Keywords, Road-map To Your Images!

Really good, Rich! This is an early Christmas present for all those who aren't in the know about search terms...

I still remember somebody removed my entry from a contest and when I asked why it had been removed, I was told it was because I hadn't added the keyword "flowers". I would say that the keyword "flowers" is pretty much useless as far as it helping you to get found in a search. Instead I had much more specific search terms (can't remember which kind of flower it was at the moment).

Peggy,

Thank you! And yes, as we say in NJ, the more "pacific" you can get with your keywords, the better the results. Ideally, I think we ALL would like to be on the first 2-3 pages of any search results for our stuff.

Rich

Thanks Rich!

I find that no matter how much we think we know about SEO it's always good to learn more or have a brush up. When I decided to sell my art online I had no idea I was going to have to learn all this other marketing stuff. I appreciate people like you who are willing to share your knowlege!

Thank you Rich for the information.

I have some questions.

I have plenty of images that have not gotten the looks/views/traction that I would expect from promoting it.

So is it better to edit the keywords....add/delete or does that do more harm than good?

Or should I start over with the same image and delete the old listing?

Thank you!

Just beware that the easier you are to find with those car brands - car lawyers can get to you easier too.

@david don't erase the image or you lose your place in searches. Just edit the keywords.


----Mike Savad

Thank you for this information. Always good to learn more and improve.

I also want to thank Mike for always sharing his knowlege.

Thank You for bringing up the importance of Keywords.
Spring cleaning helps a lot.

Great analysis but I'm having a hard time getting over the fact that you drink wine out of a box :P

David,

NO!!! Keep the old image/keywords! Too many links would disappear if you deleted it and then re-uploaded it! OY! You've got some good keywords, but maybe like I mention here once in a while, I try and use the keyword in all 3 places! Title, Description and Keyword. Some search engines look IN different places, so you want all 3 places covered. And use some phrases. Here's what I would use as a keyword phrase: "Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder Singing at 1992 Lollapalooza Festival" or "Eddie Vedder Singing at 1992 Lollapalooza".....Join some FB groups and post elsewhere, maybe Instagram/Twitter for a month of some of your rock guys, maybe 1 or 2 a day and watch your "visitor" count to see if there are any good changes.....

Susan,

"Or a covered bottle of wine!", a sorry example of a metaphor....BUT, I have had some decent wine out of boxes.....glass bottles shipped in boxes......

Rich

Rich that was a great read! Well done! I think my words are all level ones!

Thank you for sharing this!

I do have one question. I do a lot of birds and animals, would using their scientific names work as key words?

Absolutely use scientific terms in your descriptions, especially for animals and plants.

If you think it will get people over to your work, then yes. Along with misspellings, alternate names, nick names etc. I always add the latin. Can't say it helps but you never know. You can classify it as a mammal, furry, hairy etc. Anything you know about it, mention it.


----Mike Savad

Thank you, Susan and Mike!

This is all great for the simple search here on FAA. But Google really doesn't care much about the "keyword" section here. In fact that list of words are actually tags. And Google doesn't trust those lists to be a reliable indicator of the content.

Keywords can be anywhere. They can be in the title box, or the description or in the tag section,. The FAA search here ignore the descriptions, but Google places a lot f weight on them. And Google likes information not just words. So never make the description a list of keywords. Instead use the keywords in a sentence and make a paragraph about the work and pepper in all those important keywords.

Google also uses the title as a good indicator of the subject. And it looks at the other boxes such as "Painting" or "photograph." A match between the title keywords and the words in the description is going to alert Google to index that image with those keywords with a high degree of confidence. And I presume it looks at the tag section too. So use the tag section for the FAA search, but you also need good descriptions, using the general and more specific terms as Rich suggests.

That absolute worst thing you can do is upload images with no description. That leaves Google with little information to index the image. And you can assume that most searches give a little boost to new images. So it would be wasting that "newness" advantage to not put in the descriptions before uploading. You have to really research the subject, and everything has a subject, even if it is abstract. It's a numbers game here and you have to stack the odds in your favor in any way you can. If your work is not seen it matters little how good it is.

I love wine from a box because it keeps better. Sometimes I drink less than a whole bottle and the reds lose taste after a day or 2.

Chad,

Welcome! You have some nice stuff! Birds are great! Good keywords, but I would use some more phrases. "Red Headed Woodpecker", instead of just, "red,woodpecker, head". Lots of "fours" in your keywords. "woodpecker", 16,350 results! REDHEADED WOODPECKER......325!!!

ALSO!!! ONLY ONE IMAGE OF......ready.......melanerpes erythocephalus.......ONE IMAGE HERE! And in my opinion, your images are a standout for this bird!

Rich,

Also, Also....look for my tutorial on correctly pricing images "proportionately" for here and generally on the Internet.....

Thanks, love the illustration.

What do you think about longtail keywords here? They useful too?

Bradford,

Yes, there are "good" drinking, everyday wines in premium boxes and do last longer because of the valve!

