The greatest lesson I ever learned about microstock photography is that key-wording is extremely important. It’s not sexy or fun but this is where you eventually will crush your competition if you do it right. Most of your competition will luckily do it completely wrong so you can get an enormous advantage here.

Listen carefully.

Some microstock agencies have millions of images in their databases and the method the photo buyers use to find the right image is to search for certain keywords they think is relevant for the image they need.

It works much in the same way as when you search for something on Google. You type in a few keywords and Google presents the result the search engine think is relevant.

But Google and all other search engines have a big problem with images.

You can easily see what the image is all about just by taking a quick glance at it but for a search engine it’s not as easy. They are simply clueless if you don’t help them to understand what the image is all about.

No one will find your images if you ignore to include relevant keywords.

Tagging your images with relevant keywords is an absolute must if you want the photo buyers to find your images.

Not just one keyword but many keywords (as long as they are relevant).

In most microstock sites you also can write a short description and a headline to your images. Also use this opportunity to try to get some important keywords.

Here’s a few important types of keywords you should try to include:

• Where the image was taken (city, national park, country)
• What is in the image (Empire state building, Niagara falls)
• Emotions expressed in the image (happiness, loneliness)
• Concepts involved (cooperation, complexity, security)
• Orientation (vertical, horizontal, panoramic)
• Race (Asian, Black, Caucasian)
• Age (11-12 years, senior)

Note: Include as many keywords you can as long as they are relevant but do not include irrelevant keywords just to come up on the search engine result page.

You have two options to upload the keyword to the agencies website.

1. Type in the keywords after you uploaded the image and got it approved
2. Embed the keywords inside the image so they automatically are uploaded when
   you upload the image.

Embedding the keywords in the image is obviously preferred because you only have to do it once and get the keywords automatically uploaded to the site. You can save lot’s time if you submit images to many stock agencies.

The problem with embedding keywords in images is that you need special software to do it and not all stock agencies support it. You also need to decide which keywords to use before you upload your images (but you can always add keywords later).

If you decide to manually type in the keywords you can simply create a simple text file with keywords for each image and simply copy and paste the keywords to the website. This is also fast and easy so don’t panic if you can’t afford software to embed keywords or don’t know how to do it. This is how I started out and often still do.

Previous posts in this series:

1. Microstock Photography Tutorial
2. Types of stock photography
3. STEP #1: Research hot selling markets
4. STEP #2: Leverage on your strength
5. STEP #3: Research for lame and lazy competition
6. STEP #4: Determine A Niche For Your Microstock Photography
7. STEP #5: Shortlist Microstock Photography agencies
8. STEP #6: Select one (1) microstock photography agency
9. STEP #7: Select stock images with good technical quality
10. STEP #8: Select images that are commercially useful
11. STEP #9: Remove images with potentially legal issues