Help With Keywords That Really Work

The best selling images are at the top of the search! So, since you are new to this site, unless you sell many of any image, you will not see yours on the front pages. It also takes about 24 hours for new uploads to appear in the search.

Think of as many keywords that fit the image. Don't spam keywords. Only tags that apply. You can also use grouping of words separated by a comma. Locations are also important.

Try mykeyworder.com. It always gives a few weird ones, but mostly good ideas and thought starters. Be sure to use your name and any names you go by as key words, too.
Welcome and good luck.

Try mykeyworder.com. It always gives a few weird ones, but mostly good ideas and thought starters. Be sure to use your name and any names you go by as key words, too.
Welcome and good luck.

Lindsay,the internal sort algorithm is pretty much top secret, no one apart from FAA staff really know how it works, but I think its correct to say that images are ranked (among other unknown things) according to their sellers sales history. Those who sell regularly and in large quantities will be at the top of the search, people like me who sell very little here on FAA will be towards the bottom of the search. And I think it correct to say that FAA may not display all images searched for where there are large numbers meeting the search criteria, eg if there are 10,000 relevant images, the search may only display the first 1000.

Bottom line, if you are new to FAA/Pixels, or don't have a successful track record of regularly selling here, its important to advertise your work outside of FAA, using social media, etc.

Jessica

One small correction.

The best selling contributors are at the top of the search.

there are no magic keywords. only having the right ones work. you get on top of the search by selling. but again as i pointed out in the past -- THEY WILL NOT PRINT YOUR WORK WITH A HUGE SIGNATURE, NOR WILL A CUSTOMER BUY IT LIKE THAT.

so that should be the first thing you fix.


i don't see the words - ship, boat, vessel, transportation, sailor, sailing, clipper, etc but you do have islands and that is wrong.


location matters, mention where this is townwise etc. you can say heavens, astronomy, astronomer any constellation in there.


this may get dinged for noise... but mention that its night, what is that body of water? what buildings are those? architecture style and so on.

you have quite a few images that repeat, it won't help you in the search that much

basically you want words that describe everything in the scene. but you have to fix that watermark name thing you have going on.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Thank you everyone for your tips and advice. Mike, the Korcula Reflections has a painterly filter applied. If it reads as noise, I better replace it with the original non-filtered image. Thanks for thoughts on extra keywords. That is helpful. This is all new to me.

Now, about my signature watermark. I read up on other artists questions regarding it before I started uploading images. Some put their watermark on their images, some don't. When I exhibit a piece, I print it with my signature on it. That way, when people look at a framed photo, they can see who the artist is without turning the picture over to the back. Also, it is a bit of deterrent to digital theft.

What are all of your thoughts on this?

Thank you!

its the dots in the sky, that's the noise. that filter seems to be affecting just the lighter parts of the image, ignoring the dark sky. so the original probably won't help you there.

i will tell you now that they will not print the work with a mark like that on there. and no one here will recommend you put your own on. customers will usually not buy it at all if there is one one there. the watermark they use is the FAA mark in the corner. if your trying to sell it at an exhibition, that giant signature will make the piece look like am amateur made it, instead make a sign with your name above all the works. or put a sign next to the piece with your name. the name should always be small and subtle.

as for theft, i can remove that in about 2 seconds. 1 of those seconds is downloading it and opening it. it would be gone in a flash, its not a deterrent of any kind other than for sales.

all of my work is signed. but you won't see it unless you get close. and you want people to look at it close enough to read it. not much point in seeing it from across the room.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Mike, so the customers receive a print with the FAA watermark? I did not know that. Ok thanks for the tips on the watermark and the Korcula image :)

No, the customers do not have the FAA watermark on it when they buy it....it is there on this website but will print without it.

Dear Rose, thank you for your comment. I am just learning to 'follow' artists by clicking on their name. I tried to click on your name, but I am 'forbidden' why is that?

no they don't. that's just it. the watermark we have here is removed before the customer gets it, but they can't remove yours. which is why it would be rejected. and if it some how does get through you'll hear an earful on the review page.


rose is the forbidden fruit i guess... or the site is having issues again.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Lindsay,
I don't know how many see it like me. So just my opinion: a signature is for originals. I NEVER would buy a print for my wall with a signature. It disturbs my eye.
And think about size. You have no controll: when someone buys a bigger print he just gets a bigger signature.

edit:
missing keywords for Your Korcula and Hvar images are island, port, mediterranean and Dalmatia.
For Korcula also use Your two versions You used for Hvar: harbor for the US and harbour for the rest of the world.

