Keyword Optimization Part 1: Choosing the Right Keywords

In today's day and age everything information based can be easily accessed using just our fingertips and the click of a mouse. It's easy to say that we have never been more in touch with people wherever they are located as long as they have internet access.

This is so true when it comes to sharing our work or the passion we have for our art. There are thousands of other people like you who want to sell their images. One of the keys to get your work noticed is to take advantage of keyword optimization. This is the practice of using appropriate words or phrases to describe your images in order to better locate them. Search engines such as Google and Mozilla Firefox display all related information based on the keyword or key phrase you type in.

With PhotoStockPlus, we use a combination of your image name, description, keywords that you set, category and the score given to your image from our editors to define your rankings. Depending on what people search for, your relevance to that search and your score are all part of how we decide what image is shown first. But even beyond that your images will have listing in other search engines that read our metadata. Our up loader tool also reads EXIF information so if you have already added keywords to your images they will automatically be added.

The trick is to try and visualize yourself searching for your image using the site search. What phrases or words would you use to locate it? Use those words or phrases in your titles, descriptions and meta data. Apply the keywords in the body of your text as much as you can but not too much, otherwise you will sound like a broken record. Avoid using single, overly used words such as 'image' or 'sunset because it is vague and thousands of people have most probably used it, thereby burying your own image under the mountain of competing information. Think of more specific terms using two words or more if necessary. For example, 'Grand Canyon sunset' is a much better key phrase than just the keyword 'sunset'.

Be very aware of your spelling when using keywords. Although there are misspelled words that people will commonly use to search for a website, these misspellings imply sloppiness and it would lead to a negative perception of your work. Also, be aware of who you are targeting when you write those keywords. Are you trying to reach the young crowd? If so, use keywords that are trendy and often used by that population. It must be said that most people are not particular with capitalizations when doing keyword searches.

Avoid spamming your set of keywords. Do not write 'win' or 'free' as a tactic to make people check out your site. Useless words that have no bearing to what your page is all about will just cause confusion and might even leave surfers angry because they were misinformed.

Make those keywords relevant, popular but specific and always consider who your target market is to fully benefit from keyword optimization. Stay tuned for the next article which is about how to use keyword tools to organize your image files for faster searches.