You’re signed up. Images uploaded, but before you hit submit did you enter keywords?
Keywording photos can be a time consuming endeavor, but it should still be included in your workflow as it is the most important exercise for getting your images found by people who are looking to license them. The key to effective keywording is to use all the terms – and only the terms – that are clearly conveyed by the content and context of your image.
Describe the content, what it’s doing, where it is, what concepts it conveys and how it’s composed without clearing stating the obvious.
The image below contains, hands, nose, mouth, eyes, but it’s not the main context of the image. This is an image of a teenager with headphones. Someone searching for “human hand” is looking for an image of a hand, not this image.
Keywords: teenager, headphones, listening, music
Think like a Buyer
You took a picture of woman lounging on the beach, you may know she’s your sister and she’s a doctor. The buyer sees a woman lounging on the beach, then “Doctor” and “Sister” are not valid keyword.
Representative & Conceptual
After you have described what you see (mentioning the most prominent motives and actions) it’s time to move on to the conceptual terms, meaning words relative to the theme, feelings or concept of the scene.
Keywords: relaxing, girls, childhood, fun, carefree, youth
Avoid spamming
Including irrelevant keywords actually hurts your visibility on the site. Deliberately including incorrect terms that have no bearing or only a flimsy connection to the content hurts the collection and can result in having your portfolio removed from the site.
30 is enough
The minimum number of keywords we require is 9, and while we don’t have a maximum, we think 30 is enough. Separate every word by a comma “,” for it to be recognized as a single keyword.
What not to include
- Numbers
- Camera or file info (ex. Canon, 4k)
- Irrelevant words (this will result in file refusal)
- Overly descriptive terms
So, there you have it. Get your work seen and help customers find what they’re after to boost your sales! Head on over to Kraasimages to get started.