Yesterday, we took a look at what  photo metadata is, why it’s important, and how it benefits photographers. The information came out of a presentation on metadata by ImageSpan with liveBooks and the Bay Area-based Renegade Meetup photography group that drew nearly 30 photographers to an after-hours event at liveBooks last Wednesday evening.

Today, we’ll continue to share what we learned in that Metadata Meetup. We’ll touch on how to apply metadata, how to make the application of certain types of metadata more efficient, and why applying metadata is critical for your business. We’ll also include links to websites where you can learn more about metadata.

Attaching Metadata

There are several ways and methods for attaching metadata to an image. In addition to embedding metadata as images are published to the Web, through services such as LicenseStream and liveBooks, photographers can associate metadata in several other types of photography workflow software, such as Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom™ . In fact, photographers using Lightroom and the popular Adobe Creative Suite® 3 software can upload all of their images along with metadata applied in those programs to LicenseStream via plug-ins.

Travel photographer David Sanger,  who presented a great overview of what metadata is and how it works, said that there are instances where social media sites will strip out metadata. He added that even some major search engines will not look at metadata to help anyone searching for an image find it.

To ensure that the image is searchable, Sanger recommends photographers associate a caption as well as keywords with their images. Search engines, Sanger said, “primarily look at the text on the page associated with an image.” That said, he added, “If somebody finds your image and the metadata survives, then they can identify the image as yours and they can license it.”

Applying Keywording

Brian Pobuda, a corporate photographer who also consults as a digital asset management specialist, said that to make applying metadata more efficient,  he often applies a first round of basic keywords to a group of content. For a recent shoot, for example, he labeled a batch of images “City Center, Las Vegas, 2010,” and then applied more specific keywords to those images he expects clients to use.

Sanger said his keywording practices depend on the image destination.

“For example, with Getty I provide conceptual keywords and they do the rest of the keywording,” he said. “When I know an image will be put on Google Images, I want lots of keywords because I want as many people to find it as possible.” Other stock agencies may penalize you for having too many obscure keywords, he added, because your ranking depends on your click-through ratio which may fall if too many obscure keywords are attached.

There also are situations when additional keywords may not be desirable.

“If I have a picture of a sunset, it won’t necessarily say 'San Francisco, Baker Beach, June 2003 sunset 4 p.m.,'” Sanger said. “I may just say 'Sunset on Ocean,' because an image buyer may just be looking for a generic image. Similarly, he doesn’t always apply a date. “There are times specificity can work against you,” he said.

PCWorld Senior Editor Melissa Perenson, who served as moderator at the Metadata Meetup suggested a good, common-sense method for applying keywording. “Just think about how you would find an image if you were doing a search,” she said.

In fact, keywording specifically and metadata applications generally can still vary widely. Major stock agencies all have their own methods of applying metadata. Some use IPTC – a standard that came out of the newspaper world. A more advanced standard which includes additional fields emerged when Adobe moved to XML, Sanger said. “Then there is a third way to do it, which is to have the captions or metadata in a sidecar which is a separate XMP file that can accompany the photo,” he said. In addition, there’s a fourth standard called Dublin Core®.

Because there is not yet complete standardization as to what fields are used by various agencies or within various software programs, Sanger said, “it helps to stick with the simple ones that are used in your tools unless you have reason to delve more deeply into it. You can overdo it.”

As for keywording hierarchies, Sanger recommends Controlled Vocabulary, a site run by metadata master David Riecks. “David's site not only has more than you need to know about structured vocabularies,” Sanger said, “he also has links to a variety of products that will allow you to structure your keyword hierarchy.”

A Critical Tool for Tracking Your Business Efforts

While metadata is used to identify, license and monetize images, Sanger also suggested photographers think of metadata as information needed to operate their businesses. It can include your sales results, where the images have been submitted for licensing, where the images have been sold, which stock agencies or services have a certain image or group of images, and which clients commissioned them.

“This is important information because if you have an exclusive contract with one agency you have to know which images are with that agency and can’t go elsewhere for sale or licensing," he said. "While that information isn’t usually in the image itself, the ability to track sales and revenues relies upon identifying which images have been sold or licensed. It all goes back to the file name or the ID portion of the file name.”

