Re-Keywording....is it worth the effort. Will it pay off?

[focal point]

After a dozen or so years of extremely successful selling via Alamy the past couple of years has showed sharp declines in sales.  This is in spite of adding a steady stream of new images.  My wife and I have done a comprehensive look at our keywording over the years and have noted that we have done an average job at best with keywording our images.  Downright sloppy in many instances.  We have talked of re-keywording and the editing of our entire 70k image collection at Alamy.  We are thinking that this would be the best thing that could be done to boost sales at this point in time.  Better than shooting new material.

 

1.  What say you ?

 

2.  Have you redone your entire collection at Alamy (regardless of size)?

 

3. Has it paid off for you in Ranking and subsequent sales?

 

4. How much dead wood % have you deleted from your collection.

 

5. Have you use a pseudo for a trash can?  If so wouldn't your over all ranking still be affected downward because the images are still in one account.

 

6. Have you tried a second account?  How did that work?

 

7. What approach (philosophy) have you taken when re-keywording.

 

Your general thoughts on this entire subject of fine tuning your collection to increase sales would be appreciated.

[vpics]

Personally, I'd wait for changes to be made to the Manage Images section. I seem to recall the possibly of adding keywords in batches somehow. Or then, I might have been mistaken.

 

I definitely need to change quite a few of mine, too.

[Jill Morgan]

Right now I try to check AoA from the previous day to see what searches applied to some of my images that I haven't included.  I then go in and add that search term to images it would apply to.

 

Not the best solution, but I have a small port.  It will help if we can add to a batch without having to do it one at a time.

 

Jill

[NYCat]

Personally, I'd wait for changes to be made to the Manage Images section. I seem to recall the possibly of adding keywords in batches somehow. Or then, I might have been mistaken.

 

I definitely need to change quite a few of mine, too.

 

I definitely agree. They will be making changes of some sort and you'll want to take advantage of them. They have suggested, I think, that they will roll this out before the end of the year. Or did I make that up?

 

Paulette

[John Mitchell]

I regularly go back and tune up keywords of my older images in related (location, subject, etc.) batches. With fewer than 6000 images in my collection, it's not all that daunting a task. However, I have no evidence that my efforts have resulted in more zooms/sales or better ranking. If I had almost 70K images to wade through, I think that I might just leave things to the gods and hope for the best.

 

I've never liked the idea of a "trash can" pseudo for the reason that you suggested. This is probably just superstition on my part, though.

 

Have yet to remove "dead wood" because I feel (naively, no doubt) that somewhere down the road, someone might be looking for a certain piece of firewood and find it at the bottom of my wood pile.

[MircoV]

Seeing the last reply i would say YES....it is worth to re-keyword.

 

I always wanted to know wich toilets are a "historic attraction"

[Reimar]

I went to a random page and clicked this image:

 

activity, anchor, appeal, appealing, architecture, art, artisan, artist, artistic, artistry, asian, attraction, authentic, bc, big, boat, borough, british, build, building, ca, canada, china, chinatown, chinese, city, cityscape, columbia, construction, cook, cooking, craft, craftsmanship, cruise, cultural, design, designs, destination, development, dock, downtown, engineer, engineering, excursion, family, famous, fashion, food, fruit, fun, group, hallmark, heritage, historic, historical, history, holiday, icon, iconic, import, imported, interest, interesting, journey, landmark, landscape, large, lasting, leisure, life, meaningful, meat, megalopolis, memorable, metropolis, metropolitan, minority, momentous, municipal, navigate, neighborho, neighborhood, noteworthy, ocean, old, pacific, passengers, past, pastime, period, plan, planning, playing, pleasure, point, port, race, racial, relax, relaxation, remarkable, sail, scene, scenic, sea, town, vancouver, vegetables

 

I know that re-arranging keywords in alphabetical order makes things look worse than they are, but many appear to be completely irrelevant.  I imagine your Alamy rank is relatively low, which will affect your views (hence sales).  Re-keywording will probably increase your rank, but whether this is worth your while for so many images, I don't know. Why not start a test of re-keyworded images placed in a new psuedonym?  Contrary to your assumption this will not affect your "account".

[John Mitchell]

Were these keywords auto-generated -- either by a keywording program of some kind or by a keywording "service"?

