Sally Posted November 22, 2017 Share Posted November 22, 2017 On 20/11/2017 at 14:22, Brasilnut said: Clemency Wright Consulting and I collaborated on a LinkedIn blog post about keywording a few weeks ago (with examples of some of my mediocre keywording and what was done to remedy). You can access it with the follow link: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/keywording-photographers-quest-increase-image-sales-clemency-wright That's interesting. Some useful tips . But it does go against other advice I have read in this forum to include the words 'a' and 'an'. Maybe I don't have to go back through the first half of my images to add these Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brasilnut Posted November 22, 2017 Share Posted November 22, 2017 Quote For a commercial collection at a more specialist outlet the figures may well work out. But here? I have my doubts Dont these specialist commercial agencies keyword images themselves? I'm with Robert Harding and even though they'll thankfully do this job on my behalf, I'll still keyword it since they tend to reject the majority of my images. So this saves me time later on and perhaps they'll also be grateful to have some useful keywords, particularly location specifics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedSnapper Posted November 22, 2017 Share Posted November 22, 2017 9 hours ago, Sally said: . But it does go against other advice I have read in this forum to include the words 'a' and 'an'. Do a search for: apple and banana an apple and banana apple and a banana make our own conclusions km Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 On 21/11/2017 at 15:27, Matthew Noble said: Hi Everyone, I have used Clemency Wright based in the North of the UK. I don't have time to do the key wording myself. I have noted an uplift in click-throughs and zooms. As yet, no surge in sales, but I only started using her in August. I generally label the locations, but they put in the synonyms and all those other bits which are such a pain to do. Hope that helps. Kind regards Matt Did she do #KEBCFK? I'm wondering where the 'architecture' or 'building exterior' is, I can't see any on the expanded thum. And what is the 'environmental issue' depicted by the image? Or this one #KEBCD3 - it's the outside of a cafe and she has put 'food', 'French cuisine', 'food and drink', although there is no food or drink visible in the image. Also she has put 'window shutter', while that's correct, the normal term would be 'shutters'. I see she's using some words/phrases from G's CV, like 'absence' and 'Place of Interest' in that image; 'beauty in nature' in the first one, and in another image 'small group of objects' A lot of these only work because of the way their search/CV functions. Hmmm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
teczoom Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 Morning Folks, After seeing this topic i contacted on 20th Nov, Clemency Wright consultancy and had a very interesting conversation with Clemency regarding the keywording of my images and the amount of sales/zooms, after talking at length to her i realised that i was missing some important keywords on a lot of my images have agreed with her to have 200 images re-keyworded etc, and we are going to monitor the results over the next six months, if my sales increase i will have no problem retaining her services. I will report back to the forum with the results in due course! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemency Wright Consulting Ltd Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 It's very interesting to hear first-hand from photographers on this Forum about your experience with keywording. Matthew, it is great to hear that your 'zooms' are increasing since we started working with you. Having consulted with Alamy on the Image Manager (Nov 2017), I gained valuable insight into Discoverability and Ranking. The methodology we employ is designed to optimise zooms and sales for the Alamy platform. If a client is submitting to other libraries, then the methodology must be adapted. Our new Alamy clients are invited to trial a small set of images initially. We monitor 'zooms' and sales over an agreed period (typically 6 months), before our client decides whether to invest further. Therefore not all of the images an Alamy client of ours has online are ones that we have keyworded. I'd be happy to expand further if there is something specific anyone would like to know more about. Here's to a successful and profitable year ahead for all Alamy photographers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedSnapper Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 2 hours ago, funkyworm said: Many agents exclude those words, I understand that is the case with micros. However Alamy keeps them. 'a' is searchable, and should be included as tag (or at least part of a tag - 'a banana', for instance) 'an' isn't (so can be ignored: 'an apple' and 'apple' produce the same results) km Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matthew Noble Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 I don't have time On 11/22/2017 at 08:26, spacecadet said: Yes, those are well keyworded. About as well as mine. BTW do you check them? Confectionery isn't spelt with an "a". No I don't spell check as I don't have the time. I have another job as well which takes up most of my time - Building Surveying, a fair bit of which is in France, so easier to outsource my key wording. I am happy with the service, and as we charge out our surveying work at £100 per hour plus VAT, key wording would not b worth our while. Matt x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
imageplotter Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 Am I the only one who feels that this is turning into an advertising thread for one provider's services? In the interest of competitive fairness (and because there are bound to be many other keywording providers not currently advertising here) perhaps this should be made clearer. I would especially question why a keywording services provider is registered as an alamy photographer with just 4 images which presumably she has submitted for the sole purpose of gaining access to alamy as a platform and forum to gain clients. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemency Wright Consulting Ltd Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 3 minutes ago, imageplotter said: Am I the only one who feels that this is turning into an advertising thread for one provider's services? In the interest of competitive fairness (and because there are bound to be many other keywording providers not currently advertising here) perhaps this should be made clearer. I would especially question why a keywording services provider is registered as an alamy photographer with just 4 images which presumably she has submitted for the sole purpose of gaining access to alamy as a platform and forum to gain clients. The Forum is not a place for advertising, it is place to share advice and guidance for the benefit of all. I have not advertised - I have been recommended by clients - which is not the same thing. Secondly, I was requested by Alamy's Head of Content to submit images. As previously mentioned, I consulted on the Alamy system and as such, I needed to be logged in as a 'Contributor', for which the account must contain images. I believe this Forum is an excellent resource, providing helpful advice (at no cost), for the benefit of the photography community. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Lewis Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 35 minutes ago, Clemency Wright Consulting Ltd said: The Forum is not a place for advertising, it is place to share advice and guidance for the benefit of all. I have not advertised - I have been recommended by clients - which is not the same thing. Secondly, I was requested by Alamy's Head of Content to submit images. As previously mentioned, I consulted on the Alamy system and as such, I needed to be logged in as a 'Contributor', for which the account must contain images. I believe this Forum is an excellent resource, providing helpful advice (at no cost), for the benefit of the photography community. How can this be worth it with the vagaries of the Alamy reranking system and many inaccuracies in captioning. Its impossible to separate some English villages. Regards Jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted November 23, 2017 Share Posted November 23, 2017 3 hours ago, Matthew Noble said: I don't have time No I don't spell check as I don't have the time. I have another job as well which takes up most of my time - Building Surveying, a fair bit of which is in France, so easier to outsource my key wording. I am happy with the service, and as we charge out our surveying work at £100 per hour plus VAT, key wording would not b worth our while. Matt x Be that as it may, I hope if someone else looks at your keywords, they will point out where you have words which are not relevant to the image, for example on having each of Scotland, Engand, Ireland and Wales for one image which can only possibly be one of these countries, some spelling mistakes, some wrong or irrelevant words and you should be making keyword phrases instead of letting your keywords split (e.g. I was going to ask you where the Robin was in one of your pics, but luckily I looked at the caption and it was Robin Hood's Bay, which should be a keyword phrase, not three separate keywords (though ironically Alamy's search splits keyword phrases, and muddles them with words from other keyword phrases. We have to hope it will work better one day). See, I told you that for free. I should charge £100 ph! ;-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cryptoprocta Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 23 hours ago, Clemency Wright Consulting Ltd said: Having consulted with Alamy on the Image Manager (Nov 2017), I gained valuable insight into Discoverability and Ranking. The methodology we employ is designed to optimise zooms and sales for the Alamy platform. If a client is submitting to other libraries, then the methodology must be adapted. I'd be happy to expand further if there is something specific anyone would like to know more about. One thing I've been aware of since starting here about eight years ago is that what Alamy says about their search and what actually happens isn't always the same. For example, recently I was looking to see how one of my files was ranking on its main keyword, it was in the top ten, , but what I also discovered was that three in the top ten had NO KEYWORDS AT ALL, including the top ranked, only a caption. (It was a good caption of the A doing B at C type, so obviously searchable on its main keyword, A). Presumably that contributor has a high sales rate which trumps keywords. Also, when you consulted Alamy, did they actually tell you that Alamy clients search using phrases from G's CV? E.g. in your own image, #HAJ73B, you have '4-5 years'. This is the way their system works, you type in e.g. girl or child, and you get a dropdown with options for ages and if it matters, you can click one. On Alamy, if a buyer searches on 'four year old girl', they can't find your image. Or even girl four. I actually checked, I searched on 'girl four independence lifestyle' and 'girl 4 independence lifestyle', your file showed up on the latter, but not the former. Not that anyone is likely to search on that string exactly, but I was testing (very important) to see if 4 and four had suddenly become intersearchable here, and they haven't. You're welcome. Oh, I'm positive I have less than perfectly keyworded files (I noticed a location missing from the keywords on one only the other day, but it was in the caption and was in the top line of relevancy search (a small search, to my surprise, not an indication that I have a high rank!). But I'm not setting out to charge people for my keywording knowhow and research within Alamy. Maybe I should. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sally Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 Actually the information from Alamy about keywording is pretty sparse (and I have read all their blogs). If they want us to keyword properly, it would be better if they provided a lot more information plus examples. I have had to learn the hard way by reading these forums, and then going back over images to change things, which is very time consuming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert M Estall Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 I'm happy for Clemency Wright Consulting to have a voice here. No reason why they shouldn't build a portfolio, though they might consider that a conflict of interests. Me, I have the time to do the keywording though I might not get full marks. I tried an English bloke from Poland working from a UK drop-of a good few years back. He was offering a scan and keyword service which isn't quite comparable. He had the same LS 9000 as I did but didn't have the carrier to take my mounted 67 transparencies so trashed my mounts and printed captions in the process which meant I had to re-do them. I had to remind them about the keywording which he then supplied as a spreadsheet, so nothing actually imbedded in the scan files. Rather put me off the whole idea and so I just soldiered on converting my archive to digital myself. It took a couple of years of graft Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Foreign Export Posted November 24, 2017 Share Posted November 24, 2017 my keywording may not be perfect - and whilst im happy to outsource a lot of services - i do my own keywording because i believe i know best Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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