Finally, for additional information on metadata, Sanger suggested the following sites:

• www.photometadata.org
• www.StockArtistsAlliance.org
• www.controlledvocabulary.com

Have questions or comments about this blog post? Please feel free to share them by clicking on the "Comments" link below.  

There are so many ways to participate in social media, that it's difficult to determine where to put your energy and resources.  You can easily lose your day working with various social media outlets and wind up generating minimal results.  For the third post in our series about social media tools and outlets, we're going to take a look at one of the fundamental building blocks of a social media strategy for promoting your LicenseStream business -- the Blog.

A blog is an easy and fun way to tell people what you do. It allows you to build relationships with your existing and prospective clients by regularly updating them on your activities, including upcoming exhibits, newly published works, and recent photography shoots or projects. It's also a great way to share your passion for your interests and the fun bits of information that you pick up as you experiment and gain experience through your creative work. There are several free platforms available today to help you get started, including:

• Blogger: Google's blog creation and publishing platform allows you to post text, photos and videos from the web or even a mobile phone.  It also allows you to personalize your blog with themes and gadgets. For more information, go to: www.blogger.com  

• Movable Type: A professional blog publishing platform that  makes it easy to launch a blog, manage entire websites and build a professional-grade social network with user profiles, ratings, community blogs, and forums. www.movabletype.com

• Tumblr: A versatile blogging platform that allows you to post text, links, photos, videos, music and to customize your blog with themes, colors and to post from your desktop, mobile phone, even AIM. You can also automatically post from other sites or profiles. Learn about it at www.tumblr.com 

• WordPress: Built on PHP and MySQL  and licensed under the GPL, WordPress prides itself on a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. To learn more go to www.wordpress.org

After you set up your Blog, give yourself a deadline for posting and stick to it by publishing your blog on a regular basis. The more often you post, the more of your content becomes available for the search engines to index. 

A blog offers the easiest place to implement and experiment with topics and ideas, ranging from tips on Creating New Opportunities in Tough Economic Times to information on new photographic gadgets and techniques.  In fact, a great way to gain readership for your blog is to write about the tips, tricks, gadgets and gizmos that you find useful in your work.  When you're trying out a new gadget on a shoot, be sure to report through your blog about how useful or useless it is, or what tricks make it a more valuable piece of gear. Providing your audience with useful content and links to valuable Web sites is a surefire way to foster a following and linkbacks that boost your search ranking.

It's a good idea to regularly link to articles of interest to your community, such as a recent article on the Shutterbug about how new technology and social media tools are bringing change to the business and marketing of photographic services.  (See our blog about SEO Dos where we talk about the value of creating links back to your site.

A blog also provides a great place to experiment with a keyword strategy, since it provides an ongoing opportunity to weave into your posts keywords associated with your content.  If you just uploaded great new images from this summer's Burning Man event in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada into your LicenseStream account, then you'd surely want to use the name of the event, some information about the art installation or event you captured, such as "Exploding Man" and a phrase or two capturing key images at the event, such as "Burning Man bicycles," or "Burning Man robots." While initially you may find it cumbersome and time consuming to provide such detail about your photo shoots, the payoff is great if you keep at it. Over time, your search results will improve.

If you have a personal website, another way to help boost your search index ranking is to choose carefully the URL you'll use for your blog. It is best if the blog's URL is tied closely to that of your website. For example "your blog.your website's URL.com" or "your website's URL/blog."  Attaching your blog to your URL makes it very easy to find in a Web search.  It also is likely to increase your search index ranking because each time the search engines crawl the Web and find a new post, it increases the relevance of that URL.

After you've published a few blog posts, take time to actively promote your blog by connecting your readers to other social media outlets where you have a presence, participate and post regular updates. If you have a Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn account, then include a link on your blog for those pages, or link directly from posts on those sites to your blog as you may with Tumblr.  Be sure to check your blog each week to see if anyone has posted comments that call for a reply. You wouldn't want to miss an opportunity to connect with a potential client.