"But Google really doesn't care much about the "keyword" section here" that's WHY I suggested keywords in all THREE places here, Title, Description and keywords/tags....

Rich

Thanks Rich/Mike and others as well.....

Thanks, Rich! Food for thought on my Keywords.

Thank you so much Rich!

Hi rich

Just noticed on this image you only have ONE tag keyword "florida".

https://fineartamerica.com/featured/2018-chevrolet-camaro-ss-redline-edition-x166-rich-franco.html

Angela,

GOOD EYE! Although, what you can't see "behind the scenes" are the rest of the words......these.....

"2018 chevrolet camaro ss redline edition, 2018 chevrolet camaro ss,2018 redline camaro,  2018 camaro ss ,2018 ss camaro,455hp, 2018 camaro redline,camaro ss,rich franco, longwood car show,florida,"

Not sure WHY, but FAA doesn't show all the keywords for some reason.....but they are there.....thanks for looking....

Rich

Great post, Rich. Thank you for sharing your insight on this.

Victor,

Thanks! I believe that you can't hide them and I don't worry about that function anyway. If they click on "keywords" FROM your page, they are done with your images anyway....

Can't see all of your keywords, but as I point out in my thread, I like to use the SAME important words in ALL THREE places, Title, Description and keywords. Which I believe helps with various search engines....

So, in your nice Sonoran Springtime 2002, I would use as the title, "Sonoran Desert SpringtimeFlowers" and leave off the date, 2002. Then, in keywords, sonoran desert springtime flowers,sonaron desret flowers, sonoran springtime desert flowers, desert flowers in Sonoran desert, etc.

And then something like this for the description...Beautiful Springtime Flowers Exploding through the Sonoran Desert, springtime flowers enjoying their Springtime!

Rich

HUGE THANK YOU , RICH ..........am safe now! KNOWLEDGE is the KEY......YOUR! KNOWLEDGE! TYTYTYTY, Ms.V

So annoyed as in many of my images... I had listed the exact name of a place, a beach for example... to help a potential buyer to find photographs of that particular beach... they have all now been erased with just the generic keyword beach..

great, what a waste of my time!

Ms V., Glad to be of service.....

Debra, Not sure that ANY real keywords are missing from any that have been uploaded, my "understanding" is that they may not show in certain places. You should bew able to search on the specific word/phrase and find your images....let me know....

Rich

@Debra - The keywords are not gone, they're still there in the background. The image pages have never displayed all the keywords you've added to an image, but if you edit the image, you should see them all there. You can also see them all there if you view the page HTML source. As long as they're there, they're available for internal searching and Google indexing.

BUT............@JohnTwynam:::::::::::::
The faa/changes are clickable and take visitor off to General Search, away from your page, !! IF you change from new FAA tags OR NOT .!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

even though::::::::::::::

@Debra - The keywords are not gone, they're still there in the background. The image pages have never displayed all the keywords you've added to an image, but if you edit the image, you should see them all there. You can also see them all there if you view the page HTML source. As long as they're there, they're available for internal searching and Google indexing.

Ms V,

From above....."If they click on "keywords" FROM your page, they are done with your images anyway...."

And besides, this is "chump change" compared to the BIG search change, where "selective artists" appear in a search and ONLY their images will show...that to me is much more important than this function....need an answer from "corporate HQ" if this is permanent or not....

Rich

RICH.......Agree !!!!!!! ...........we're all 'chumps' .......lose lose.................I give up.

Having read all of this a couple of times, I can see that something is afoot with FAA now having their general searches by tags skewed towards "selective artists".

One thing that bothers me is that I WANT my keywords as my tags.  I want someone to click on "cactus flowers", or "Echinomastus erectocentrus".  But now they don't have that choice!  Their only choice is the generic tag "flower", and that takes you to "Flower Art" with 2,133,870 choices.  I choose my keywords so that my art will not get totally lost in the massive mix here on FAA.  Now that option is gone, and I want it back!

My example:

It is my experience that in this latest iteration, if keywords aren't shown on the page, they will NOT get searched on. Using this example, I had a birdhouse image, my first keyword was, of course, "birdhouse" but it would not allow that keyword, the image ended up in the Bird category. The only keywords FAA let me have were "bird, summer, spring, pattern, abstract". So of course, I searched on several combos of my missing keywords (cute whimsical birdhouse, for example) to no avail...no image. BUT, when I put in the phrase of the 5 keywords FAA supplied, in that exact order, then voila, my image showed.

All this to say that if your keywords are drastically pared down, it's likely you will NOT be found in search on missing keywords. Best to delete all your keywords aside from your main one, then start adding them back in, one by one, checking the product page each time to make sure it doesn't end up eating your most important keyword. That's what I had to do.

@Viva - re: The faa/changes are clickable and take visitor off to General Search, away from your page

I'm not sure what I'm not getting here. That's the way it's been for as long as I've been on the site, since May 2021, so that's not a new change. As far as I can tell, the only change is that the image pages display fewer keywords.

