“I’m on my iPad and I can’t see your website!” These words can cost you more than just frustration – they can cost you money. Wouldn’t it be great if you could make your site accessible no matter what device someone is viewing it from? You can with PhotoBiz’s HTML and mobile mirror sites!

Having an HTML or mobile mirror site gives your customers the best of both worlds: the beauty of Flash on their computer, and the accessibility to view and navigate from mobile non-Flash compatible devices (e.g., iPad, iPhone, Android). No matter what device they access your site from your customer can explore your work, learn information about your company, and contact you with ease. In fact, our system does all the work, automatically recognizing what device someone is viewing your site from to determine which version to display.

HTML mirror site. An HTML mirror shows all the same pages and links as your Flash site, but in HTML format. This allows your site to be seen in its entirety from any non-Flash device. You even get to choose an HTML template and adjust the colors to compliment your Flash site. This is a great way to present continuity between your sites and provide the same experience to your customers, no matter what device they access you site from!

Mobile mirror. Having a mobile mirror is another way to provide easy access to your website from mobile devices. This format is presented with the feel of an “app”. You get a clear navigation menu, and your beautiful images can be easily seen.

These products are available for purchase through your Flash/HTML control panel under the “Extras” icon.  This is a great way to invest in the accessibility of your website!

Welcome PhotoBizzers, this is Andy R. from the Passionate Support Team. Here at PhotoBiz we provide Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists to help you improve your ranking in the three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing). My goal today is to provide some tips and debunk some myths about SEO.

Have a clear idea of what searches you want to rank on. When working on your SEO, it all starts with determining which keywords are most important. For example, what type of sessions generate the most income for you? Or where are you looking to expand your market? It is often easiest to break into a niche market, versus general keywords. No matter what keywords you choose, the key is providing pertinent information and useful links.

Search engines index both Flash and HTML sites. While search engines once skipped over Flash sites because they didn’t know how to read them, Google has specifically improved their algorithm to accommodate Flash designs in addition to HTML. In fact, PhotoBiz has specific SEO in place to help optimize both HTML and Flash sites such as allowing you to set meta data on most pages of your website – with the goal of giving Google an in-depth view of your content.

Focus on select keywords, not every conceivable word customers will use. Unfortunately putting too many keywords in your meta tagging can actually hurt your SEO results. “Keyword stuffing” is a black hat SEO technique that is frowned upon, and search engines can penalize for it. Instead of thinking of every possible keyword people use to find your site, focus on the most important ones. They are after all called “key”-words.

Differentiate between content keywords and meta keywords. When we discuss keywords we have to make a distinction between meta keywords and content keywords. Both types of keywords are important, but they have their own purpose.

• Meta Keywords: These words and phrases are found in the coding of your website, and are part of what search engines look at when indexing your site.
• Content Keywords: In the broadest sense this is every bit of text on your website. Search engines not only crawl the coding of your website, but also the text on pages in order to have a complete picture of the work you do.

Updating content versus adding content. Updating your content is making changes to your existing pages and meta data on your site. When you make a change to the content of your website Google will re-crawl your website to take this new information into account and adjust your ranking. Adding content refers to new pages or blog posts added to the site. In the case of new content being added, search engines focus on reviewing the additional content, without rechecking the older content. New content such as blog posts is seen as a good thing, and why having a blog on your site helps to improve your SEO.

Good SEO is not an overnight fix. One of the most frustrating parts of setting up or improving your SEO is the time it takes to see results. Google, Yahoo, and Bing all have their own unique schedule for reviewing websites that we aren’t privy to. You can decrease the amount of time that it takes for a search engine to review your site, by submitting your site map to places such as Google’s Webmaster Tools. Whether you actively submit your changes or wait for crawlers to find you, know that it can easily take 30 days for changes to be reflected. So each time you make changes, the clock starts over again.

Let PhotoBiz Help You. PhotoBiz undoubtedly has the industry’s best SEO tools paired with Passionate Support consultants available by phone. Give us a call at 866.463.7620 or submit a support ticket to have one of our SEO Experts to review your website today!

We are continually amazed and impressed by the awesome talent of our PhotoBizzers and all that they contribute to our community. Many of you share your beautiful images with us and we love to provide an opportunity to show them off. Recently, a PhotoBizzer from “Down Under” shared some of his music and there are now 11 of Chris Alderdice’s songs available in our Music Bank.

Chris Alderdice is a musician from New Zealand who creates guitar driven instrumental tracks and has shared eleven of his songs for our Music Bank. “I have always loved both photography and making music, and over the years I have written and recorded numerous songs and instrumental guitar driven tracks,” said Chris. “I am very excited about PhotoBiz making my music available to its customers as I do believe that music and images create an enhanced experience for the audience, and when a complimentary piece of music is added as a backing track the pictures can take on a new a new meaning.”

He plays all the instruments on the tracks (except drums), and earned first prize in a pacific song writing contest for the guitar solo on his song ‘Rest in Me’.  His biggest music influences are U2, INXS, Joe Satriani, and Eric Clapton.  

When asked what inspires him Chris says,  “I like to think that somehow my emotions are transferred and captured into my songs, just like the magic that can occur in the world of photography.”

You can check out Chris’ work at www.southernfocus.co.nz, and connect with him on Facebook.
 

You raved about the image clipboard on the PhotoBiz Store and Blog – as of today it is also available in the Website Templates and Client Proofing products. 

This plays a huge impact on your overall image count, in that you can upload a photo once, and use it as many times as you want throughout our four amazing platforms! This feature will help you to maximize your membership plan.

In October, we provided a detailed guide on how to take advantage of the Image Clipboard, check it out to learn more about how this new tool works.

Then log in to start taking advantage of this feature, and see how much more space you have available by using the Image Clipboard!

 New Image Clipboard feature shown in Website Templates control panel.

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PhotoBiz has installed a wonderfully elegant, easy to implement,  new feature that allow you to have a Spanish Site in minutes. If your clients native language is Spanish, and you always wanted to have labels and instructions in Spanish; We have delivered! The Multi-lingual feature added to Store & Blog sites will allow you to specify Spanish language settings and field tags for any internal system messages, even custom names, with a simple click.

Now you can imagine if your audience is primarily Spanish speaking that the ability to change these messages to Spanish would help a great deal in working their way through a site. We have also given you the ability to change the labels inside of the PhotoBiz store. For example, you can now change the “Buy” label to “Purchase Now”.

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