How to Increase Sales Using Keywords?

From time to time, rather intriguing articles appear on various stock photo sites that, with the right approach, can help increase sales volume and boost your earnings on stock photo sites. If you are proficient in English, you can easily browse through a wealth of helpful articles available on microstocks. But if not, feel free to visit my blog and read articles about stock photo sites in translation. Today, I would like to present an article about the use of keywords, published on the stock site Shutterstock quite some time ago, yet it remains relevant to this day. By the way, as many have already realized, the optimal use of keywords can significantly boost your sales on stock photo sites. Because no matter how great your image is, without the right keywords, it won’t generate significant sales on microstocks. I would say that achieving a high number of sales on stock photo sites requires both high-quality work and the effective use of keywords.

Choosing the right keywords when adding an image to a stock site is not as easy as it might seem at first glance. Often, keywords are chosen incorrectly. For instance, why use the keyword “sun” for a photograph when the sun is actually absent from the shot? Just because the photo was taken in daylight doesn’t mean you should include the word “sun” in the list of keywords (there are many such examples). If you overuse keywords, you might end up in a situation where potential buyers simply skip the suitable image with the required keyword along with all the other works.

There are several keywords that many beginner authors on stock photo sites try to use with every work. Among such often misused keywords are:

• “Computer” – the fact that you used a computer to create this image is not a sufficient reason to add this keyword to the description of such work.
• “Couple” – using this keyword implies the presence of two individuals of human gender, engaged with each other in the illustration or photograph. Using this keyword to describe a photo with two standing bottles is not quite appropriate.
• “Family” – this keyword is often used to describe an image featuring a single person. For a family, that’s a bit lacking, wouldn’t you agree? This keyword is appropriate for photographs and illustrations featuring two or more people who share something in common beyond just two eyes, two hands, and so on.
• “Love” – remember the joke about love for one’s homeland? So, using this keyword is appropriate if your photograph or illustration features something associated with love. This could be a loving couple, a bouquet of red roses, or a heart, but not in the form of a human organ.
• “Vector” – this keyword is appropriate if you have a vector illustration. If your work is created in JPG format and you are not uploading an additional vector format, then you shouldn’t use this keyword either.

On the stock site Shutterstock, there are specific rules for working with keywords. By adhering to these, you can significantly increase the number of views for your works and, consequently, your earnings on this stock site as well as others:

1. Keywords should be used in any language supported by the microstock.
2. Keywords must reflect the theme of the image.
3. Keywords can be changed both after uploading and after the image is accepted into the stock site’s database Shutterstock.
4. “Keyword spamming” can lead to a decrease in sales, rather than an increase. And if you spam with keywords constantly, your account on the stock site may be deactivated.
5. For each uploaded image, you should choose at least seven keywords. Try to make sure that the selected keywords correspond closely to the images!
6. If you are adding a phrase as a keyword, there is no need to put it in quotation marks, so that the image can be found in search results both by the phrase and by the individual words in it. In this case, all images using that phrase as a keyword will be displayed in the search results. If the phrase is quoted, then it may happen that if a buyer’s search request includes separate keywords from the phrase, the image will not be shown in the search results.
7. The Shutterstock stock site’s search engine automatically searches for the plural form of the word, so try to use keywords in the singular form. This will be sufficient.

Don’t forget that choosing the right keywords is crucial not only for selling your images but also for providing subscribers of the stock site Shutterstock with the most relevant (accurate) results during the search according to their request. Correct use of keywords is the key to success on the stock site.

Properly added keywords in your images will only benefit you. Sometimes, while browsing images on the stock site, one might think: “How did THIS pass the inspector’s eyes? Do these keywords reflect the theme of the image?”. Most likely, these keywords were simply added after the image was checked. Below you can see such photographs. The photographs indicating a problem with the keywords are highlighted in red…. Where’s the sun here? Where’s the sunset?

How does such an inappropriate arrangement of keywords affect the sales of such images? Imagine you are a subscriber on the Shutterstock photobank. Got it? You urgently need a good photo and you search for the keyword “flower” – here are the search results:

So, how is it? How many flowers do you see in the selected photographs? Undoubtedly, the photographs themselves are good, the landscape is nice, but there are no flowers on them. In these photographs, the keyword “flower” was added after the inspector checked the photo. Most likely, the keyword “forest” was added at the same time as “flower”.

In the example above, a photobank subscriber might lose the desire to such an extent that they stop searching for the desired image on the Shutterstock photobank and might even turn to other photobanks because some author added irrelevant keywords to their photograph!

To succeed in working with a photobank, a microstocker must learn to critically evaluate their work. When describing images, use obvious words and phrases. Put yourself in the position of a photobank subscriber. Analyze the theme of your works, do not copy and add to the list of keywords whatever comes to mind first. If approached wisely, by selecting and adjusting keywords for each image, you can increase the number of purchases of your photograph or illustration on the photobank. Remember, you should aim not only for your uploaded image to hit the photobank’s TOP but also for your image to be easily found on the first pages of search results.

In my opinion, this article provides a fairly broad overview of keyword selection for images uploaded to photobanks. And although the article was written by representatives of the Shutterstock photobank, it will be relevant for working with other well-known photobanks as well.

Source materials for preparing the article on increasing sales on photobanks: http://submit.shutterstock.com/news