Forum Moderators: phranque
In April this year I started a keywording project, with a Malaysian lady supplying an average of 20 keywords for each image. Starting from June I placed these keywords in a box (a one cell table) below each image on the image pages. The keywords were separated by commas and for each keyword there was a link to my site's internal search engine, so that clicking on the keyword would search the site for related images.
For instance, in the China/Guangzhou gallery there is an image titled "Street with fruits shop" with the following keywords:
china, guangdong, guangzhou, canton, downtown, city, fruits shop, fruits, street, chinese signage, shoppers, lamps, oranges, persimmons, mandarins, clock, dirty floor tiles, bicycles, fruits stall
Behind each keyword there is the code <a href="www.mysite.com/search/?s=keyword">keyword</a>.
The trouble is that this keywording exercise has not produced increase in image sales as expected. Instead the sales have dropped since June. It could of course be a seasonal effect, but just to be on the safe side, I disabled the keywords feature in September (only the internal site search engine gets fed with these keywords).
I wonder if Google thinks that I'm trying to spam my way up the rankings. That would be one explanation. But then the question is, how do I inform Google about the image content?
The "Street with fruits shop" photo shows persimmons, mandarins, clocks, a dirty floor tiles etc., i.e. all keywords are relevant. There is no image description in a few sentences on the pages, because of the huge effort required to write such a text for each image, but as stated, each keyword is relevant.
Also, this clickable keyword feature is very user-friendly, allowing quickly to find related images. I hated having to disable this feature.
What can I do? Somebody suggested to add rel="nofollow" to the keyword links, so at least the search engines would ignore them - would this work?
More generally speaking, how should keywords be added to images in a stock photography site, in a way that enhances the site's search engine standing?
Slightly off topic, but I would have a link under each larger photo "add to cart", as I found it a bit confusing the "select" at top of page.
Your keyword pages have all the same titles (search results) why not put i.e clock photos in title and meta tags. And generally try and make each keyword search page as unique as you can.
Thanks for the suggestion. Actually what you refer to keyword page is the output of the search engine, which is disallowed anyway in robots.txt (i.e. the directory search/ is disallowed) and therefore does not get indexed.
It's just that I found your site and it is really not made easy or clear just how to buy images. I know you probably explain it all, but most people (me included) cannot be bothered to read all that. It was absolutely clear to me that I could email my list to myself or anyone elese, and eventually clear that if I wanted to buy I should email it to you.
There are so many stock sites where you can just click buy now that people become accustomed to doing that. Plus the use of the word 'cart' made me believe I would be able to buy right now - the extra step of getting into an email discussion first might just put me off.
My guess, and it is only that, is that as people become more and more used to doing things one way, they are less and less likely to take the time to do it some other way. I run a travel site and while I know print is different, the truth is that nowadays I only buy images when I cannot find a suitable one with a creative commons attribution only licence at Flickr. More and more often I never need to buy one as the number and quality of images there is plenty good enough.
Are you so sure the drop was due to the keywording?
Has it gone back up since?
What effect did the keywording have on traffic, as distinct from sales?
In any case, I can't of course be sure that the keywords impacted negatively the sales, but I need to know if this is the case. Should I perhaps ask directly Google? (if is this possible)
It's just that I found your site and it is really not made easy or clear just how to buy images. I know you probably explain it all, but most people (me included) cannot be bothered to read all that. It was absolutely clear to me that I could email my list to myself or anyone elese, and eventually clear that if I wanted to buy I should email it to you.
The images are all rights-managed, so a dialogue to determine the price is necessary before an image can be sold. The images are not royalty free.