[Joseph Clemson]

What astonishes me, as much as the dubious keywording which needs a massive amount of work to bring it up to scratch, is the fact that numerous images containing both people and private property are set as RF, contrary to Alamy's rules. This is compounded by the vast number of images where one is set as RM and a near identical image as RF.

[Jill Morgan]

 

 

 

activity,adriatic,adventure,ancient,appeal,appealing,architecture,artifact,artifacts,attraction,big,boat,bold,building,buildings,buoyant,canal,canals,carry,carrying,castello,cathedral,catholic,city,cityscape,commerce,commodity,connect,connection,continent,crowd,cruise,day,decorate,decoration,deliver,delivery,design,destination,dock,downtown,e.u,environment,eu,euro,europe,european,excitement,excursion,float,fun,group,historic,historical,history,holiday,holy,icon,iconic,interest,interesting,italy,join,journey,landmark,landscape,leisure,link,many,mass,metropolis,moving,natural,navigate,navigation,ocean,old,over,overpass,passengers,past,pietro,port,pray,protect,recognition,relic,religion,remains,river,romance,romantic,san,scene,scenic,sea,seeing,ship,shuttle,sight,sightsee,sightseeing,sightseer,streets,structure,style,venice,white

 

U N B E L I E V A B L E

 

Seriously! Is this a joke?  

I think I'll spend the same time answering your questions as you do on your keywording: 2 seconds. Oeps, time up!

Sorry, but I have better things to do than answering deliberate keyword spammers   

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

Interesting, that "recycling bins" isn't in the keywords

 

Jill

[Michael Ventura]

 

activity,adriatic,adventure,ancient,appeal,appealing,architecture,artifact,artifacts,attraction,big,boat,bold,building,buildings,buoyant,canal,canals,carry,carrying,castello,cathedral,catholic,city,cityscape,commerce,commodity,connect,connection,continent,crowd,cruise,day,decorate,decoration,deliver,delivery,design,destination,dock,downtown,e.u,environment,eu,euro,europe,european,excitement,excursion,float,fun,group,historic,historical,history,holiday,holy,icon,iconic,interest,interesting,italy,join,journey,landmark,landscape,leisure,link,many,mass,metropolis,moving,natural,navigate,navigation,ocean,old,over,overpass,passengers,past,pietro,port,pray,protect,recognition,relic,religion,remains,river,romance,romantic,san,scene,scenic,sea,seeing,ship,shuttle,sight,sightsee,sightseeing,sightseer,streets,structure,style,venice,whiteU N B E L I E V A B L E

Seriously! Is this a joke?  

I think I'll spend the same time answering your questions as you do on your keywording: 2 seconds. Oeps, time up!

Sorry, but I have better things to do than answering deliberate keyword spammers   

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Interesting, that "recycling bins" isn't in the keywords

 

Jill

Nor is "trash, rubbish, garbage, waste, recycle....."

[Bill Brooks]

I think new keywording would help your sales.

 

Try to think like an international client conducting a search. A UK client might use “America” but a United States client would use “USA”. Use both USA and UK spelling, subject names, and plurals.

 

Try to answer Where, When, Why, What, and How, when appropriate. Referred to as the 4 W’s plus How.

 

Keyword for the IMPORTANT parts of each specific image. Yes there is a “dog” in the far distance, but would someone looking for a “dog” consider the image? Do not use the same keywords for a set of images unless all of the images are similar.

 

Make your own keyword catalogue in Adobe lightroom or Bridge so your keywords are consistent and spelled properly. To speed your keywording use sub keywords. If go to my keyword catalogue and click on the sub keyword “Lahaina” (a town in Hawaii) then Adobe Bridge will automatically insert “Maui” “Hawaii” “America” “United States” “USA” as well as “Lahaina” without typing, and all separated by semicolons, and without typos.

 

Compose the caption first, because your most important keywords are probably in the caption.

 

On a Mac I use TextEdit to compose. Two lines of type in my standard TextEdit page, fits the Alamy caption box perfectly.

 

I Cut and Paste all of the keywords from the keyword Catalogue into the TextEdit page. Then I rearrange the keywords in importance by cutting and pasting, and then paste the entire keyword block back into the image file’s keyword metadata slot.

 

In terms of sales, good keywording is as important as good photography.