Once you have your blog up and running, be sure to share it with us!  Here are a few examples of photographer blogs we've found useful and interesting:

• Chuck Eckert's blog: http://chuckeckert.blogspot.com/

• Rob Haggart's "A Photo Editor": http://www.aphotoeditor.com/

• Chase Jarvis' blog: http://blog.chasejarvis.com/blog/

• Joe Pobereskin's "Eat at Joe's" blog: http://cafejoetogo.blogspot.com/

• Marc Silber's blog: http://www.silberstudios.com/blog/ 

• Dave Walsh's blog: http://www.davewalshphoto.com/blog/

Let’s face it, all of us are feeling the crunch these days and many photographers who had a very steady stream of clients and projects have seen these dwindle over the past year or so. The decline is probably due to a number of factors, including the economic downturn, and several industry-specific trends including the availability of quality Prosumer cameras, the low pricing of royalty free microstock images, and the proliferation of super-low-cost photographers on sites such as CraigsList. All this makes for slim pickings. Many clients are shooting projects “in-house” and sourcing generic royalty free images because they, too, are feeling the crunch.

I spoke with a handful of professional photographers to find out what strategies they’ve employed over the past year to generate new business and found some interesting ideas.  Besides taking advantage of the ability to market and license their work using LicenseStream to generate passive income and expose their work to a greater audience,  many photographers are using the enforced downtime to get more creative about how they market their work.

This slow period has been welcome relief for some photographers who needed a break from tough daily schedules that don’t allow much time for personal growth in order to develop new artistic styles, create new bodies of work, or to learn about new photographic tools and acquire new techniques in a digital age. Some have decided to travel, exploring new views on the world that they can bring back and market. For example, one couple who had planned a trip to Africa took an extra step in their preparations: they contacted some private doctors and non-profit organizations to see how they might help support documenting success stories, and raise awareness for these doctors who were performing surgeries to fix facial abnormalities and other health related issues in underprivileged villages. This outreach resulted in work that helped support a trip they were going to take anyway and created a new area of business.

Other photographers have found it pays to participate in local farmers’ markets, in gallery exhibitions, or to develop fine art products.  One photographer talked about the success he had achieved in marketing his love of architecture, details, and natural patterns. He offered single-day rate for shooting photos of a particular location, say a winery or a beautiful hotel, and then offered to create for the location’s owners a coffee table book or a series of framed prints and the ability to use the images for promotional marketing materials as one complete package.

In addition to creating new niche markets and products, photographers need to look at reducing expenses. Consider sharing workspace costs, equipment, and combining different talents to collaborate on projects and expand networking circles. And let’s face it, not all of us are the best at running our business or going out and getting new clients. Hiring a business consultant and perhaps photo representative might be the best idea yet.

In addition, it may help to visit a few of our past LicenseStream blogs, including those on Using LicenseStream to Power Your Niche Photography Business, Using HTML to

Market Your Content,  Licensing Fundamentals: 20 Dos of SEO Practices, and Licensing Fundamentals: 10 Don'ts of SEO Practices.  

Oh, and don’t forget to say a few prayers, burn some incense, and avoid black cats. It can’t hurt.

We wanted to continue the conversation about keywording and segue into Search Engine Optimization best-practices for your website.  The following are ten things “not” to do to ensure your website remains listed on any search index and most importantly, to ensure that people can find your work through the  search engines.

1.    Keyword Stuffing:  If you use the same keyword repeatedly within your website’s text or in your keyword tags, you’ll find yourself penalized and likely removed from the search results index.  How much repetition is too much?  Use a keyword density checker to make sure that you’re not over the legal limit.  Experts say 3-7% for your major keywords and 1-2% for your minor keywords. We touched on this in our last blog post about keywording, Licensing Fundamentals: Keywording for Search Results. 

2.    Duplicate Content:  Duplicate content deliberately tries to trick search engines into improving a website’s ranking.  Search Engines have built-in algorithms that analyze pages with similar content.  How much similarity are they looking for?  Use this duplicate content tool to see if you’re pages duplicate too much information. If so, the search engines may omit your web pages or site from the search index.  A good place to read more on duplicate content is the Google Webmaster Central Blog.  If you need to see a more visual presentation on the subject, check out the blog posted by SEOMOZ.org.

