Keywords are the key to success in photo banks

Today, I would like to focus on the importance of selecting the right keywords and provide beginners in microstock with some practical tips based on my personal experience on how to organize work with keywords effectively.

A Key Factor for Success in Stock Photography

Why does sales success on stock photography sites depend so much on the proper selection of keywords? To put it bluntly, I believe that keywords serve as pathways that lead stock buyers to your illustrations and photographs. If you mislabel the keywords, the microstock buyer simply won’t find the path to your image and will pass by, no matter how wonderful your photograph or illustration may be. So, keep in mind that the process of selecting keywords is almost as important as the creative process itself, and neglecting keyword selection during selling photos and illustrations on stock sites is not an option. Accurate keywording can significantly boost your sales compared to similar works!
In principle, numerous services for keyword selection have already appeared on stock sites and various online resources. Using such services can greatly simplify the keyword selection process, but it still doesn’t free you from the need to think critically. There will always be works in your portfolio that are quite challenging to describe using standard keyword selection services.

Algorithm for Selecting Keywords for Images

1. Identify the main object in your image and describe it with a short phrase (2-5 words is sufficient). Ask yourself the question, “What do I see?” For example, “A tree on a green lawn” or “A girl with apples in the garden”. Next, translate the phrase into English, and you’ll have a foundational phrase for keyword selection. Go ahead — by following the link and the instructions, you’ll obtain a ready-made set of keywords sorted by importance.
2. Using your foundational phrase and a keyword selection service, you’ll get a prepared set of keywords sorted by their importance. However, if you cannot use selection services, simply try searching stock sites with your foundational phrase. You’ll receive images related to your foundational phrase. Sort the search results by sales level and select several works that closely match your theme, then extract keywords from those works for your own keyword set.
3. If you don’t have access to the internet while selecting keywords but still don’t want to waste time, you can do the following – answer these questions:
   • What do we see in the image? For instance, a house, a woman, a child.
   • What is it (he, she, it)? Color, age, size, shape, taste, mood, etc.
   • What is happening? Or what is the person doing? For example, construction, repair, sitting, jumping.
   • When? For example, day, night, old age, childhood, youth, summer, winter.
   • Where? For example, outside, indoors, in the forest, Russia (only if there are clear signs of the country).
   • Associative words. Things that are not present explicitly but relate to the theme of the image. For example, a loaf of bread – association – diet, an athlete – health, a gift – joy. However, do not stray too far.
   • Describe fine details. For example, a watch on a wrist, a diamond in a ring, or a cherry in a cocktail.
   • Count the number of people/objects in the image. Use both numerals and words.
   • Provide a description of the technology used to create the image. For example, soft-focus, rasterized, isolated, rendered 3D. You don’t always need to specify Photo or Vector; the exception only applies to rasterized vectors.
4. Now that you have your set of keywords, check for spelling errors. Also, enhance your list with synonyms, remove duplicates, and count the number of words. It will be more convenient to count words if you enter them in cells in Microsoft Excel or any other spreadsheet.
5. Now, sort the keywords by importance. By the way, it’s also easier to do this in Excel. Simply assign an importance index next to each word in the adjacent column and sort by it. Why is this sorting necessary? There are several explanations for this sorting. First of all, the photo bank Fotolia recommends listing keywords in order of importance, while other photo banks do not. Secondly, if the number of keywords exceeds what a specific bank allows, and for the photo bank Shutterstock it is – 50 words, it will be easier to remove the excess keywords from the end than to analyze the entire list of keywords one by one. Now copy the selected keywords from Excel to Word (paste as… => unformatted text), replace ‘^p’ (paragraph sign) with ‘,’. Now we have a list of keywords separated by commas.
6. At the final stage, you will need to transfer the selected keywords to the metadata of your image. This can be done using special software mentioned below. By the way, don’t forget to immediately insert the image title and its description. A small tip – try to make descriptions at least 7 words long (this length is required by microstock Bigstockphoto, while other microstocks have shorter restrictions). Well, now that you have a set of keywords ready, writing the description will be significantly easier. Pay special attention to the fact that the description should consist of meaningful phrases, not a mere list of keywords separated by commas. For example, “Beautiful young woman walking outdoors. The weather is sunny.”

How to save keywords in image properties (IPTC format)?

Metadata in the IPTC format allows you to store additional information directly in the image file (JPEG, TIFF formats, etc.). For microstock photographers and illustrators, this is the most convenient option for storing keywords, titles, and descriptions of images. Moreover, practically all leading photo banks have the option to read and process such data when uploading images, allowing us to avoid the need for repetitive entry of image data on various microstocks manually.
Many modern graphic software packages have IPTC metadata editing functions, including Adobe Photoshop (from version 6), Adobe Bridge, ACDSee version 8 and above, IrfanView, and others.

And finally, let me say

I want to give you a few more useful tips when working with keywords. If you experience difficulties translating into English and are also selecting keywords manually, use a translation program to speed up your work (one word/phrase per line). Then try translating the resulting keywords back from English. If the meaning remains the same, you are on the right track. By the way, from my own experience, I want to note that as you work with microstocks, you will be pleasantly surprised at how much your English vocabulary expands.
If you are working with a series of similar images, first create a set of keywords that is as general as possible for all images. After that, it will be easy to supplement it with words that describe the specific features of each image.
I want to warn you: adding popular keywords that do not relate to your image is a path to nowhere! This will probably not lead to a significant increase in additional sales, but it can easily result in warnings from the photo bank administration or even the blocking of your account with the loss of all your earned money.