When you upload your images to Bigstock, make keywording an important part of your workflow. Your images will sell better if you put a little extra effort to writing accurate keywords, and lots of them.
Here are a few tips to help you master the art and science of keywording.
1. Think like an image buyer.
Picture the person most likely to download your image. Now, put yourself in that person’s shoes and think about which words they’d type to find an image like yours. Think specific.
2. Use lots of accurate keywords, and write different ones for every image.
As a general rule, try to input 25 to 40 keywords per image. It might be tempting to upload a batch of images from a single shoot and label them all with a list of identical keywords. However, if you put in a little more time to write precise keywords for each image, you’ll see better sales. Even if two shots are very similar, a customer might specifically seek a photo that’s tightly cropped or loosely cropped, or of a person smiling or not smiling. So include keywords like “smiling” or “serious” to help out people doing searches. The differences will help your images stand out to customers with specific needs.
3. Make your titles and descriptions unique
Titles should be succinct, punchy and describe exactly what’s seen in the image. The “Description” should be longer and more detailed. Make this data as accurate and unique as possible. For example, if you have two images of dogs, don’t give them both a title of “Dog.” “White Dog Playing With Ball” and “Black Dog Eating” will help differentiate the photos and lead to more success when buyers search for specific terms and phrases. The time you save when batch editing might result in fewer sales.
4. Don’t spam.
Never label your images with irrelevant keywords in an attempt to get more views. Remember, the whole idea is to help the right customers find your images. What’s more, Bigstock investigates and reserves the right to ban contributors who use spam keywords.
5. Be precise with descriptions of people.
Use as many accurate words as possible to describe your models’ ages, races and genders. Take particular care in how you describe someone’s race and ethnicity. For example, never describe someone as “ethnic” or a “minority,” since those words mean different things depending on where in the world you are. Don’t label someone with multiple, different ethnicities.
6. Think about concepts and feelings.
A smiling person isn’t just “smiling.” He or she might also be conveying “happiness,” “joy,” “delight,” “humor,” or any number of other emotions. Image customers often search for conceptual words like these, so think about which words might apply to your images and use those keywords liberally. Use a thesaurus to find new words and a dictionary to spell your keywords correctly.
7. Learn from which images are selling well, and edit your keywords as needed.
You can always go back and change your keywords on Bigstock. If you have older images that can be improved with better keywords, go ahead and improve them.
These tips should help get your images in front of people who want to use them. Go out and create and upload great pictures, but remember that good keywording is essential, too. The best image in the world won’t be found unless it has good keywords.
Image: ©plrang/Bigstock
