Adding Tags and Keywords to Your Photography For SEO Purposes | Blog Love

I must warn you beautiful ladies that this is a post I did last year... but I think know that my followers have going up into the thousand mark.... I should repost it! A lot of you could benefit from it ^_^

Adding Tags and Keywords to Your Photography For SEO Purposes - for Finding Images and Bigging Up Your Blog!

I have to let you all know that I have started this little article for everyone who uses Flickr, Pinterest, Deviant Art, stock photography sites, weheartit etc. On to the importance of tagging images...

When you are feeling uninspired do you reach to Flickr, Weheartit and Pinterest for inspiration? I certainly do. Now.. last week I was feeling very inspired by the colours and florals being used in wedding photography on sites such as once wed. The site I was searching on was PInterest.

I typed in "Wedding" and four images came up (way back when i originally did this post and  Pinterest was quite new) - I'm unsure if it was an original error  with Pinterest; as when I searched for 'pins' and hit the 'pins' tab - no further pins appeared - nevertheless.. I found 4 images.

I went to 'repin' the image to save it for future reference; when you repin the image all the details show up - title/description and tags.

There were 2 tags and the title description said 'Ribbon Swing'. It did not contain the keyword "Wedding" and that was a pretty generic search term I thought.

How would you describe and tag this image?

When you are tagging images ask yourself some questions -

What is in this image?

A Swing

A Bride

A Wedding Dress

An Outdoor Seat,

A Fence

What are the items made from in this image?

Swing - ribbon
The Bride - Female obv (detail like this is obvious so no need to include)
A Wedding Dress (Unknown fabric BUT what word could you use to describe it? its short!)
The Outdoor seat - unknown material BUT what colour is it?

Can you now add more adjectives? Can you describe the colours?
The swing - Multi Coloured or Multi Colored (depending on where you are from)


Keep in mind that when you are writing tags you need to recognise that Americans and English folks spell words differently. I dont know why americans do this but its weird for me and makes a game of anglo-american scrabble an absolute nightmare! Colour to those in Britain is Color in the states. This is important.

Photo Source




ALSO - Use a thesaurus..notebook...OR a brainstorming page....it helps pick out the best desciptive words and themes the image could be suitable for...


I was taugt how to do a brain storming page when i was 16 and it just opened my creativity completely!!

Image - Ke_Cupcake

So why is it important to add a description and tag? Well I put this to you; if someone typed the word 'wedding' into a search engine and it turned out you were the photographer of this photograph, if you had the appropriate tags that people were looking for (and a kick ass image) the search engine would find you, it would find your Flickr or your blog and BAM - there is a potential customer or you have inspired someone to create a ribbon swing, or style this at their wedding! Also sometimes people are nice enough to credit you as their inspiration OR get in touch to let you know how much you inspired them. (That feeling is wonderful)


The beauty of sites such as Flickr and Deviant Art is that the Tags and descriptions are married with the search engines. Tags are especially important if you have a specific theme you want to look for.

I used to work as an Image Researcher for a stock photography company that was in partnership with Getty Images when i was a young student. If you dont know who getty images are - just look in your cardstore, magazines, tv programs.. likelihood is - they provided the images. Now.. A client would give the account manager (person who sells them the images) and you have to go find them. Sometimes it was a COMPLETE NIGHTMARE and other times - with the right keywords it was a total dream. In the end of my time there I had so much responsibility with different areas of the business and image editing and launching of a new stock photography site that i became extremely experienced in keywording and describing images for the site to sell.


I ALWAYS had on hand the thesaurus. I will give you a an example and i will attempt to show you keywords you can attach to them. On Flickr and Pinterest you have no limit - and i ALWAYS go there for inspiration for themes. There have been so many wonderful pieces of art I have found by trawling through groups and have had no keywords. Thats frustrating to me because I think - how will anyone know how good you are unless they go and join a specific group?

How would you tag an image of your kitchen?


What is in this picture? Make a list...
Plates
Tupperware
kitchen Ware
shelves/kitchen shelves
Decorative Plates


What is special about the items in the photograph?
What are the items sitting on?
Is there anything else around the main items in the image?
Are they bright? Black and white? Colorful? or Colourful? or both?! :p


Show me your examples! And remember.. its boring to tag your images but its completely worth it!

Have you anything to add to the Flickr Group? Send your creative lovelies here and i will pick a few favourites weekly!