« Back to contributor support page
Adding keywords is an important part of the picture submission process. In an ever-expanding collection with thousands of images, keywords are the key that enables customers to find what they are looking for.
The purpose of the keywords is basically to enable potential buyers to find the type of picture they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible. keywords should describe as thoroughly and accurately as possible what an image represents. This could be the actual physical content of the image as well as emotions or abstract concepts that you think the image represents.
If you submit a photo of a man on top of a mountain, obvious keywords to include would be 'man' and 'mountain'. You might also find that the image could represent certain moods and ideas such as 'remote', tranquil', 'freedom' or 'achievement'. Single words separated by commas work best, so 'man, mountain' would work better than 'man on a mountain'
A few simple guidelines:
1. Avoid keywording microscopic content. Example: an image of a living room. In a dark corner, only covering 0,5 % of the picture, one can barely see a pencil. It is entirely unnecessary to add 'pencil' as a keyword. A buyer searching for 'pencil' is only confused by this photo. You waste your own and the buyers' time by typing irrelevant keywords.
2. Drop articles and prepositions; the, in, on, one, a, and, this, but etc. Just drop them.
3. Only include colours as keywords it they are a central or important part of the picture. Example 1: For a photo of a box of crayons, do not add the colour of each and every crayon in the box, just put in 'colours/colors' and/or 'colourful'. Example 2: For outdoor photos, do not include 'blue' and 'green' as keywords just because there is some blue sky and a couple of trees.
4. Focus on the image! Of course, for a photo of a snow-covered mountain, the word 'ski' might come to mind. But if there are no skis or skiers in the image, this is not a relevant keyword. Example 2: two girls applying make-up in the toilets during a party. Perhaps you want to type 'drinks', and we surely understand why – they are going to have drinks later. But for the image sale and the buyer, this is irrelevant.
5. Use adjectives. Buyers are often searching for images with a certain feeling or mood; happy, sad, energetic, harmony, etc. We know these keywords are often sought after. So when you have that brilliant image of a happy familiy, go further and type not only happy but also: glad, fun, harmony, harmonic, jolly, joy, amusing, etc. Words like fantastic, euphoria, spectacular etc, are perhaps over the top in this case. Be precise!
6. Do not include 'generic' words such as 'photo', 'photograph', 'image', 'picture', that could apply to nearly any image in the collection, unless they are relevant to the CONTENT of your image.
Misleading keywords
We will occasionally add keywords that we feel are missing to boost an image's selling potential (but this is no excuse not to spend time adding appropriate keywords yourself!)
We also reserve the right to remove keywords that we find inappropriate or misleading – again the purpose of this is to make it easier for potential customers to find exactly what they are looking for (and nothing else). This is an important aspect in the usability of the search function of the site.
Correcting keyword content
Some of you have asked if it is possible to correct and/or add keyword content for your images after they have been uploaded. At the moment this is unfortunately not possible. Because the keyword content is so important for browsing the site, we don't feel that we can give the individual photographers unlimited access to edit this information. The keyword content is evaluated next to each image that is submitted, so once it is added to the database we consider this information final, just like the image itself is the final image.
Whereas the vast majority of photographers would only want to do suitable corrections and improvements to the keyword content of their images, a few might be tempted to add some popular search words as keywords to their images regardless of their suitability, simply to get added exposure for their work. This could have serious consequences for the functionality of the site.
Should you detect important errors or ommissions in your descriptions or keywords we recommend sending an email to
help@crestock.com, with a detailed description of these.