Keyword question

[Duncan Day]

Hiya, I have had a quick search but can't find the answer I am looking for so wonder if you good people can help. I am struggling on some photographs to get relevant keywords to make up to 50 and have found myself putting irrelevant keywords in to make the quota to make the pictures discoverable. When I used to run a website I was always led to believe that doing that is more harmful than god to a product in search engine optimization so presume it is the same here. just wondering what people do when they exhaust all possible keywords, thanks for any advice.

[spacecadet]

51 minutes ago, Duncan Day said:

when they exhaust all possible keywords

We don't do it. Discoverability has no advantages that I can see and most of my recent images have no more than 25-30 tags. Overtagging is positively harmful as it will lead to irrelevant aearch returns and harm your rank.

[Duncan Day]

10 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Overtagging is positively harmful as it will lead to irrelevant aearch returns and harm your rank.

that's what I thought , so why does Alamy set out that full discoverability is only available when you reach 50 tags and 10 supertags, surely they should realise this too.

[Harry Harrison]

16 minutes ago, Duncan Day said:

so why does Alamy set out that full discoverability is only available when you reach 50 tags and 10 supertags, surely they should realise this too.

Why indeed!

Edited November 11, 2019 by Harry Harrison

[meanderingemu]

20 minutes ago, Duncan Day said:

that's what I thought , so why does Alamy set out that full discoverability is only available when you reach 50 tags and 10 supertags, surely they should realise this too.

 

competitive advantage for those who come here and find out that the process likely has a negative impact. 

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, Duncan Day said:

why does Alamy set out that full discoverability is only available when you reach 50 tags and 10 supertags

Actually to be fair there are certain types of images that will benefit from a lot of keywords, you'll find examples if you search the various posts on this subject. Don't forget that you may need to add plurals (no stem-searching on Alamy) and US spelling perhaps, things like UK, United Kingdom, England, Europe etc. and conceptual keywords. 10 supertags is almost certainly a good idea, especially if a lot of them are repeated somehow in the caption. It's not an exact science though, and I don't take my own advice so look to others for how it should be done.

[Betty LaRue]

If you have a person in your image, for example.

person,persons,people,man,men,male,males,25 years old,25-30 years old,Caucasian,curly hair,beard,farmer,farmers,farmer plowing field,jeans,tee shirt,work boots,man working,person working,man driving tractor,tractor,tractors,farm,farming,plow,plowing,field,fields,farm field,preparing ground,preparing field,Farmall tractor,Farmall tractors,spring,copyspace,copy space,day,daytime,one person only,outdoors,sunshine,Wichita,Kansas,US,USA,U.S.,U.S.A.,United States,North America

50 tags, all relevant.
Depends on whether you want to bother. Some images can only have a handful of relevant tags and I have some like that. 

pork chop,pork chops,grilled pork chop,pork,meat,food,foods,savory,seasoned pork chop,seasoned pork chops,fried okra,salad,garden salad,garden salads,corn bread,dinner,meal,ready to eat,American cuisine,southern cooking,dining table,indoors,USA

A lot of people use half or less than I do.

The way searches work, if you have: man,plowing,field, and the searcher uses the phrase “man plowing field” your image will be returned. But if you have the exact phrase “man plowing field” that the client used, your image will (should) be returned higher than the other way. I usually try to add a relevant phrase, but trying to think like someone else is hard. So you might also add “farmer plowing field” “farmer plowing”.

Disclaimer: it all depends on how tired I am. Sometimes the tags flow and other times there’s a cork in the bottle. 😁

Betty

[Avpics]

Quote

...man,plowing,field, and the searcher uses the phrase “man plowing field” ...

plowing, ploughing (UK). Another example of why sometimes fifty is not enough with so many variations, but 'aim' to only use words applicable.

[Betty LaRue]

20 minutes ago, Avpics said:

plowing, ploughing (UK). Another example of why sometimes fifty is not enough with so many variations, but 'aim' to only use words applicable.

True. I don’t use enough of those variations.

[Duncan Day]

yeah, I understand that Betty La Rue, I have some photos that the key words just flow, others that no matter how you dress it up can sometimes barely get to 20 no matter how hard you try.

[george]

Don't forget to put the latin name for animals, birds, insects, plants etc (your swan as an example) it may take time researching but I enjoy it, its amazing what you learn. 
Also plurals and singulars, for example I looked at one of your images of a train, it has trains but not train. So pheasant and pheasants, plant and plants etc etc. Also as already mentioned the variations in spelling from UK to US, colourful, colorful, for example.

[Allan Bell]

41 minutes ago, Duncan Day said:

yeah, I understand that Betty La Rue, I have some photos that the key words just flow, others that no matter how you dress it up can sometimes barely get to 20 no matter how hard you try.

 

Don't worry. A great deal of my images have maybe 10 - 15 maximum tags.

 

Allan

 

[Lori Rider]

2 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

If you have a person in your image, for example.

person,persons,people,man,men,male,males,25 years old,25-30 years old,Caucasian,curly hair,beard,farmer,farmers,farmer plowing field,jeans,tee shirt,work boots,man working,person working,man driving tractor,tractor,tractors,farm,farming,plow,plowing,field,fields,farm field,preparing ground,preparing field,Farmall tractor,Farmall tractors,spring,copyspace,copy space,day,daytime,one person only,outdoors,sunshine,Wichita,Kansas,US,USA,U.S.,U.S.A.,United States,North America

50 tags, all relevant.
Depends on whether you want to bother. Some images can only have a handful of relevant tags and I have some like that. 

pork chop,pork chops,grilled pork chop,pork,meat,food,foods,savory,seasoned pork chop,seasoned pork chops,fried okra,salad,garden salad,garden salads,corn bread,dinner,meal,ready to eat,American cuisine,southern cooking,dining table,indoors,USA

A lot of people use half or less than I do.