3.    Free-For All Link Exchange Programs:  There is a difference between natural link building and free-for-all link exchange programs.  With natural link building, you’re linking to relevant sites or reciprocating links with partners or associations.  Free-for-all linking occurs when you use software to put your links out to hundreds of thousands of sites.  Free-for-all programs are essentially spam and if a search engine discovers this practice they will likely penalize your website and lower your ranking (if not blacklist you).  Stay honest, start a link-building program by establishing reciprocal links with relevant, reputable websites. It really is that simple.  If you’d like a good online resource to learn more about  this, check out this blog by SEOMOZ.org on link building.

4.    Robots:  Do not use a robot to rewrite your content. Such robots alter it just enough to generate a set of new, duplicate pages for search engine indexing and with the ultimate goal of increasing your search engine ranking.  You may be seduced by the offer of having your website rewritten for you.  Don’t fall for it.  Such robots, or programs, typically rewrite your content with very few changes.  If you’re caught with duplicate content, your search ranking is likely to plummet so far that no one will ever find it.  Needless to say, if you use the LicenseStream HTML code to publicize your store on your blog or personal website, don’t submit it for a robot to rewrite --not only will it affect search engine rankings for your personal website, but it could also affect rankings for your LicenseStream store.

5.    Keyword Dilution: Focus on the main keywords that pay off for your online content.  To get an idea of what keywords people are looking for, use the free service from Wordtracker.  Plug in your keywords and see how many searches they have initiated. Focus the copy on your website and each page on a specific theme. This will naturally ensure your keywords are specific as to the types of content and images that someone can find at your website.  You may want to refer to our previous LicenseStream Insight Blog post about keywording practices.

6.    Difficult to Crawl Website:  An all-Flash site is nice, but is difficult for the search engines to crawl and index.  So if you’re going to use Flash to create a site, include an HTML option and an easily navigable site map.  liveBooks is a great resource for putting together a fantastic Flash site for your work, and its Flash sites automatically generate an HTML version for SEO purposes. You can also link the Flash site you create with liveBooks directly to a LicenseStream account, so that visitors easily and seamlessly can license your work.  With these services, you’ll have both the HTML needed for good SEO and the keywording and direct licensing features that can help your business succeed.

7.    Hidden Text: Hidden text is computer text set in the same font color as the background so as not to be easily read by anyone viewing the page, but that a search engine will recognize. Usually it is used to camouflage keyword stuffing. If you think that it will generate a higher search result ranking, think again.  If you are caught doing this, your pages will be removed and banned from participation in search engine rankings.

8.    Bad Redirects: Don’t create pages with keywords with the sole purpose of getting a high search engine ranking only to redirect visitors to another page that is totally unrelated to the focus of a search. For example, say you do a search for “blue egrets” and you’re directed to a page that says, “One Moment While We Redirect You.” The next thing you know you’re on a page about candy bird eggs.  This practice is unlikely to win you any fans and instead may result in the removal of your site from search engine indices.  There are instances in which redirecting is appropriate.  But the deliberate and malicious misuse of keywords is a practice that is likely to backfire.

9.    Same Title on Every Page: Don’t use the same title on every page of your website.  While you may think that by using the same words over and over again you’ll achieve a higher search engine ranking, think again.  Instead, use titles relevant to the content on each page to increase the chance it’ll be found via a variety of search terms. For example, if your website is about birds in nature, don’t title every page: “Birds in Nature.” Instead, be specific.  If you have three pages within a LicenseStream store website and one is dedicated to Blue Egrets, then name that page, “Birds in Nature: Blue Egrets.”  Similarly, be specific in your captions or keywords.

10.    Misspelled Words:   Don’t use misspelled words anywhere other than in your META tags.  Yes -- you may want to incorporate common misspellings of words, but keep them hidden in your META tags, not in your copy.  Obviously incorporating misspelled words reduces your credibility, and such damage can’t be offset by any incremental gain in site ranking. 

These are just a few tips to get started; there are many others and we’ll offer related tips in future posts.  Optimizing your website for search engine ranking requires patience and diligent work.  Our advice is to stay honest.  Don’t try to game the system, it just isn’t worth it -- especially when your reputation and ranking of pages that represent your work are on the line.

As mentioned in a previous Blog entry about SEO, detailed Descriptions and a variety of Keywords are things the search engines are looking for. One of the great functions of the LicenseStream engine is the ability to import these fields from Metadata already stored in your images. If you are using Photoshop, Adobe Bridge or LightRoom, then there is a wealth of information you may enter before you even upload to the LicenseStream system.

