Lesson #22 Search Engine Optimization
Written By Titmowse

The webmaster who makes their living from TGP galleries will create and submit hundreds of pages a year. He or she depends on the traffic that comes from being listed on a collection of TGP sites.

The gallery maker toils hard over layout and ad placement. They labor to make sure their thumbnails and images work in congruity with the sponsor or site they’re trying to market. The TGP page-maker tries to insure their combination of content and advertising is attractive to reviewers and salable to surfers. The hope is that while the gallery resides on the TGPs, it brings in enough traffic to make a tidy profit for the webmaster.

With all this effort, it’s no wonder that many gallery builders don’t take the time to optimize their pages for the search engines.

What’s that? Optimize a gallery for the search engines? A TGP gallery is a disposable document. It doesn’t have a shelf life. The TGPs only list a page for a week at the most. What good will it do to take time out of a busy day to mess with the META tags on a gallery?

First of all, a gallery page isn’t as temporary as you might think. It’s true that even the best gallery will appear on the main page of a TGP for a short time. However, it’s also true that many TGP operators archive old galleries as a service to surfers. If you get listed at a TGP, it’s always a good idea to keep that gallery online just in case it’s put onto an archive page.

Many TGP webmasters tell of how they’re still receiving hits from archived galleries they created months, and sometimes years ago. A listing from a TGP need not be temporary.

In fact, as long as your gallery is online, there’s no reason why you can’t get search engine traffic from it. The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) has a specific category where webmasters may submit individual gallery pages. The guidelines for submitting a gallery to DMOZ are similar to the guidelines of the average TGP. No pop-ups, a certain amount of images on the page, a reachable email address.

If DMOZ indexes your page then eventually both Google and Yahoo will pick it up. If you’ve used the right keywords and title tags, then it’s quite possible your gallery will receive SE traffic for months to come. So take a little extra time and apply some SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to your TGP gallery.

Insert a good title in your TITLE tag. Add descriptive, applicable keywords into your META tags. That way, your page has a chance to continue working for you long after it falls off the front of the TGPs. Get some more traffic to it by optimizing it for the search engines.

Make sure to check out our Traffic Lounge Classroom right here on Cozy Academy or the Traffic Control help guide on Cozy Frog for scoop on search engine basics and optimization!