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Keywording is both a science and an art. No matter what you call it, it can be the best cure for insomnia available outside of a bottle of sleeping pills. But without relevant keywords, images will be lost in remote territories and never be found.
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Here's a checklist that might help you stay on track and not miss good keywords. Try for 25 words (10 is the minimum) but stay away from extraneous words just to make a quota. It is highly unlikely that more than forty keywords will be useful in finding an image without introducing confusion in search results.
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Let's pick up from where we were in part II...
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Look at the words you have already used in the image title, description and the categories. Add these words and any synonyms and different tenses or plurals into the keyword box. |
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Carefully look at the image one more time. Scan the image with your eyes from top to bottom to see if you have missed anything. Try to think of alternative words for each important element and get those into the keywords. Make certain that what you find on this final look really matters to the message of the image. |
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Spell check. Before you hit the "submit" button SPELL CHECK! Click on the check box  and change any misspellings. |
| CAUTION: In using a thesaurus, do not copy all the words under a listing. Many will not be appropriate. Only use a thesaurus to suggest relevant words that you might overlook. Never enter a word when the meaning is unfamiliar to you. |
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Rules and standard practices for Dreamstime keywords.
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| Place Names and Proper Nouns |
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No need to capitalize place names in keywords |
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Unless it is obvious an image is from a specific locale or the elements in the image are important to the region, do not use the location name. |
| Example: The image of the man below has this description: In the city, New York. But there is nothing about New York in the image. Keywords relating to Manhattan or New York would also be wrong. This image would get many more downloads if New York was replaced with words more relevant to the image. The image of the couple below had the keywords Manhattan and New York. These images were both taken New York but that fact isn't evident in the images. |
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There is no specific landscape in the following images but they are typical images that say Turkish souvenirs (the colorful shoes) or Argentina (Flamenco) and someone wanting to illustrate a tourism brochure would find them if they were keyworded to the locale.
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Do not use a model's name in the caption or in keywords. This is important to protect their privacy |
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Don't enter the names of pets in the caption or in keywords |
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| Singular/Plural forms |
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If only one object is in the image, do not use the plural form of the word. |
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Example: The keyword for the images below is woman NOT women. Only one woman in each image |
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Example: Two women in an image. Keywords would be woman AND women.
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Verbs. Only use a verb to describe what is in an image if the action is actually taking place
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Example: Don't use eat or eating when the image is a food still life. There is no eating going on in the image of the burger. Only the image on the right has eat and eating as correct keywords.
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Nouns. Only use the word if the object is actually in the image.
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Example: The image of the woman on the phone is found when searching on keyword desk but there is no desk in the picture. The illustration correctly has the keyword desk.
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| Colors |
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Only use words describing color if the color is prominent in the image. |
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Don't describe all the colors in a plaid shirt, for example. |
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Use a keyword describing clothing if it is a prominent feature of an image and the color is a solid color. |
| Example: Blue would not be an acceptable keyword for the image on the left but is an important keyword to the image on the right. |
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Indicate the dominate, overall color of the image. Sometimes designers want an image because its dominant color matches a certain a palette. |
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It is important to identify a prominent background color with a keyword. |
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It is also important to name a color that predominates in an image even when it isn't the background color. |
| Example: The dominant color on the left is blue and the image should have the keyword blue. Yellow dominates the image on the right and accordingly should have the keyword yellow. |
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Concept keywords. Concept keywords denote an emotion or an idea. They can be very subjective and culture dependent. Try to use them but be careful. Concepts can also be identified under the various sub-categories in Abstracts.
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Example:
Some noun keywords for the ocean wave image could be wave, ocean, and spray.
A concept keyword would be powerful.
Noun keywords for the image on the right below could be mother, child, toddler.
Joy is a concept keyword for this mother and child:
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Example: In the image of the tulips below the most important element is the yellow tulip. Yet it is very small in comparison to the whole image. It has the most impact because it is different from the rest. And it carries a strong concept.
Noun keywords: tulip, flower, red, yellow, group.
Concept keywords: individual, unique, different.
Noun keywords for the row of men would be men, suit, row, jeans.
Concept keywords are the same as for the tulip image: individual, unique, different.