LOL, Mike! Sorry, Lindsay, I don't know why it was "forbidden" for you to follow me....were you signed in when you tried that?

Rudy, gasp! I never thought of that. Tomorrow I will swap out the watermarked images. Rose, maybe I tried to 'follow' you from the email notification. I was able to follow you when I am on the webpage. Thanks all, you have been so much help to me :)

One notable stat that's not been mentioned "yet". I recall a post by Abbie when she clarified some of the mystery behind keywords and FAA's algorithm. She had mentioned that for any given "keyword", only "X" amount of images will ever appear in the FAA search, per media type. If I'm not mistaken, I believe she said it was 2,000. If Abbie sees this, I welcome her to correct me if my figure is off.

So as an example, if you choose the keyword "NATURE", only the first (2000) images that used the keyword NATURE will appear in any search.

yeah they only show like 2000-3000 images i think it was 2600 actually. figuring that most people won't go through a million images. this is why you want unique words.

like you can have the word - chicken, farmer and poultry. but to get higher you need to know the name of the chicken, scott for example... kidding, the name of the breed, latin etc. you never know what a buyer will type in, the more exact the better. use only generic words, and you'll be in a huge pool of other people using the same words. there is an art to keywording, but on this site its about how many sales you have. and that's the hard part about the search.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Lindsey on a side note, your (avatar) image looks like it is out of focus.

MG, her avatar is totally cute!

It is!

And Lindsey, it took me years to get to the front page for some of my tags. in 2013/14 I didn't really make it to the top 30 pages for "New England fall foliage" Around 2015 I started moving a few images to pages 14-29.
Will it be faster for you? Maybe, all you need to do is get more sales than I did. (about 7 the first year) and 15 the 2nd. I also did not push myself those first years so if you stay focused you have a very good chance of bypassing me. I only had a few hundred images in the first couple of years. A guy here (Don) has loaded almost 2,000 images this year alone so he should bypass me in a big way...

I guess I'm trying to say, you need to be here for the long haul. No one makes it overnight unless they are already a household name like Anne Geddes. I think with hard work you can make it to the first page of search but the best way to do this is to ignore trying to get on the search pages here and instead worry about getting on Google page one, learn to utilize your social media, Those things will get you sales and sales will increase your search ranking here.

Short of sales the rest of the things here like getting (likes, favs, contest wins) will bring you a minuscule increase in search ranking. I've never sought L/F/ or CWs and rely on sales to put me up on page one for sales. I am not worried about trying to move up on the search here. I only worry about the sales that I can affect out off the site.. (35 sales since 18 Nov)

These are my best suggestions... and I hope they help

In general, key words that really work: naked, God, puppy, happy, baby, flowers, Trump, "end of times", success, "get rich", sex, money, ................ you get the idea. (^_^)

As I've been seeing it, for the typical FAA/Pixel member, common keywords are much more of a determent than they can ever be helpful...For you will never be seen by the use of those keywords, and more importantly, those keywords will be posted along with your artwork, and are CLICKABLE, meant to direct your potential buyer to the above mentioned, Best Sellers.

I have the feeling that the best keywords to use are commonly MISSPELLED words... I think that potential buyers are more apt to use them, than fellow artists/photographers.....And I don't think that the algorithm will ever display them with your artwork

Just a thought, but I have observed that for Google searches, there is tremendous weight put on the image title alone. The image title is also stuffed into the alt tag for the image on your FAA pages. This is important for SEO - read up on alt tags. Also note that Google apparently does not read the image keywords you add, so if you want to rank well on Google choose a highly appropriate and descriptive title and supplement it with a good description containing other keywords you would like to use.

I made the mistake of using fun creative non-descriptive title for my images. I had the keywords and a reasonably detailed description but that wasn't enough. Only later when I was researching why I wasn't finding anything in Google did I discover these things: When I tried searching some of my title names (some very common conceptual names, nothing too exotic or specific) I found some ranking okay in Google and realized what was going on. I renamed most of my image titles and now I am finding some of them with searches of my desired keywords in Google.

