As most of you are aware, good, concise, precise keywording has always been a strong factor in getting your images found by image buyers.

As I am still a recent  stock photo website owner with no prior experience in promoting and marketing one, I quickly realized the importance of having all of my images well tagged with proper keywords. I have discovered that it is much more important when it is your own website.

At the early stage of an image website, Google index all your gallery titles and image keywords. Needless to say Google is your best friend to have if your image keywords and gallery titles are well thoughout.

If an image buyer search from the google search engine instead of an image agency, your site keywords will compete with all other similar keywords under the "Google ranking system".  It is the same principle as competing with similar keywords within an agency, but the big difference is you are competing under Google algorithm not an agency own brand of algorithm.  

Interestingly, I did a few Google searches of my images to see how my website ranked amongst others.  Obviously I needed to be fairly descriptive in my keywords and included my name denis pepin to have results readily available.

Firstly I searched the following keywords: denis pepin toronto building photos.

Not surprisingly, the resulting first line is a Shutterstock link leading to my Toronto buildings, the next one is leading to depositphotos and the next one after, to my site page where some of those buildings are located at denispepin.com.

The next lines after that are Fotolia, Veer, 123RF etc. all leading to those same buildings with the same keywords.

My site came in third while other big agencies fall behind.

Of course hardly anybody will search images with my name attached, and obviously my photos will not come up first without it, but it does show that Google does a good job at finding your own site specific images if they have proper keywords.

I believe that once all the basics of having a beautiful image site is met, getting better Google ranking with less keywords to type in the search field can only come with a promotional strategy and time.

Denis
http://denispepin.com

Interesting information. I have been considering doing my own site, and I had not thought about the possibilities of using keyword tactics which are against the rules on the agencies. Not spamming or black-hat SEO - those would work against you in the long run I am sure - but things which the big agencies don't like for whatever reason but which might give you an edge on Google.

That is right Michael, in addition, your own site's image found from a google search open up all of your images to that buyer without any other competition surrounding it. Therefore the right keywords of one image could mean the discovery of your website to a willing buyer.

Denis, image SEO is a skill by its own. There are many tricks or guidelines involved to push them upward. One of those is to include a sitemap for robots in XML including description. Another one is including title and description in the same DIV or H3 tag on your site. It's also important to rename the JPG title on your site to some meaningful keywords separated by hyphens. You can find all these tricks on SEO blogs if you take some time off to Google. You could start here:
http://www.theseoworld.com/blog/google-images-search-optimization/

The algorithm on Google Images seems to change constantly. Some agencies are better coping with it than others. At the moment 123RF (and FT) seems to do the best job, and surprisingly also iRockStock. There has also been a shift from minimal picture sites (like the license pages of agencies) towards blogs for harvesting and weighing images by the image bots. (hint).

As most of you are aware, good, concise, precise keywording has always been a strong factor in getting your images found by image buyers.

As I am still a recent  stock photo website owner with no prior experience in promoting and marketing one, I quickly realized the importance of having all of my images well tagged with proper keywords. I have discovered that it is much more important when it is your own website.

At the early stage of an image website, Google index all your gallery titles and image keywords. Needless to say Google is your best friend to have if your image keywords and gallery titles are well thoughout.

If an image buyer search from the google search engine instead of an image agency, your site keywords will compete with all other similar keywords under the "Google ranking system".  It is the same principle as competing with similar keywords within an agency, but the big difference is you are competing under Google algorithm not an agency own brand of algorithm.  

Interestingly, I did a few Google searches of my images to see how my website ranked amongst others.  Obviously I needed to be fairly descriptive in my keywords and included my name denis pepin to have results readily available.

Firstly I searched the following keywords: denis pepin toronto building photos.

Not surprisingly, the resulting first line is a Shutterstock link leading to my Toronto buildings, the next one is leading to depositphotos and the next one after, to my site page where some of those buildings are located at denispepin.com.

The next lines after that are Fotolia, Veer, 123RF etc. all leading to those same buildings with the same keywords.

My site came in third while other big agencies fall behind.

Of course hardly anybody will search images with my name attached, and obviously my photos will not come up first without it, but it does show that Google does a good job at finding your own site specific images if they have proper keywords.