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Ethnicity. If you know the ethnicity or nationality of a model indicate it in the keywords and image name. If the ethnicity is obvious, it is ok to use but don't guess.
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Example: The keyword Latina will identify the woman in the red dress below to the many users for Hispanic and Latin images. The user looking for image of those of African descent will easily find the mother and child image below if it is keyworded African American or African descent.
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Nationality is an important element in images. There are visual clues embedded in images taken in different countries that users in those countries value. When Americans, for example, want to photograph youth culture in a distant country, they sometimes miss the mark and the images look silly.
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Variant spellings in English. Whenever possible please keyword images with both the US and the UK versions of English spellings such as color and colour. The trunk of a car in America is the boot in the UK.
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Don't Spam. Spamming causes poor search results. It makes the site less useful and does nothing to improve your sales over time. So just don't do it.
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Think of keywording as a crossword puzzle: get all the words right and you win.
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I started getting my images keywords and hits are up, well worth it !!! - posted by
Photomyeye
on May 02, 2008 |
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Just wondering about phrases...
I have noticed when I enter a phrase such as "golf ball",
The keywords are re-ordered into alphabetical order...
And the phrase is split up into separate words, with "ball" coming first and "golf" further down.
Do I need to put a hyphen between the two words instead of a space?
I haven't found any info regarding this.
Cheers
It doesn't matter to the search that the noun and the adjective are together. When the search terms 'golf' and ''ball' are both entered into the search field, the search will return images that have both words in the keywords no matter what order they appear in the list of keywords.
If you were to enter 'golf-ball', your images of golf balls would not be found as easily. - posted by
Boughn
on March 10, 2008 |
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Just wondering about phrases...
I have noticed when I enter a phrase such as "golf ball",
The keywords are re-ordered into alphabetical order...
And the phrase is split up into separate words, with "ball" coming first and "golf" further down.
Do I need to put a hyphen between the two words instead of a space?
I haven't found any info regarding this.
Cheers - posted by
Astroboi
on March 05, 2008 |
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Great article, thank you! I will pay more attention to the conceptual aspect of my kewording. - posted by
Twieja
on February 13, 2008 |
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Great,enlighten article.Thank you! - posted by
Seesea
on January 10, 2008 |
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Thank you for posting this article. It will help me in getting the keywords right. - posted by
Belgium
on January 09, 2008 |
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I've read all three of the Keywording blogs you have written - thanks very much! I learned a bit about keywords on Flickr, but of course those are subjective and not calculated to capture buyers. My journey into stock photography is starting here at Dreamstime so I thank you in advance for helping me refine the title and keyword process! - posted by
Amyemilia
on January 08, 2008 |
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British vs American terms Or just google "American vs British English - posted by
Boughn
on December 13, 2007 |
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Look on internet, you have many dictionnary available....or Thesaurus is a good one too... - posted by
Pinkcandy
on December 12, 2007 |
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Thank you it helps quite a bit. But where can I find the spellings in American and in British because I don't know all the words from the two different countries. - posted by
Bimmergirl
on December 12, 2007 |
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This article has been read 14195 times.
Photo credits: Nalukai, Rob Bouwman, Dreamstime Agency, Emin Kuliyev, Marcin Balcerzak, Karen Struthers, Bobby Deal, Marcin Balcerzak, Oleg Kozlov, Bora Ucak, Tomasz Trojanowski, Ron Adcock, Baloncici, Andres Rodriguez, Wendy Rombough, Stockphotonyc, Yakov Stavchansky, Les3photo8, Robert Mobley, Frank Boellmann, Siberia, Siberia, Gataloca, Vallentin Vassileff. |
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| Stock Photography that SELLS! |
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Ellen Boughn, a veteran of the stock photography industry with over 30 years
of experience gives expertise tips on successful stock.
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| Archive |
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2008  |
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 Ellen Boughn
Bainbridge Island, US
I am Dreamstime's Director of Content and Business Development. A long time stock industry professional, I have held executive positions at Corbis and Getty (Stone) as well as at several other large US agencies. Although I was given my first camera when I was six years old by my father, I gave up taking pictures when I became a photo editor. A lifetime of looking at the best work from some of the world's best photographers, made me realize my skills were in editing images, not taking them. My areas of expertise are content and business development.
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