Hi John, oh, I see, since MAY '21....all part of 'the future' among aliens, imho. I missed any, if any, FAA notification
about tags being 'clickable'. Wonder why?

I don't know what's going on with the tags. I can see 20 on my image pages and the rest are there as well (in Edit), not visible but searchable. Apart from some glitches (I found a mystery "still life" added to a townscape) I am not concerned about the tags.
Like Rich, what I am worried about is that new heavy focus on selected artists and collections which will make it even harder to get a foot in the door here. The collections especially appear to me to be a very poor representation of what's available on the site and yet, to the uninitiated, may give be impression that that's all there is. I am really struggling to understand that move.

The tags are plain weird. Like I have a fruit store and it lists - vintage, apple, green, window or something like that. It looked more like a memory test rather than a useful device. Why even list it at all if its only going to have a few words showing?


I know they are all in the search, but on the page, I like to check if I have a word on there. But now it looks rudimentary.

I think in the long run it will be better in google, because nearly all links from google are dead ended in the search. It never goes right to me, just where the bot last saw it in the search. But they look weird visually.


----Mike Savad

I was structuring my keywords to specifically show other things in the same collection or style under the image. I have a new series I'm working on and I placed a certain keyword as the first to be able to show other images from that series under the main one. It's not doing that anymore, and it's showing images which have nothing to do with my series. I listed a new painting yesterday, and the focus is an animal, so I used that word first to show other animal art under it. It changed it and pulled the keyword "flower" out and is now showing flower photos under my painting...OLD flower photos I'm not proud of anymore, that I probably should delete now that they're being shown like this. I really wish it would at least show images from the same COLLECTION under an image, at least then it would make more sense.

Jai,

Wonderful ART! Thanks for joining in here. I may have come up with some sort of answer to the "HOW" the keywords are getting shuffled around or in your case and others, non-related new "keywords" are being generated and used.

ONE explanation could be that FAA is NOW using a new "AI" program to "look" at our images and letting the AI program "decide which keywords are the best!!! Seems like the ONLY answer. Not being done by HUMANS, certainly.....

Here's an example from a new image I uploaded: 1972 BMW 3.0 CSI Coupe. Uploaded 3/30...Here are the keywords I used "1972 bmw 3.0 csi coupe,1972 csi,1972 bmw,bmw csi,1972 bmw 3.0,3.0l engine,rich franco,longwood car show,florida,

The "keywords that are now showing are only "BMW and FLORIDA"!!! None of the other keywords/phrases! When in my case, car owners are looking for particular models/years/types, BMW and Florida is NO HELP! BMW 3.0 CSI is VERY important!

I'll post a new thread asking if FAA has switched to a new AI "system" that overrides OUR keywords....should be interesting,

Rich

OPEN!

Reactivating

Abbie,

Thank you...

Thanks! I’m a techie and I think this is great.

Pebbledune,

Thanks! I'm certainly not a tech guy! My VCR is still blinking 12:99! LOL!

I've got a tutorial on "pricing" that you might enjoy....

https://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=5127197

Rich

Just had to say thanks to Rich for the reminders. Always good to get a review of something so important.

I glanced down at the comments and saw one from Mike Savad that I’d forgotten and haven’t been doing lately, but which I think is great advice: include misspellings!!!

And thanks to Abbie for reactivating this post!!

So if I understand correctly the concentration should be on the search engines not on FAA search. I searched FAA to see what other art was out there and I kid you not you cant compete in an FAA search when you find a shop that has over 40,000 listings of mostly pattern designs.

How do buyers find anything searching on FAA. I guess that's why we have to drive the traffic to our own products/art.

Kim,

Welcome! Great images!

Yes, I'd say Google and others first and then FAA. Seems most of my buyers find me on Google/Bing, etc. and then search here in my "collections". So, for example, a buyer looking for a 2023 Ford Mustang GT 5.0, would see one of mine on a Google search and then click on the image and be brought here or better, to Pixels.

When I market to locals, then they START at Pixels and never need to go to Google.

I have a tutorial you might enjoy reading about "pricing"....

https://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=5127197

Rich

Thanks Rich
I've had account for years but only recently really gotten into using FAA as I should. Got rid of some really awful stuff I had, re doing everything with new art.
I guess its Artists growth and started Digital Painting so got heaps of nano pixels to have good images.

Yeah my marketing is rubbish, doesn't matter how good your images or art is if no one sees it, it's not a happening thing.
Social Media pains me lol, so I'm concentrating on Pinterest as it's like a search engine I've been told, I don't really know.

My pixels site I need to look at thanks for the reminder :). and the info :)

Cheers Kim

I would love advice how to better my odds of showing up on FAA searches. I feel like I’ve added appropriate keywords etc. but must not be doing something right.

@Denise Strahm, are you aware that FAA search results are predominantly based on best selling images for words searched? This makes it difficult for many members to appear in the list of FAA searches, unless you happen to have images that have little competition from other FAA members. If you search the discussion forum, you see many threads indicating the best strategy for most members is to bring buyers in from external search engines like Google etc from your own marketing efforts.