Alamy Posted June 19 Share Posted June 19 Hi Everyone, We're hosting a webinar for Alamy Contributors with Clemency Wright, the leading industry expert on keywording for digital media. There'll be advice on proven strategies to improve your image keywording for better discoverability. You will also learn about her new platform 'Make Search Better'. Find out more details and where you can sign up here: Improve your keywording and Make Search Better with Clemency Wright - Alamy Blog The webinar will take place on Tuesday 9th July 4pm - 5pm BST. Places are limited so be sure to book your slot! Thanks Sophie 3 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Yarvin Posted July 9 Share Posted July 9 Thank you for a great presentation! Keywording is my downfall, but I keep trying. 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Ventura Posted July 9 Share Posted July 9 I ended having a shoot during the time of the webinar. Was it recorded and available online sometime soon? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SalopPhil Posted July 9 Share Posted July 9 I was only able to attend half the webinar, but I understand it was recorded. So, where will we be able to access this, and when? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harry Harrison Posted July 9 Share Posted July 9 Yes, it was recorded and Alamy will post on here with the link. There was no time for the Q&A at the end so Sophie will look through the questions that were submitted during the session and try to answer some of them at the same time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alamy Posted July 10 Author Share Posted July 10 Hi All, Thanks to all who could attend the webinar yesterday on how to improve your keywording - we really hope it was useful! It has been recorded, so I'll be posting a link to the recording once it's ready and all set up. There was so much to cover on the session that we didn't have time for Q&A at the end, but all the questions have been noted and when I post the link, I'll share the answers to those questions. In the meantime you can find further resources here to help with what to keyword, and how to caption: https://www.alamy.com/blog/tips-for-your-captions-from-the-sales-team https://www.alamy.com/blog/captions-and-tags Thanks Sophie 3 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kent Johnson Posted July 10 Share Posted July 10 Thanks for the webinar - it was 1 AM here in Australia but I am glad I stayed up for it - the presentation really helped with my understanding of 'Concepts'. I am already trying out new Ideas so I will know in a couple of weeks... if I've managed a good start on what I have long perceived to be a missing link in my use of Keywords. Looking forward to the Q&A being published. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemency Wright Consulting Ltd Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 On 09/07/2024 at 17:34, Brian Yarvin said: Thank you for a great presentation! Keywording is my downfall, but I keep trying. Hi Brian, thank you for coming to the webinar and I'm glad you found it useful. Keywording comes with practice, good luck on your journey! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clemency Wright Consulting Ltd Posted July 16 Share Posted July 16 On 10/07/2024 at 12:22, Kent Johnson said: Thanks for the webinar - it was 1 AM here in Australia but I am glad I stayed up for it - the presentation really helped with my understanding of 'Concepts'. I am already trying out new Ideas so I will know in a couple of weeks... if I've managed a good start on what I have long perceived to be a missing link in my use of Keywords. Looking forward to the Q&A being published. Hello Kent, wow that's stamina! Thanks for staying up so late to attend the webinar, and I'm pleased to hear you found the concepts part useful. Great to hear you're trying out new ideas. Sophie in the Content Team will update everyone on the recording and Q&A soon. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alamy Posted July 24 Author Share Posted July 24 Hi Everyone, You can now access the recording for the keywording webinar either on our blog: https://www.alamy.com/blog/supercharge-your-image-discoverability-watch-the-free-improve-your-keywording-webinar or directly on Youtube: Don't forget also to check out Clemency's great resource Make Search Better, which is highly recommended to help further with getting your images seen: http://www.makesearchbetter.com I'll close off this announcement thread now, but the Q&A can be continued in community support here: See below for answers to the questions that came in but we didn't have time to answer because the session was so jam-packed! In some cases they overlapped or I've rephrased for brevity, apologies if I missed any! Q. Are captions searched in the same way as keywords? A. Yes text in captions are searchable, though it's worth repeating relevant words in the keywords as this will add to weighting of importance of that word. Q. Is there an optimum or maximum/minimum number of keywords that works best? What is optimum keyword quantity for where my images appear in the search results? The number of keywords doesn't matter but images will not fully optimise with less than 50? A. No, there is no optimum number as you should only add keywords that are relevant to your image. If you add 15 relevant words and you're struggling to find reason to add more, then it's possible that there is nothing more to add that would be useful. You can add a maximum of 50 words, but this shouldn't be seen as a target to reach - it's all about thinking: 'would the customer expect to see this image if they searched on this word'. Where images appear in results is also based on a complex algorithm that includes other factors including customer data, but the best place to start is to use accurate and relevant keywords only. The discoverability bar where you can 'optimise' discoverability was to encourage contributors to add to all metadata sections, your images will still be found even if you have only 20 keywords. Q. Is it better to have 10 strong/relevant Super Tags with fewer ordinary tags. Or have the 10 Super tags and dozens of “other” tags. How are supertags different from ordinary tags? Does it matter what order to add the keywords? A. It is best to add 10 supertags for the most prominent features in the image as the supertags will give the image more weighting in search if a customer searches using one of the supertags. Then you should tag only on what is accurate and relevant - always ask yourself, 'if a customer searched on this word, would they expect this image to be in the results?' No, it doesn't matter what order you add the keywords, but supertag the ones that are most relevant to the image. Q. How important is the word “Concept/ conceptual” in super tags? A. If you believe the image is