Plain-English URL’s now in Smugmug – a SEO improvement?

The first part of a major SEO (Search Engine Optimization) improvement was released the other day.

Gallery URL-paths are now in plain English. Instead of “/Gallery/1234567-xxxx” you can now control the URL path so it looks like this: “/sports/fishing/Alaska/1234567-xxxx”.

Yes, it is a great improvement for SEO.

Also a few bug-fixes were silently released – Smugmug no longer feed the BOT’s (Search Engine Robots) with “Hide owner” URL’s (like www.smugmug.com/gallery/1234567-xxxx) . Technically this created duplicate pages – same content on different URL’s – a major no-no according to Google. It was on pages like Smugmug search pages that this happened earlier, but now it is corrected.

Again – Great for SEO.

Also - Pages titles were changed – Those that earlier had followed Smugmug’s advise and had the same page title on all their pages do now have a much more unique page title.

Again - Great for SEO.

Do these 3 “Great for SEO” improvements help?
Is “Hide your photos in a Smugmug account” history?

Those that previously had the same page title on all their pages will most likely see a major increase in number of visits coming from Search Engines.
For the rest of us – time will tell.

Does it help Image Search?

Most likely not – These improvements were targeted galleries – not photos. Long way to go here.

More updates later when I know something about the effects of these changes.

I do have a Smugmug user account and I’m looking forward to the next SEO release from Smugmug. I hope for many more SEO improvements, especially regarding duplicate pages, more control of page titles and meta data, quality photo page content in general, a “Plain English” URL all the way to photo pages, and the ability to make a link to a photo page that doesn’t break when I make structural changes in my galleries and photos.

As a reference:
1% of my photos published on Smugmug con be found on Google Image Search.
50 % of my photos published on Panoramio and flick can be found on Google Image Search.