Google Analytics, kicking butt and taking names...

I can't tell you how much I love Google Analytics, the information it provides about the visitors to your site is phenomenal and it's a must have tool.

If you have not yet setup Google Analytics you can watch this step by step video tutorial to get the ball rolling.

One of the things I like to look at in analytics is the ability to check on post popularity, there are times I write a post that I think is going to be killer and it falls flat, other times a simple quick post will hit it out of the park. It's a good way to judge the interests of your visitors and match what you have to say with what they are looking for.

I was pretty surprised to learn that about one third of our readers are from outside of the United States.

You can also learn what days are good to post on and what days are not.

What you can learn is almost endless and amazing.

If you follow this link you'll find 50 resources that will help you get the most out of analytics.

Below is an 8 minute video (done by Google) that will walk you through the analytics interface showing you where to find what you are looking for.

Tomorrow I will wrap things up with my (general) rules for blogging, not that I am a whiz kid at it (or a whiz old man), but in the 5 years I have been doing Weekly Photo Tips I have learned a thing or two about blogging and I will share those lessons with you.

Speaking of image metadata...

What is metadata?

Metadata is a pretty broad term when it comes to web design but for todays post we are going to talk about how it applies to images and/or photographs that we post on websites or a blog.

It's descriptive information (data) in an image file that will identify what its about, who took it, copyright & contact information, camera & exposure information, and descriptive information like keywords.

Why is metadata important? It makes the image readable by Google (and other search engines) which in turns makes the image searchable on the internet and will help improve search engine rankings.

As photographers this is extremely important as our sites are a more image intense environment, so image metadata really is mission critical information.

But image metadata only gets there because we put it there, which is the purpose of this post, to give you the information that will make the process easier.

A very useful free tool (that I use) is ProStockMaster. ProStockMaster is designed to both simplify and optimize the metadata process for folks who sell stock photography and if it helps them to standout in the highly competitive field of stock photography it will certainly help us on on our websites.

ProStockMaster is available for both MAC's and PC's and you can download it right here.

Another option for adding metadata to images is through Lightroom, and you can find a written tutorial here or if you prefer, a video tutorial here and here.

These aren't the only two ways to ad metadata to your images, you can use other (free) programs like FastStone Image Viewer, IrfanView, or "pay" programs like ACDSee and Paintshp Pro (to name a few).

Below is the best video I've seen that explains what image keywords are and why they are important (here is the second best, ironically by the very same person), it's only 3 minutes long and worth every second.

And it comes directly from the horses mouth, Google, so if you don't see the video in your subscription PLEASE return to the blog to watch it.