photos online. I also shared that frustration. Over the past few weeks, I have noticed this frustration has reached a breaking point with many photographers. Photographers want to engage in multiple channels of distribution online but end up sacrificing the opportunities in order to save the time to do what they want or need to be doing…taking pictures and building their businesses.
Luckily, some of the work we are doing here with the first release of FocalPower will help address this issue. I’m excited about some of the capabilities we are building into FocalPower…to enable photographers to better manage their online photographic assets with minimal effort. I’m also looking forward to hearing the ideas of the at large photographic community in additional ways the FocalPower technology can be adapted to help them optimize their time.