The way searches work, if you have: man,plowing,field, and the searcher uses the phrase “man plowing field” your image will be returned. But if you have the exact phrase “man plowing field” that the client used, your image will (should) be returned higher than the other way. I usually try to add a relevant phrase, but trying to think like someone else is hard. So you might also add “farmer plowing field” “farmer plowing”.

Disclaimer: it all depends on how tired I am. Sometimes the tags flow and other times there’s a cork in the bottle. 😁

Betty

 

It was my understanding that if you have "man driving tractor" then you don't need to put "tractor" again by itself. Same with "grilled pork chop"/"pork chop". If I am wrong, then I have a lot of keywording to fix.

[Colin Woods]

4 hours ago, Duncan Day said:

why does Alamy set out that full discoverability is only available when you reach 50 tags and 10 supertags, surely they should realise this too.

This topic comes up regularly. I too am surprised that Alamy still include it. Just pretend its not there and keyword answering the questions Who, What , Where, Why, When, and How.

[Betty LaRue]

2 hours ago, Lori Rider said:

 

It was my understanding that if you have "man driving tractor" then you don't need to put "tractor" again by itself. Same with "grilled pork chop"/"pork chop". If I am wrong, then I have a lot of keywording to fix.

I’m somewhat confused myself. What I believe is that if a searcher uses “pork chop”, anyone who has that two word tag will come up before another person’s “grilled pork chop” where “pork chop” is retrieved from the three word phrase.  
I think Alamy did push for using tags like “grilled pork chop” and saying there is no need to add “pork chop”. But on the other hand, exact phrases seem to be rewarded. 
Like I said, it’s confusing, so I err on the side of caution. Right or wrong. Sales these days are so hard to come by. I’m sitting on zero for November.

[Cryptoprocta]

11 hours ago, Duncan Day said:

Hiya, I have had a quick search but can't find the answer I am looking for so wonder if you good people can help. I am struggling on some photographs to get relevant keywords to make up to 50 and have found myself putting irrelevant keywords in to make the quota to make the pictures discoverable. When I used to run a website I was always led to believe that doing that is more harmful than god to a product in search engine optimization so presume it is the same here. just wondering what people do when they exhaust all possible keywords, thanks for any advice.

This is the Alamy official tutorial on the current Image Manager, showing best practice.

There are only 16 keywords.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DeGewd73uw&t=344s

 

Edited November 11, 2019 by Cryptoprocta

[Duncan Day]

thanks all

[Lori Rider]

2 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

I’m somewhat confused myself. What I believe is that if a searcher uses “pork chop”, anyone who has that two word tag will come up before another person’s “grilled pork chop” where “pork chop” is retrieved from the three word phrase.  
I think Alamy did push for using tags like “grilled pork chop” and saying there is no need to add “pork chop”. But on the other hand, exact phrases seem to be rewarded. 
Like I said, it’s confusing, so I err on the side of caution. Right or wrong. Sales these days are so hard to come by. I’m sitting on zero for November.

 

Thanks for your thoughts. I'm a big zero for November so far too.

[Sally]

9 hours ago, Betty LaRue said:

,US,USA,U.S.,U.S.A.,United States,North America
 

Disclaimer: it all depends on how tired I am. Sometimes the tags flow and other times there’s a cork in the bottle. 😁

Betty

Correct me if I’m wrong but since the search engine ignores punctuation I think US/U.S. and USA/U.S.A. would be the same so not worth distinguishing.

[Betty LaRue]

39 minutes ago, Sally said:

Correct me if I’m wrong but since the search engine ignores punctuation I think US/U.S. and USA/U.S.A. would be the same so not worth distinguishing.

I didn’t realize that, Sally. Thanks.

[Lori Rider]

1 hour ago, Sally said:

Correct me if I’m wrong but since the search engine ignores punctuation I think US/U.S. and USA/U.S.A. would be the same so not worth distinguishing.

 

Oh, thanks for this. I have always left apostrophes out based on this assumption, so I'm glad for confirmation I did that right--and also glad I don't have to fix my US/USA!

[Betty LaRue]

I’m sure I must have read that information in the past, but I’m too set in my ways to leave out punctuation!  It’s hard to unlearn something that was always so important. So I probably brushed it off so I wouldn’t have periods and apostrophes haunting my dreams. 😊

[CrowingHen]

This is a great question.

 

I love the keyword part.  It's just like that game we played in creative writing class in High school where you have 60 seconds to come up with the most unique and relevant words about a photo.  I loved that game but I got points off for bad spelling.

 

This is what I've been doing (I haven't sold anything yet, so it might be an example of the wrong way):

 

When the photo is new, I try to get at least 20 really obvious keywords, often more.  Then on rainy days or insomniac hours when I cannot go outside and take photos, I come back to my photos and select the ones with orange line (poor discoverability) and do deeper research.  I might search on Alamy to see if I can find a photo like mine (and I'm never sure if I should be happy or sad when mine's the only one that comes up) and see what keywords the others are using.  Or I might search for the item on wiki and mine the article for keywords.  

 

I like having all my images with the green line because I'm obsessive that way.  But I know I'll have plenty of rainy days once winter decides to settle in when I can upgrade my keywords.  But I also don't want to put irrelevant words.  Waste of valuable word space.

 

That said, the photos I took where I can't find anything like it on Alamy, I take more time to get as many relevant keywords in there right away.  I've also just discovered Alamy Measures yesterday and found some areas where people are clicking my images AND there are only a few hundred images (maybe 80% of them are related to the search words) come up. So I'm going to focus on images related to that and give them more keyword love and research (find the latin name for the plant they searched and stuff like that)