I just found what appears to be a nice sitemap generator plugin for Wordpress.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/google-sitemap-generator/

Make sure you have the following box checked in the settings: Include custom post type Symbiostock Images


Anyone have different/better sitemap solutions?

The YOAST SEO Plugin generates a really really good one. I was impressed how it managed multiple sitemaps (which you will be using if you have lots of images) plus it handles a lot of other things ... and the theme supports its breadcrumbs feature. If you can switch I'd suggest going with that since its better to have everything in one package.

Thanks Leo, I'll go Yoast.

I know about enabling breadcrumbs in Yoast, but all other options....
Maybe some kind of tutorial, what else should we set there  for best performance/indexing with our sites?

I think it would be great for someone to open a "Symbiostock Model Site" thread, showing all the necessary plugins, design tips, and so forth. When everything has been considered we can make a tutorial based on the outcome of the discussion.

Hi,

I've submitted a sitemap for web and images on google webtools using Yoast SEO sitemap plugin, and some of my web pages have already been indexed (since 6 days) but none of my images appears in google search.
I can't understand what's wrong.
Can somebody help me to solve problem ?
Thanks !

Hi Chris, Google Images is a separate index with a separate bot so it doesn't necessarily index images at the same time your pages get indexed.  In the past I've seen it take between 10 and 15 days for the images to start being indexed after sitemaps where submitted.  I'd do some searching around to see what's normal but I know others are seeing images show up so I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

Thanks Amanda,

I will try to be more patient 

Thanks for all.

Quote from: Amanda_K on May 03, 2013, 18:34
Hi Chris, Google Images is a separate index with a separate bot so it doesn't necessarily index images at the same time your pages get indexed.  In the past I've seen it take between 10 and 15 days for the images to start being indexed after sitemaps where submitted.  I'd do some searching around to see what's normal but I know others are seeing images show up so I'm sure it's just a matter of time.

it's a lot harder to get images indexed -- it may be that google doesn't index images that are similar to ones it already has -- unfortunately that means the MS agencies for most of us

I find a lot of my images when i search google images, but most are with agencies not my own sites. I've recently had some better luck with getting my image sites indexed - both cascoly.smugmug.com and cascoly-images.com (my sym site)

I've played with a lot of sitemaps -- tried several from wp plugins that just didn't work -- eg - uindra &  Image XML Sitemap @author Cor van Noorloos

here are some of my other results:

http://cascoly-images.com

wonderwebware sitemap generator
   works well - 533 of 893 items were indexed - no separate image sitemap though

http://cascoly.com

the inspyder sitemap generator trial version resulted in
   2191 of 2931 webpages indexed
   33 of 842 images indexed

wonder
   2874 of 23,440 webpages indexed

(my game pages that access the CIA worldfactbook generate a lot of unique urls, but most aren't indexed)

Thanks a lot for your help Cascoly...

I will test that  !

while testing the yoast SEO, I had yet another idea to keep Leo busy -- if you don't enter a meta desc, you get this in your webpage

<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v1.4.7 - http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ -->
<!-- Admin only notice: this page doesn't show a meta description because it doesn't have one, either write it for this page specifically or go into the SEO -> Titles menu and set up a template. -->

couldn't the theme check for a meta desc when it's creating the page & create a temp desc from the caption or description in the iptc?  for images it would usually be close to what we'd want  anyway as a desc.

Quote from: cascoly on May 04, 2013, 01:14
while testing the yoast SEO, I had yet another idea to keep Leo busy -- if you don't enter a meta desc, you get this in your webpage

<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin v1.4.7 - http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/ -->
<!-- Admin only notice: this page doesn't show a meta description because it doesn't have one, either write it for this page specifically or go into the SEO -> Titles menu and set up a template. -->

couldn't the theme check for a meta desc when it's creating the page & create a temp desc from the caption or description in the iptc?  for images it would usually be close to what we'd want  anyway as a desc.

This is exactly the issue I brought up with Leo about two weeks ago. We need auto generated meta descriptions based on title/description of the image, and perhaps some other generic text like "Stock Photo:" if the user wants.

Yoast has the ability to do all of this, it's just a matter of Leo finding a way to get it to work with the Yoast templates section   


But Leo is aware of this and has said he is working on it.

