Keyword search on search engine

[SemmickPhotoParticipant]

Can someone tell me please if the keywords we add to our images, are the keywords the search engines respond to when they get a search query?

For example if I have an image with the keyword Apple, will Google show my image when someone searches for Apple on Google? Or Bing, or Yahoo, etc.

Or is the search engine only returning results based on the focus keyword in our title and description and meta tag?

Thanks,

[SemmickPhotoParticipant]

I dont know, I just did a few tests, for example, “Butler dynasty” is a keyword on some of my images, but when searning Google for images, none of mine come up. And these images have been long indexed. When I search for “Butler dynasty” semmick photo they do show up. What I find weird is that even the images on the agencies dont show. When I search for butler dynasty canstockphoto I see them all. But not when only searching for Butler Dynasty.

Same with Commercem, I misspelled commerce, so when searching for it, none of my images show up, when I search for commercem semmick photo, you will find them.

So keywords dont seem to work very good. Unless they are extremely specific like Butler dynasty Caisleán Chill Chainnigh, that will show my images on the 3rd and 4th row.

What I am trying to find out is if I should add keywords to all my images like stock image, image, royalty free, microstock, stock, etc. If that helps sales or not. If someone searches for butler dynasty stock image, they might be seeing my images first.

It doesnt add up, thats for sure.

[ShazamImagesParticipant]

My understanding is that the words in your description are the most important and they are the most important to Google.

[SemmickPhotoParticipant]

What happens if I put all my keywords in my description? Will Google punish me? Or will it have no effect at all?

[ChristineParticipant]

Look up Long Tail Keywording

http://kerioakimaging.com - trying to reopen
http://nail-art-at.kerioak.com - Art and Nail Art

[KLSbearParticipant]

I think there may also be some emphasis on what is in the title too. I did not see either Butler or Dynasty in your titles. If I search on crenelated parapet you come up in the first row. Keyword clutter may be to blame as well. the search seems to be returning a lot of results based on single word relationships and I wonder if it’s trying to include most popular searches for a word. I see a lot of images for Duck Dynasty showing up as well as others that have the word Butler in the title or meta description.

I tried a search for my images under Spring Table Setting and found lots of pretty pictures bu none of mine and almost nothing with agency watermarks. If I add the word Stock to the search it is almost all stock sites showing with watermarked images. Of the eight of mine showing half of them were my Symbio site including the first one.

I don’t know if buyers are adding that in their searches but it does help clear out random image clutter so it would sure help the search efforts if they did.

I noticed that a search for butler dynasty fair trade returns one of your images in the first row.

[ChromacoParticipant]

I have been operating on a common sense premise which is the following. “Googles primary goal is to send the searcher to the most relevant page possible based on the search term.” It seems logical that they would consider keywords along with content – particularly content. I assume Google rates the keywords based on how they relate to the content of the page. I also assume that Google knows that not every keyword will be equally relevant. My guess is that Google uses content to determine which keywords are most important. By the way- the way Yoast ranks the images re-enforces this notion. So placing all of your keywords in the title and the description seems like it would be counter productive. However placing select keywords and phrases and focusing on these would be very helpful. Also if you have similars splitting the keywords among different images seems like it would help you out. Ex. focus on 3 -4 keywords for image #1 and 3-4 slightly different ones (with some overlap) on image #2. If you are using the similars widget then Image #1 will help sell image #2 and vice versa.

FWIW- I built a second symbio site in November to test this concept. The first site uses unique everything (except keywords), titles, descriptions, image names, and maximizes Yoast scores. The second site is upload via FTP and forget it. (Same info as the micros) The first site outsells the second one about 50 to 1. In fact it was so obvious that I started re-structuring the content on the second site. I just had a sale on my the 2nd site this morning. Guess what… it was one of the few images on that site that had been reworked. My personal experience is that content is hugely important. It also give self hosting a massive advantage over the micros because they aren’t maximizing content like we can. I really think Google will wind up liking our sites better in the long run if we are very conscious about how we build the content around our images.

I haven’t really explored this so I am just speculating, but I am guessing that reason guys with monster content like Sean Locke and CThoman aren’t experiencing huge sales via Symbiostock is for this very reason. I would bet that even though their content is awesome in reality Google sees their sites similar to my second one. They aren’t getting the search placement because the micros and their other sites are ranked higher. I only have 1400 or so images and only about 1/3 are actually up because my process is so slow. I can’t really imagine how I would handle this if I had 20K images. Maybe I would choose 1-2 in each category style and start by optimizing those and hope that they help sell the others. I’m not sure.

[SemmickPhotoParticipant]

Thanks guys, I am going to add those keywords now. My SEO is as best as it can get for now. Unless I put in a ton more work, which is fine, I just need to get to it. LOL

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