Clikpic specializes in websites for photographers and artists and is based in the UK. Since I specialize in search engine optimisation for photographers and artists I want to review the SEO features of Clikpic photography websites so that you are best suited to get your Clikpic site into Google results. Some Clikpic features have built-in SEO advantages and do all the work for you, while other aspects require you to have your own SEO knowledge from other sources. For this I recommend my step-by-step training in the Photographer’s SEO Book. The non-technical tips, easy to understand explanation of Google, link building sources, and cut and paste examples from the SEO book are easily applied to your Clikpic site to take maximum advantage of your Google rank. If you are evaluating Clikpic as a platform or already using it, here are its search engine optimisation features that can definitely impact where your site will appear in search engine listings.

Auto-Generated Sitemap Tells Google About All Your Pages

A sitemap is an index of all the pages of your website. Search engines love sitemaps and enable them to quickly index the contents of your site without looking at all the pages, like reading a table of contents. Typically Google would rely on links to every one of your pages, and may not take the time to look deep within your website at pages or images that are too many clicks from the homepage. A sitemap resolves this issue and also passes other critical information to Google, like the last modified date of the page, helpful because Google loves frequently updated content and will come back to your site more often if your content is continuously updated. Clikpic provides an automatically generated XML sitemap (the best kind of sitemap) that updates every time you add new things to your website and you don’t have to do anything! I have not seen this in other website services for photographers. Every time a search engine looks at your site, you know it can find all of your content.

Text on Page Option of Great Value to Google

Many photography websites are built in Flash or are completely image-based with little room for text. This can be extremely detrimental for search results and is definitely not the case with Clikpic sites. Clikpic offers room for text on all of its pages and galleries so you can tell your readers and search engines what your site is about using properly placed keywords as recommended by the Photographer’s SEO Book.

Each Photo Gets a Webpage

Every photo in your Clikpic galleries gets assigned its own webpage. This is extremely valuable for SEO because the more pages you have means the more chances you have of ranking, and also the more information Google has about your site. Most photographer websites have 10 pages with a folder of a lot of images that can never appear in search engines, so Clikpic galleries have a distinct advantage. You can add to that advantage if you use proper image naming techniques, add to the text on the page (add image descriptions), and add links to your image pages – everything that I talk about in the Photographer’s SEO Book. You really should buy it now for $39 so you can get the most out of your Clikpic website.

Clickpic Page Titles and Meta Descriptions

Page titles are one of the most important on-page factors for search engine rank. Clikpic sites have an automated process for building the page titles which is good for the beginning SEO photographer. The titles of the pages are generated depending on what you name your website, galleries, and photos, so it is extremely important what you choose! The Photographer’s SEO Book helps you with exactly those things.

Titles inherit a site level format:
Homepage: Site Name
Gallery Page: Site Name: Gallery Name
Photo Page Title: Site Name: Photo Name

I do not see evidence of meta descriptions on any pages of Clikpic sites. Note that meta descriptions do not help a site rank better, but since they do appear in the search results, they can help convert a user to click on your result if you have control over what the text says. For that reason I like to at least be able to craft the meta description for my homepage.

Little URL Control for SEO

Photographers cannot control the URLs of their photo galleries or the URL of an individual photo page that has one image on it. For example I have a gallery called UK Wedding Photos and in it is an image called Zach’s Wedding Reception. The URLs for the gallery and image page are randomly generated as /gallery_163609.html and /photo_1914277.html when it would be much more powerful for Google to have a gallery URL of /uk-wedding-photos.html for example.

Clikpic will preserve the filenames of your photo uploads, but will store them in a Clickpic shared directory

http://www4.clikpic.com/yoursiteidentifier/images/your-image-name.jpg

Slideshows and Photos Hide Valuable Image Information from Search

Slideshows use Flash to animate the photos, so the photos are not visible to search engines. This is because Google cannot see the visual portion of the site, only the code. In the Flash code there is no link, image name, or alternate text to help describe what the Flash is about. That is why I always recommend to avoid Flash and use individual embedded images, unless you think the Flash can really convert a user into a new client for you.

The only SEO benefit of having photos on the page is if search engines can read the images. As I just mentioned, search engines look at code to understand an image and the main piece of code is the alternate text of the image (viewed as alt=”Image description” in HTML). Clikpic sites use the image names as alternate text on the photo page, but not the homepage or gallery page where they are most important (since those are the pages most likely to rank in search).

Automatic Search Engine Submission

Clikpic has an automatic search submission option via a “Publicise site” button. Automated submission to search engines is NEVER recommended and can often delay your site from getting listed because it puts you into a very long queue instead of following the traditional and faster “crawl” method where Google simply finds your site through links that point to your website. All you need to do is establish one link to your site from another reputable website ( a site with a high PageRank). Guess what, Clikpic does this for you by linking to all of its clients. So you don’t need to do anything! My guess is what all Clikpic sites are found by search engines within one month of launch, without any manual submissions. Of course you can quickly move up in the rankings by building more links to your website (read my blog post about linkbuilding), and there is a list of both UK and US recommended sites in the Photographer’s SEO Book – buy now take the confusion and difficulty out of Google rankings.

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