Right now I'm working in order of priority. SEO tweaks are going to get addressed soon after I take care of the image processing (almost done) and the IPTC data for those who are concerned about that.

In SEO->Titles & Metas->Post Types->Symbiostock Images->Meta description template:
I've put
%%title%% - Stock Photo

and in
SEO->Titles & Metas->Post Types->Pages->Meta description template:

%%title%%

Quote from: ajt on May 04, 2013, 08:54
In SEO->Titles & Metas->Post Types->Symbiostock Images->Meta description template:
I've put
%%title%% - Stock Photo

and in
SEO->Titles & Metas->Post Types->Pages->Meta description template:

%%title%%

Thanks for this! While I am waiting for Leo to address the IPTC issue, I was just going back through the 200 images I already uploaded and was working on SEO.

thanks for the SEO tip - that will certainly help in the short term!

Quote from: cclapper on May 04, 2013, 13:42

Quote from: ajt on May 04, 2013, 08:54
In SEO->Titles & Metas->Post Types->Symbiostock Images->Meta description template:
I've put
%%title%% - Stock Photo

and in
SEO->Titles & Metas->Post Types->Pages->Meta description template:

%%title%%

Thanks for this! While I am waiting for Leo to address the IPTC issue, I was just going back through the 200 images I already uploaded and was working on SEO.

Question though...in the Symbiostock>author options we have the ability to add - Stock Photo (or whatever words we choose) into the title. Does adding it into the SEO Wordpress section also mean it will show up double, or is it ok to have it done in both places, or should I only add the - Stock Photo in either the SEO section or the author options section?

edit: i want to also add stock-photo to the beginning of the url (permalink) of the image. Now that my images have been published for a couple of weeks, can I change the permalink name without causing any issues? Will the images be re-indexed because of that change? I tried one image as a test, and I don't see where it disrupts any linking issues within my website, but was curious about the seo side of it.

edit again: I went back and reread a thread i created early on about this very same thing. I won't go back and change the 200 images I have already uploaded, unless I can figure out an easy way to do a redirect in wordpress. I will start included stock-photo in the URL (permalink) as I upload new images, though.

Which sitemaps should we upload to Webmaster Tools? I have uploaded the page sitemap, images sitemap, and posts sitemap. But there are more, such as image tags etc. Is it optimal to upload all of these?

I've put only address http://mysite/sitemap_index.xml, and there are links to all other maps.

Quote from: djpadavona on May 30, 2013, 21:35
Which sitemaps should we upload to Webmaster Tools? I have uploaded the page sitemap, images sitemap, and posts sitemap. But there are more, such as image tags etc. Is it optimal to upload all of these?

I loaded all of them -- the image ones got the usual 10% but the others all had good results -- I've got over 1700 pages indexed now, even though with 1500 images only about 150 are indexed;  I think most of the nonindexing is of images other agencies hold -- too bad we cant see directly which images google has

Steve,

When you say "indexed" are you looking at Webmaster Tools / Sitemaps, or have you actually searched for your images in Google Images? If you type "site:mysite.com" into Google Images, you will see all indexed images.

You probably already knew that  but I figured some people might want to see how you can track your indexed images.

Quote from: djpadavona on May 31, 2013, 22:05
Steve,

When you say "indexed" are you looking at Webmaster Tools / Sitemaps, or have you actually searched for your images in Google Images? If you type "site:mysite.com" into Google Images, you will see all indexed images.

You probably already knew that  but I figured some people might want to see how you can track your indexed images.

Thanks for that tip again. I searched yesterday for some indexed images, and yes indeed, some of my earliest uploads are now indexed and show up in images "above the fold". That is so great!

edit: and if I don't see my own site's images indexed yet, warmpictures are right up there too. You have done a good job on that too Dan!

Quote from: djpadavona on May 31, 2013, 22:05
Steve,

When you say "indexed" are you looking at Webmaster Tools / Sitemaps, or have you actually searched for your images in Google Images? If you type "site:mysite.com" into Google Images, you will see all indexed images.

You probably already knew that  but I figured some people might want to see how you can track your indexed images.

thanks - i knew that, but had forgotten it!  i'll add that to the faq

yes, warmpictures had great success in competing with the ms agencies