primarily a 'concept image', then add it to the super tag and the search will give this more weighting if someone searches for 'concept'. Q. How do foreign buyers search on Alamy - in their own language? Should I caption and keyword in different languages? A. You should always caption and keyword in English only. Customers who visit the .com site will have to search in English to get the results they need, including any translations of any place names (though you could add 'Firenze' as well as 'Florence' for example). For the German site, any text will get translated into German for customers to search on in German. Q. How important are plurals - s’s ! In keywords. Eg Car, cars…. A. If there is more than one car in the picture, then definitely add both 'car' and 'cars'. If there is only one car in the picture then you might assume that the customer is looking for an image of one car only if they search for 'car'. If there are two cars you could also add 'two' etc. Q. Should I add both British English and American English spellings e.g. colour and color? A. Yes - customers will be in both US and UK so good practice to add the alternate version of each word if you want to reach customers in both locations. Q. When entering the country usa, is it best to spell out United States, United States of America, US, USA, America, etc... how is it most commonly searched? Should I add 'Europe' if images have been taken in France, Germany etc.? A. Yes - use all common forms of spelling. Different customers will search in different ways, so it's worth adding all variants, with 'United States' and 'United States of America' as a phrase. Yes it's worth adding the continent name too! Q. Should I use accents on words? Do buyers tend to use the captions provided by the photographer or write their own? A. Yes - especially in the caption for veracity. Results will appear in search regardless if customer uses accent in their search or not. E.g. searching for 'Paul Cézanne' or 'Paul Cezanne' yields same number of results, as any accents will be stripped to make a simple text search, but it's good practice to help inform the customer of correct spellings in the caption. In essence customers will be replying on the accuracy of the data you provide, so they may use your caption directly, or rewrite it according to their needs, but in choosing whether to buy, they will want to know what they are licensing is what it says it is, and not something else! Q. What is the impact of Capital letters in keywords, Verses all lower case (as I believe is recommended)? There's no difference in search weighting using whether you use capitals or not. Same number of results show whether customer searches using capitals or not. Q: Should I use full stops, punctuation - st. marks cathedral -Vs- st marks cathedral? A. Again it's good practice that in the caption you use the correct grammar and punctuation ("Saint Mark's Cathedral"), as this is the informative part of the image that helps the customer understand the context. But when customer searches, the punctuation will be stripped so you get the same number of results when searching for either "st. marks cathedral" or "st marks cathedral" Q. Is it relevant to add some specificity to the keywords, for example "cat", "domestic cat", black domestic cat" and so on? A. Yes definitely - some customers may want specifically a 'black cat' because it's for Halloween, others may search more generally for 'cat' not sure what they are looking for until they see it, and then might refine their search to 'black cat'. Q. As Alamy already ask for location and time of shooting already when uploading a photo, do we need to duplicate again in the keywords? If you put location in the location field, do you still need it in the keywords? A. Yes, as customers will search in different ways - some using the filter for date taken, others using keywords. So especially on archive images if you have a photo taken in 1964 (and that's in the date taken field), it's worth adding '1964' and '1960s' to the keywords. Q. Do I need to use vertical or horizontal orientation in keywords? Do customers search for color vs black and white? What is the best keyword/s for black and white photography? Relevance of special terms such as copyspace, copy space, side view etc.? A. You should not need to add 'vertical/horizontal' as there is a filter where customers can search for landscape, portrait or panoramic images based on the aspect of the image file. There is also a filter to search for b&w images only, but if it is a 'black and white' photo it'd be worth keywording for that, but not 'colour' as it's the norm now that most images will be in colour. Yes it's worth adding keywords that describe the image like 'copyspace' as customers may be looking specifically for images with copyspace. Q. Is it worth time and effort to re-keyword images on Alamy for over ten years? Will re-keywording give an image the advantages of being a new submission? A. You may want to look if there is anything missing in your keywords or metadata that may be relevant now, that wasn't then. But re-keywording with new words will only meant that those images will appear for the customer searching for it, and this could also be combined with the date taken filter. Q. I have some pictures from Leicester Square in London. When a customer asked for something from Leicester and the photos from Leicester Square came up. How can I avoid this? How does Boolean search work? Do customers use combinations of keywords or are they just processed individually? A. Customers are informed of how to search with lots of guidance, so if they find irrelevant images coming up, they'll know to refine the results on offer, e.g. they can either search either: 'Leicester Leicestershire' or search: "Leicester NOT london'. So keyword with the town, county, area (east midlands) etc. as they can refine that way, or by using 'not' in their search. More on how a customer might search and how it can work for them here: https://www.alamy.com/blog/how-to-think-like-a-picture-researcher-and-find-the-content-youre-looking-for-on-alamy Q. Is there a way of cutting down on the hugely time consuming work that is filling in metadata. Is there any AI-generated software out there that you've tested that you may recommend to save time (at least as a starting point) ? A. We've seen some AI software to help with keywording however I think it's still too early for this to be useful as it does tend to either add irrelevant keywords, make assumptions that aren't true, or write captions that are really over the top! We are working on a new tool for managing your images and metadata, which will hopefully make it more efficient, but this is still in very early stages of development. Thanks, Sophie 2 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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