I believe that once all the basics of having a beautiful image site is met, getting better Google ranking with less keywords to type in the search field can only come with a promotional strategy and time.

Denis
http://denispepin.com

Hi Denis,

One MAJOR factor which placed you 3rd in line for this search of denis pepin toronto building photos. is that you had denis pepin in the name of you .COM domain.

Having a domain name which have the keywords search is a major factor for being placed first in the google search.

For example, search for keyword haircut. You will have haircut.net and prohaircut.com right after the wikipedia pages.

Search for natural stone. You will notice most 1st pages have those keywords in their domain name. You can test this for most keywords. Of course, good SEO on a website will beat any .COM name without SEO, but it does gives a major edge.

Hi Denis,

One MAJOR factor which placed you 3rd in line for this search of denis pepin toronto building photos. is that you had denis pepin in the name of you .COM domain.

Having a domain name which have the keywords search is a major factor for being placed first in the google search.

For example, search for keyword haircut. You will have haircut.net and prohaircut.com right after the wikipedia pages.

Search for natural stone. You will notice most 1st pages have those keywords in their domain name. You can test this for most keywords. Of course, good SEO on a website will beat any .COM name without SEO, but it does gives a major edge.

Thank you for your comment Morphart!!

Of course it is a major factor, but also I would like to add that it is a major factor because the words "denis" and "pepin", which is my name, are very uncommon words for someone to search for,  which make those words stand out in a search because not too many Denis Pepin are indexed by Google.

I do have another website which I got on line a few years back called UsefulImage.com. However that site was not about selling photos but hiring models in the Ottawa / Gatineau area where I live.   Each model I photographed would get a gallery for themselves to download and for the public to see .  Each photo are tag with the same set of keywords as the other sites. The site UsefulImage.com is still there but I will probably take it down soon as I don't use it anymore. It is powered by SmugMug and it is paid for until April 2012.

Now,  I do have photos with the same set of keywords at both sites. If I google the following keywords: "useful image businesswoman computer photos" or even if I change "useful image" for "usefulimage" in one word like the site name, the site usefulimage.com is nowhere to be found. However if I google the following keywords: "denis pepin businesswoman computer photos", boom, the first three links are mine at denispepin.com.

I did struggle with the idea of keeping the name UsefulImage.com or maybe some other name with the word photo in it, but I figured that my name being already attached to all  my photos out there made more sense to use as a site name then a name that will not make a dent in a google search.

In the early internet days, when all the simple dictionary words got pick up for .com and .net sites, those sites benefited the most of the power of a simple .com and .net name like "haircut.net" you mention.  Thereafter, once all dictionary words got used up, small coined names were created out of simple short words. Those small coined names were not as powerful as the single words but they were still excellent names, like "prohaircut.com". Those days are gone unless you have the money to buy one from its owner. The best you can do to approach that era is to make a coined name out of two not so short words, like I had done with UsefulImage.  I believe that if I had a lot of marketing money to invest I would probably use the UsefulImage.com name. However, because this is not the case and for the reason stated above I think my name as a site name is a better bet.


Denis

Nice my sister lives there too (Gatineau/Ottawa).

I understand what you aimed for when having your name tagged along your image, so that someone who is looking for your specifics files has the chance of buying it directly from your site instead of on a stock sites... good thinking!

For the domain usefulimage.com if you don't want it anymore i'll buy it off you, or try to resale it on the domain name market. You can sell premium domaine name on ebay.

I thought it would have had a greater value but you can evaluate it here: http://www.estibot.com/appraise.php

Thanks, I love living in Ottawa...I think this is the best city in Canada...not so big, not so small, close to everything and lots of green space....well..white soon.

Thanks for the offer and the link to the appraisal site, although I may close down UsefulImage.com, I probably will keep the name registered in my name....just in case...it does not cost much to keep the registration. I had my user name "cybernesco" registered to another website 12 years ago, nothing to do with photography, I wish I had kept the name registered as it has gathered a lot of steam since then. If you google cybernesco you'll get over 135,000 hits and it is all about my stuff over the years. A few hints of my old site cybernesco.com is still within those hits.  However, the owner of the name cybernesco.com now is someone in an asian country.

Denis