 

Here is a caption and keyword paste from the TextEdit box ready to be pasted into the image file’s metadata boxes before uploading to Alamy. Keyword Canada and beyond are third level importance. First 50 keyword spaces most important. Middle keywords secondary importance

 

Highland Creek in summer flowing through the Carolinian Forest of Morningside Park in Toronto Ontario Canada

 

river; forest; lush, green; summer, deciduous, water; creek; carolinian, greenery; lazy; slow; quiet; eastern, park, color, colour, reflection; Morningside Park, flowing; verdure; fresh; Canada, highland creek, leaves, north america, Ontario, Toronto, tree, urban wilderness, woodland

[John Mitchell]

Just wondering (again), if setting up a "trash pseudo" doesn't affect ranking, then why does Alamy Measures list an "average CTR"  for each contributor? A trash pseudo will definitely lower average CTR. Wouldn't that in turn negatively affect overall rank?

[Lynn Palmer]

 

 

 

activity,adriatic,adventure,ancient,appeal,appealing,architecture,artifact,artifacts,attraction,big,boat,bold,building,buildings,buoyant,canal,canals,carry,carrying,castello,cathedral,catholic,city,cityscape,commerce,commodity,connect,connection,continent,crowd,cruise,day,decorate,decoration,deliver,delivery,design,destination,dock,downtown,e.u,environment,eu,euro,europe,european,excitement,excursion,float,fun,group,historic,historical,history,holiday,holy,icon,iconic,interest,interesting,italy,join,journey,landmark,landscape,leisure,link,many,mass,metropolis,moving,natural,navigate,navigation,ocean,old,over,overpass,passengers,past,pietro,port,pray,protect,recognition,relic,religion,remains,river,romance,romantic,san,scene,scenic,sea,seeing,ship,shuttle,sight,sightsee,sightseeing,sightseer,streets,structure,style,venice,white

 

U N B E L I E V A B L E

 

Seriously! Is this a joke?  

I think I'll spend the same time answering your questions as you do on your keywording: 2 seconds. Oeps, time up!

Sorry, but I have better things to do than answering deliberate keyword spammers   

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

Interesting, that "recycling bins" isn't in the keywords

 

Jill

 

 

There are so many keywords included that don't apply to this image but "trash", "waste" and "garbage" are omitted?

 

Edit: and don't forget "rubbish"

 

I think you would definitely benefit from going back and cleaning up your keywords and licensing designations.

[John Mitchell]

John, that average number means nothing of any consequence. Maybe it's of interest to those who have several pseudos that are for different types of images, rather than a setup like I use of having my main pseudo, a junk one and a "not so good" one. I'm sure Alamy's help pages state this somewhere too. That's unless things have changed without me knowing about it.

 

Geoff.

 

I have only two pseudos, a main one that generates almost all of my sales/zooms plus a secondary one. Curiously, the secondary one always has the higher CTR. Both pseudos usually have better CTR than the Alamy average. It's all a mystery to me, but it's instructive to hear about your experiences.

[Guest]

After a dozen or so years of extremely successful selling via Alamy the past couple of years has showed sharp declines in sales. This is in spite of adding a steady stream of new images. My wife and I have done a comprehensive look at our keywording over the years and have noted that we have done an average job at best with keywording our images. Downright sloppy in many instances. We have talked of re-keywording and the editing of our entire 70k image collection at Alamy. We are thinking that this would be the best thing that could be done to boost sales at this point in time. Better than shooting new material.

 

1. What say you ?

 

2. Have you redone your entire collection at Alamy (regardless of size)?

 

3. Has it paid off for you in Ranking and subsequent sales?

 

4. How much dead wood % have you deleted from your collection.

 

5. Have you use a pseudo for a trash can? If so wouldn't your over all ranking still be affected downward because the images are still in one account.

 

6. Have you tried a second account? How did that work?

 

7. What approach (philosophy) have you taken when re-keywording.

 

Your general thoughts on this entire subject of fine tuning your collection to increase sales would be appreciated.

DMacD,

 

Well I think you already know my answer from another forum, the best person to ask would be Brian Y (rekeyworded whole? collection). I hold to minimal keywording to keep rank high and it's worked since 2006. In terms of effort, I would say it's well worthwhile to work on your keywording in terms of rank which does make such a difference to sales.......something to do on your next cruise.

 

As to pseudos, I don't have a' crap' pseudo, if your images are of equal stock potential then it's not needed.

