The Photo Rank system works a bit differently from an ordinary ranking system. Your ranking is not determined by a visitor voting on how much they liked your picture, but is determined by the number of visits a particular photo receives. Every time your photo is visited it is given a vote, which increases that photo's ranking.
"Does having more photos in my blog mean better rankings?"
No, better photos mean better rankings. Having many photos in your photo blog will not mean that your photos will get a better ranking compared to others. Keep in mind that having one or more low ranked photos in your photo blog can drag down the rankings of your other photos, so maintaining your photo blog is very important if you want to maintain quality for your visitors.
When you submit a new photo to your photo blog, it will always have a low rank (if you have more than one photo in your blog), probably because most people are unaware that it is there. Don't let that scare you, as the photo rank will grow fast over the first 7 days. The search engines will add your submission immediately after you have posted it, and will rank you based on the written content you have provided (see also, Increase the popularity of your photos). Most members at my photo blog will have visited your new submissions within 7 days, and after 7 days, your submission will begin to turn up in search results through all the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN).
"How can I speed up my rankings?"
You can help promote your own photos and get the rank up even faster. At the bottom of each page where your photos are submitted, you will find two separate links to the photo. The HTML Code will allow you and others to add the link to any HTML driven environment (such as a webpage). The BB Code will allow you and others to share the link at any forum, through any discussions you may be participating in across the Internet. In both cases, no copyrights are violated as only the link and not the content is shared.
If you have a personal website, we highly recommend adding the Pocket Blog to one or more of your pages. This will increase the chances of people visiting your website to stay updated on the photos you capture, and at the same time help your photos to rank even higher (see the statistic area of your photo blog, for implementation).
People who are visiting your photo blog can also subscribe to your Live RSS Feed, allowing them fast access to your photos through their favorite newsreader. You can of course also share links through e-mails and instant messengers, for this we recommend copying and pasting the link from the address bar within your browser.
Don't forget that the more you participate at other peoples blogs (in terms of commenting photos) the more you share your own link to your photos, increasing the chances that their visitors will also visit your photos.
As you can see, the options for a high photo rank are many; the question is "how popular do you want your photos to become?"
"How do I know if my photo is not popular?"
You are the judge of your photo blog and the decision maker of what you define as popular and not popular. However, should a photo over a long period of time maintain a low rank, this will probably indicate that the photo is not popular among people searching the photos, nor is it popular among those visiting your photo blog. You should also refer to the first question in this FAQ about low rankings.
