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Help - Good keywords
The importance of using good keywords
Every time you upload an image to Foundmyself you should be entering a number of keywords to help people find your art. Without them your work is as good as lost, and the only hits you'll receive will be from people who happen to come across it as they browse. Remember, you're trying to get noticed not only by the users here, but from the entire internet.
Good keywords allow people to find your work out of a confusing sea of art and data. Visitors often browse without a specific goal in mind but to see interesting art, but other times they want to find something in particular. How do they find what they want? You guessed it.
The following are some tips for picking your keywords that will give your art the upper hand in search results - both by people on Foundmyself and by internet search engines like Google, MSN, Ask.com, etc.
Tip #1: Separate keywords by a space
Entering keywords correctly is the first step in improving your exposure. Enter them using all lowercase characters, and separate each keywords by a single space. You should also limit the total number of keywords per image to about 20 if possible. Currently Foundmyself doesn't handle phrases, just individual words.
Tip #2: Pick what's important
Take a hard look at your image. If it's a painting of a crowd of people, and one person way off in the distance has a blue purse, leave "purse" out of your keywords, unless it's important to the painting.
Instead, focus on what you feel most people will see when looking at it for the first time. This way, when they type in a search phrase, they will be more likely to get results they're happy with. In other words, if they're really looking for an image of a blue purse, they most likely won't see it in the painting mentioned, and will move on to the next piece of art. Adding keywords unrelated to your piece will discourage visitors, and you want your audience happy.
Tip #3: Be descriptive
Bust out a thesaurus, or use one online (here's a good one), and get some descriptive words for your image. Suppose you have a photo of a pile of rocks, with a single, red rose growing out of the pile. Because the red is so striking, you might include that color in your keywords, along with "crimson", "vermillion", "magenta", "maroon", etc. Whatever's in your image. Adding that many similar words is justified in this case because color is an important part of the image.
Other keywords you might enter for the flower might be "flower", "rose", "thorn", "grow", "plant", "living", "growth", "photosynthesis", etc. The rock keywords might include "rocks", "hard", "tough", "pile", "heavy", "hill", "dust", "dirt", "nature", etc.
Tip #4: Use metaphors
Sticking with the rock and flower example, we've done a fine job of describing the photo itself - what most everyone can see with their naked eyes. But what about a person searching for "perseverance", or "strength", or "overpowering"? Would they find this image?
Give some thought as to the meaning behind each image you upload. Some images lend themselves better to visual metaphors than others, but almost every engaging visual has a lot more going on in it than what we see on the surface.
Remember, computers are stupid. They know what you tell them. If you put up a photo of a fish, you have to tell the computer it's a fish. Surely someday this process will be automated, but in the meantime, it's all about good keywords.