Keywording Your Stock Photos - A 7 Step Guide

Good keywording is vital in stock photography. Why?

Buyers search for photos using search engines and agencies using keywords. If they can't find your photos they can't buy them. It's that simple.

Good keywording is time consuming but consider this - a good stock photo can sell for many years.

Step 1

Keywording begins with the title of the photo.

My Canon DSLR generates this title - _MG_7611

This is not going to help people to find my photos so I need to give it a descriptive title.

I changed it to: _MG_7611_Bas_Relief_of horus.

Yes, I'd been to Egypt! It's very important with a photo like this to get the details right. Make notes when you're at the site. Keep a diary. Use GPS if you have it.

Step 2

You need some ideas. Have a think, go to Wikipedia and see if there are likely words.

I quickly found these possible keywords: deity, god, falcon

Step 3

Is there any good software to help you? Any internet sites?

There is no point in reinventing the wheel. There are many pictures of Horus online and many other photographers have used keywords.

One crucial point - do not just copy other people's keywords - you must only choose those which are relevant to your picture.

My first stop is at Yuri Arcurs keywording site:

I typed in Horus and after making a few selections I quickly came up with about twenty five keywords for my stockphoto.

This may be enough but if you want to go further there are some more sophisticated tools both free and paid for:

Step 4

If you want more keywords take a look at the findphotokeywords site which works on the same basis.

I went through a similar procedure with Horus and I soon found over twenty more.

Step 5

It's worth looking now to see if there are different types of keywords

Some keywords are more important than others: Clearly horus is more important than historical

Many pictures buyers will use long tail keywords to make a more specific phrase:

For example Egyptian will be much more general than ancient egyptian culture.

the keywords horus, edfu, temple might lead to Horus in edfu temple.

You might find your keywords fit different catogories. For example:

Literal keywords: monument, stone, god

Attributes: famous, historical

Location: Edfu, Africa

Photo Technique: vertical

Different agencies will give you more advice on this according to their requirements.

Step 6

So far I have concentrated on free resources but obviously there are paid programmes and services.

My favourite programme is Image Keyworder (I have no connection other than being a user and get no money for this)

Using Image Keyworder together with my initial selections resulted in over 150 keywords and key phrases.:

These include synonyms and alternate spellings.

Yes, there are far too many keywords now but it's much better to have a good choice.

Step 7

Some final advice:

You must only choose keywords and phrases which are relevant to your photos and of course avoid false positives and keywords which will waste the picture buyers time.

Good luck with your keywording

Hi. I'm John Rocha. I'm a British photographer based in Sofia in Bulgaria. Most of my work now involves Rights Managed and Royalty free Stock Photography

I also take photos with a creative edge and they are for sale too. You can buy prints and cards of selected photos.

Some of them you can send as free E-cards.

If you want to know more about my working methods, the type of pictures I take and read my tips on photo technique and stockphotography please read my blog and subscribe to my RSS feed. You can find all this at http://johnrochaphoto.net/

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