Keywords only help you on internal search and I'm not convinced that many buyers come from internal searches. But then again I rank so poorly in internal searches despite a dozen or two sales that maybe I'm not a good data point.

Also remember as a new person, it will be impossible to get seen behind the old time artists and huge image libraries in internal search. You have to get your sales from Google searches or your own promotion, not internal search. Internal search ranking is dictated almost entirely by sales. As someone else said, no amount of contests, likes, faves, features really moves the needle at all. Thus people and image libraries with the largest volumes of sales will occupy the top many pages of results before you get to us smaller sellers with only a dozen or two sales.

descriptions are the most important thing, titles also rank high. at the very least a customer sees a title and may want to click on it if it has a good name. like if you saw a chocolate cake, you may see an interesting title for it - Mocha Madness. and a description that makes your mouth water.....

We take the finest chocolate cake, made with devils food cake, cheese cake, and a chocolate ganache, topped with a swirl of raspberry sauce. and they may go on to flourish it a little bit more as well. this may let you buy a $10 piece of cake.

but many people don't do this they will label that same cake as -- Cake. and the description if there is one at all, might be boring like - cake i ate. or worse, cake i saw. then add keywords - cake, yum, brown, triangle. and while that isn't wrong, it won't help you at all. devils food cake,cheese cake,cheesecake,chocolate,ganache,dessert,still life,food,foodie,sweet tooth,cafe,restaurant,baker,kitchen,triangle,layered,plate,confection, and so on. that will make you rank higher everywhere.

google likes a good description, they want to know what they are looking at so they can identify it. they now use the Ask Jeeves search where people ask it questions. and you'll see that at the top of the page. google what is ganache?

https://www.google.com/search?q=google+what+is+ganache+&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8

and at the top, it starts with recipe's now. and then there is a question and answer guide, and those go back to a page that has that answer. and you should be that answer. so give a history lesson about the subject if and when you can. but don't copy it from wiki, they will know, they know everything.

to get into google will also take a while, as your ranked based on what i said, and how popular you make yourself, where you are socially, if your on twitter, facebook etc. you do yourself no favors not at least being there. how many links you have going back to your store and so on. they have a ranking system that's at least 300 points long.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

I have a question. I saw somewhere on here where it was suggested to not use keywords like, prints, greeting cards, canvas etc. It was said that it may keep you from coming up on search in FAA or something like that. Is that true? I'd think you'd want those for search engines, etc (yes I know google doesn't use the keywords but others do).

Do I need to remove those types of keywords?

its not that it hurts you, its that it doesn't help you. those words are filters and only sorts things out that way. if you typed dog greeting cards, all you will get are greeting cards with dogs on it. you don't have to remove them, but if they are taking up space and you don't have things like the breed and so on, your better off being more exact with your words than adding art or prints to things. the search still places you ahead if you sell a bunch.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Thanks Mike. I usually only include those when I need to fill up the 500 so atleast I don't have to delete them. I was worried they was hurting me. I do however guess I need to go back and rearrange my keywords to have most import as first 10. When I upload my images the keywords put themselves in alphabetical order. Thanks!

The first 10 or so words that come to mind are usually best.

After that having a good quality image that someone wants to buy is most important and marketing outside of this site to actual art buyers.

....

Artist's bios in the third person put an unnecessary psychological barrier between the artist and buyer.

I prefer artists bios in the third person

If someone is going to write about you they normally grab the bio

i find that third person comes off as pretentious. he won that, he won this, he did that he did some other thing, as they often repeat their own names way too much.

i think a bio should be to the point, about the work and nothing more. going into a deep study of your entire life, when you started, when you dated, when you married, how many kids you have, all their names, the dogs and their names, all the hobbies, and it goes on like that updating us from 1922 to present, and now i live in an assisted senior center and i took up a hobby, and that's what your seeing. at this point the buyer has collapsed from boredom, and has a permanent indentation of the keyboard on their face. and they may have chipped a tooth in the process.

i like to think the bio is short and to the point. a few paragraphs, that's it. if you are in a gallery, in a book, in a newspaper, then the third person fits better, because someone else is describing them - an author, curator, reporter etc. but these stores are one on one stores. its like the salesperson talking to a customer about the bosses awards. it looks out of place. the bio is me talking to them.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com