Besides actually taking pictures, the fun of using an SLR is the hundreds of lenses to choose from, tailored to all kinds of minute specialties. I've written a few reviews for some of the different lenses I've owned, and get a bit of traffic from them. Better traveled sites, and I'd probably get more traffic.

Whenever I post a photo on a photography forum, someone always asks "What lens?" So in my pages, beneath each photo I have some basic info about how each photo was created: lens, shutter speed, etc.

I got each lens for a specific purpose. The 16-35 mm f/2.8 L was a landscape lens ( got stolen in SF on a road trip across country ), the 135 mm f/2 L is a portrait lens. Since I'm listing which lens was used for each image, I'm thinking about linking to the gallery that best represents the reason I use that lens.

I'm thinking this could help me rank better when someone searches for info about the gear, and that visual examples from photographic lenses are good results for the query. Especially the landscapes, since I've had two good ultrawide lenses and lots of photo to compare them with. On the other hand, I wonder if having the same basic family of anchor text on each of my 99 photo pages will look like spam to Google?

Any advice?

I don't think you can just pull SERP ranking out of thin air, dude. From what you described, it sounds like a good thing that might help some of your users (*), but I don't think it'll matter one iota in Google's eyes.

Mostly the people who care about what lens you used on a picture are other photographers, no? I might be wrong on this, but wouldn't they be the least likely of all to buy photos from you?

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

I wonder if having the same basic family of anchor text on each of my 99 photo pages will look like spam to Google?

Any advice?

Your image catalog wouldn't be any different than any other catalog type site where each product has a link to common info - I can't see where the duplicate anchor text would be an issue for google.

I don't think google will care. Why would it look like spam? I didn't even notice it at first.
Maybe you could have more writing on your site. That way the ratio of text to lense type would be lower.
Use more keywords that entice consumers. I agree with newbie. Anyone who knows what those lenses are will not purchase your photos. They will shoot their own.

Forrest if you dedicated a page to the lens itself that might rank particularly as more people link to it. I'm not sure just linking to the gallery will do much unless you start to feature the name of the lens prominently on the pages.

By the way why not write a specific page on each lens and why you use it, the pros and cons. You could easily enough link to an affiliate selling the lens too.

Thanks for the fantastic info, everyone! There's some really good advice in here.

GreenGuy - I'm in the process of going through and adding more text ( comments ) under each photo. It's slow going, but I noticed a lot of pages starting to drop out of the Google index, typically the ones with the least ext. So you couldn't be more right on how important that is.

I don't think I've sold ten prints in as many years ( although the first several years I wasn't very serious ), so that's not a concern. Mainly the quality of my photos is an advertisement for services I can provide, from shooting portraits to developing photography workflow software.

VanGogh - That would be the reason to link to the galleries, so when someone types "Canon EF 135" they get to my portraiture. But a mini-review is probably a better idea.

And good point about other online catalogues, SeolMan. I guess I was a little worried about repeating all the same anchor text on all my pages, but that's exactly how my navbar works, so...

Thanks to all who responded!

wow, nice...

The most important thing is that you want the information on your website geared towards your visitors. If you build your website with the visitors in mind, you will be successful. It is extremely important to make changes for the search engines, but make sure the content flows and makes sense.

The comment above me sounds cryptic, like a riddle, but that doesn't make it any less true.

Yep build site for Visitors not to SE ... so it will make loyal visitor, this is important when SE hammered your site