 

I redid the whole collection twice in lieu of stemming and some other Alamy tweak. It was only a 1000 images and didn't take too long.

 

HTH,

 

P.S. Quite funny to see people commenting on your sales...........

[regen]

As Geoff says- Minimal key wording is the way to go and has also worked for me since 2007.  None of these key wording auto programmes can beat looking at the file then deciding what,where,how etc.

 

Regen

[Phil Robinson]

The single most important factor in Alamy's future success (or otherwise..) is the Alamyrank system.

The only way an unedited, unchecked system like this can work is when images keyworded this way appear so far down the search results that they never get seen.

If it works the way it's supposed to (and I believe it does) then contributors who do this will be sent to the back page. Which is a shame in a way as some of the images are really good and could be profitable not only for the photographer but Alamy.

[spacecadet]

OP, the answer is yes. You are going to need a box of blue pencils. A good start- get rid of all your comps. I'm sure I've never had a sale from one.

I used to use one of those free keyword generators. He did me a favour when he started charging for it.

Apart from a comp cull a few years ago as soon as I figured out how useless they were I'll only edit when a bunch of spammy search results appear from the ones I missed.

The picture of the recycling bins with no keywords related to rubbish at all is a bit of a classic. I don't think I've sold an image of a bin yet but at least they'll turn up in a search.

[Dave Richards]

I claim no expertise in the subject, but it seems to me that most images could be adequately key worded with little more than twenty words, or even less. Life's too short.

[CM photo]

 

 

 

Were these keywords auto-generated -- either by a keywording program of some kind or by a keywording "service"?

 

*Insult removed by admin*  

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

 

No need to insult.

 

 

Sorry, but I have absolutely NO respect for such rubbish work. This isn't the result of typos nor not understanding the language. This is deliberate keyword spamming and shouldn't be tolerated. This is a smack in the face for people who spend lots of time working their butts off to produce a good job 

Such practices ruin Alamy's reputation.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Well said.

[Ed Rooney]

 

 

 

 

Were these keywords auto-generated -- either by a keywording program of some kind or by a keywording "service"?

 

*Insult removed by admin*  

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

 

No need to insult.

 

 

Sorry, but I have absolutely NO respect for such rubbish work. This isn't the result of typos nor not understanding the language. This is deliberate keyword spamming and shouldn't be tolerated. This is a smack in the face for people who spend lots of time working their butts off to produce a good job 

Such practices ruin Alamy's reputation.

 

Cheers,

Philippe

 

 

Well said.

 

 

 

But isn't this policing job part of Alamy's responsibility? This level of keyword spamming and mislabeling licenses on such a humongous collection hasn't been noticed at Alamy? Surely they have some time for something other than deleting National Trust images. I do my part of this operation. I plan and shoot; I do careful PP; I research and do sensible, minimalist keywording. Everything else is Alamy's part of this effort. 

 

And as far as the OP giving this forum a long, complex writing assignment . . . not me, babe. 

 

Edo

[John Mitchell]

I've never quite understood why Alamy allows so many keywords -- up to 300 "main" keywords and a whopping 856 "comprehensive" keywords.

 

Surely these numbers encourage spamming, etc. It's a bit late to change things now, though.

[Jill Morgan]

I've never quite understood why Alamy allows so many keywords -- up to 300 "main" keywords and a whopping 856 "comprehensive" keywords. It's a bit late to change things now, though.

That's characters John, not keywords, but still a lot. very few images require that many but I do use a lot sometimes to create phrases that may incorporate the same words. This way they may get a higher find if the keywords a buyer is using are in the same order.

 

But I rarely ever use Comprehensive, and usually only part of Main.

 

Jill

[John Mitchell]

 

I've never quite understood why Alamy allows so many keywords -- up to 300 "main" keywords and a whopping 856 "comprehensive" keywords. It's a bit late to change things now, though.

That's characters John, not keywords, but still a lot. very few images require that many but I do use a lot sometimes to create phrases that may incorporate the same words. This way they may get a higher find if the keywords a buyer is using are in the same order.

 

But I rarely ever use Comprehensive, and usually only part of Main.

 

Jill

 

 

My bad. It is indeed characters. Thanks for correcting me. I too seldom use the "comprehensive" box.

 

Perhaps there should be a non-searchable "irrelevant" box as well.