Do Keywords Sell Images?

I have been itching to write this article for as long as I can remember.

If I had a pound for every time I was asked this question, I'd be sitting in my Tuscan farmhouse sipping Limoncello and eating olives at this very moment.

To cut to the chase, the answer is a resounding "yes". Keywords sell images.

But proving this has been a pervasive problem throughout my 20-year career as a Keywording strategist. And you do need proof. Otherwise, nobody believes you.

Prove it...

In spite of all the smart technology available to us, we still can't say for certain what leads a customer to buy a specific product online. E-commerce platforms are an exception; tracing the customer journey is achieved through analysing the order of operations, which are logged and easily retrieved.

But not all platforms are designed with powerful E-commerce reporting technology. There are plenty of other ways we search for content that do not deliver the same level of hard "proof".

In his book "Leaders Eat Last" Simon Sinek defines the underlying issue as this:

?"Technology has turned us into performance addicts"

If we can't measure it, then it's no use to us. If we can't track and trace, then we are utterly lost and may as well give up.

DAM Performance

Increasingly, DAMs (Digital Asset Management) and PIMs (Product Information Management) systems and CMS (Content Management Systems) tell us exactly where an asset has been used, by who, for what purpose, as well as when it was last updated / replaced and when it's due to expire. This is not only useful intelligence, but essential for governance (and avoiding heavy costs incurred through the misuse of content.)

The benefit of tracking assets in your DAM for commercial businesses has become almost an obsession (something reflected in Sinke's reference to addiction).

Tracking and measuring performance is vital to business growth, but there is one caveat; it relies completely on the application of correct metadata. And with ever increasing production levels, the demands on those responsible for adding metadata is intense.

Our addiction to performance tracking comes at both a financial and personal cost, as adding metadata demands more brain power and time.

AI is one possible solution, but that is a post for another day.

Stock Response

According to Stock Photo Secrets:

there is an archive of an estimated?over 350 million?stock images available online today

That is a lot of assets needing a lot more metadata!

Unlike a DAM with built-in governance, it is much more difficult to extract information and track assets on a stock library site for a variety of reasons, including:

• Creators are not always comfortable sharing sales reports with suppliers
• Agencies often prevent third-parties from accessing internal sales information
• Agencies do not always have the technology in place to accurately track performance
• Agencies are reluctant to share insights about their algorithms, preventing someone like me from tracing exactly which Keyword led a customer to purchase a specific image
• Where sales information has been shared with me, it still cannot prove which Keyword sold the asset. A photo of a family eating pancakes for breakfast could have been searched for using any one of those Keywords

What Keywords Do

Now, consider this:

A great photo with no keywords will never sell

A good photo with bad keywords will probably never be seen

A good photo with good keywords might be seen and might sell

A good photo with great keywords will be seen and might sell

A great photo with great keywords will rank the highest and sell the most

Where am I going with this? Even if the Keywords are spot on, the image might not be what the customer had in mind. Great Keywords bad image does not a sale make.

A customer who searches through thousands of images of families eating pancakes for breakfast might only want to see ones showing single parents, or mixed race families, or families with three kids, or... [insert picture need here]

You never know what the customer has in mind, so Keywords are merely signposts.They must be accurate and relevant, but ultimately, the customer decides if the image is right for them or not

What Keywords Don't Do

When prospects ask me, "will I sell more content if you do the keywording", they think they're asking "are your Keywords better than your competitors'?"

I can say with confidence that the amount of time, thought and planning I put into developing Keywording strategies for my clients is as thorough as it could be.

Really, I should be asking them, "is your content the best in your genre and is it better than your competitors'?"

To succeed in the marketplace we need to nurture a happy partnership between content creator and Keyworder. We need a mutual appreciation and respect for the value each brings to the table, as this leads to increased online visibility and successful sales.

Keywords alone can't sell awful content, I'm afraid. They just make it more noticeable!

Take Control!

Ask not what can your content do for you, but what you can do for your content

Searching Questions

Be honest. Are you letting yourself down?

• Do you have enough content? Low volumes automatically decrease your SEO on most search engines
• Are you uploading new content regularly? Search engines favour producers who publish regularly, as opposed to sporadically
• Are you optimising your Metadata? Be warned, adding generic image numbers and internal codes that have no meaning to anyone else annoys end users (and Google). Doing this will only send you back down the slippery SEO snake
• Are you invested in developing a mutually respectful relationship with a Keywording partner equally committed to investing time and thought into an optimised Keywording strategy?

Summary

Ultimately, we cannot rely on Keywords alone to sell content. Sales success relies on content that is produced to a high standard, that is relevant, fresh and regularly uploaded, on trend, and all wrapped up with meaningful metadata.

One thing is for sure though, Keywords increase visibility, and that is a huge part of the battle.

Clemency Wright is an independent Keywording Consultant based in the North East UK with over 20 years' experience working with clients including Getty, The V&A Museum, Save The Children, Macmillan Cancer Support, Oxford University Press and others.

She specialises in Keywording methodology, Metadata strategy and Controlled Vocabulary.

As an active member of the DAM community, Clemency speaks regularly at a number of global industry conferences and panels.

Clemency is available for bespoke Keywording Training Workshops for teams both in-house and remote.

For a free 20 minute Keywording call contact [email protected] / +44(0)7956 003653