In Adobe Photoshop, even in the Elements version, you may pull down the File menu and find File Information. In Adobe Bridge and LightRoom, the display grid may be set up so the most common fields are visible and easily editable. However, there are additional fields you should access through the File Information option, such as whether the images are Copyrighted, which places the copyright symbol (©) directly next to the file name when opened in applications like Photoshop.

Another area of File Information is referred to as IPTC Contact, where you may store your name, company name, mailing address, email address, phone number(s) and web site(s). This will help reduce the possibility of your images becoming what is referred to as “Orphan Works”. There is new legislation in Congress that basically states, if an image creator cannot be found with a reasonable amount of effort, then the image is considered an orphan work and will fall into the public domain, meaning no royalties are due to anyone for use of the image. While the information may still be stripped out without much effort, that becomes what is referred to as a “Destructive” violation for images properly registered with the Copyright Office, thereby increasing the penalties.

For Keywords, the Keyword Generator function in LicenseStream is a good place to start for the basics. But notice there are blocks below the pulldowns for “Additional Keywords”. This is where you may enter words you think appropriate that are not in the pulldown menus, or where those entered in the editing applications mentioned above will fall. Look at the Celebrity Gallery of Roth Stock Digital Media for example. While “Entertainment” is available in the pull down menus, we've added Entertainer, Red Carpet, and things like Movie Premiere in our keywords.

Orlando Bloom© Lee Roth

Don’t feel limited by the suggestions from the Keyword Generator. They are simply that, suggestions, although they do contain common search terms often used by publishers. However, if you have a woman in a blue dress in a field of yellow flowers, there is no reason you cannot enter the second color as an additional keyword. Similarly, if you have a man and a woman in a photo, “adults” works, but so does man, woman and couple. The point is to not feel limited by the Keyword Generator, but to use it as a good starting point. And if you have happened to enter some of the suggested keywords in your editing software, they will populate those fields when you upload the image. In fact, it is a bit faster to load those words in the image metadata before the upload, once you get used to the system.

As for descriptions, they end up as text on the LicenseStream Gallery pages. This carries a lot of weight with the search engines. In writing your descriptions, keep your keywords in mind. Looking in the Roth Stock Scenic Gallery, take note of the Wofldogs. There are paragraphs describing wolfdogs as a subspecies and talking about the sanctuary where the subjects we photographed reside. Even though those keywords also appear as text on the page, when used in sentences and paragraphs, they weigh heavier with the search engines. But don’t overdo it. In some search engines, using the same keyword more than six times might actually be looked at as spamming the engine and result in penalization in the rankings instead of the higher ranking you are after. Just try to be natural with your descriptions, almost conversational. That way, it’s easier to read, and should result in better search engine rankings. After all, that is the goal of every Web designer, whatever the topic!

Wolfdog© Lee Roth

Lee Roth is executive producer of Roth Stock Digital Media, based in Hollywood, California, with their newest studio located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Lee’s celebrity photos are syndicated worldwide and regularly appear in such magazines as People, In Touch, Us Weekly, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar and many others around the world. In addition to celebrities, Lee also specializes in live events, scenery, environmental issues, and private glamour sessions.

Lee’s bio and links to all of his content categories are available at his portal, RothStock.Com. He may be reached at 702.202.4555 or producers@rothstock.com for more information and booking inquiries.

© Lee Roth 2008 / RothStock.Com 

Want to make it easier for buyers to find your work on search engines?

Descriptive text and links are two areas that can make a huge difference.

Descriptive text
Whether you’re editing your own site or your LicenseStream Gallery, your first step to search engine success is to write lots of descriptive content about your featured content. It’s critically important to write your descriptions in the language your clients use for searching. Chat with a few clients and simply ask them what terms they use when they search.

Make sure that your description contains enough detail that you’ll come up high in the search rankings if someone is doing a very specific search. For instance, you don’t want to stop at “Dog catching Frisbee” in your description. Keep going and include all relevant details such as “Vertical shot of dog catching Frisbee in Central Park on a summer morning.”

Links
How important are links to your pages/content to search engines? Put it this way: if you don’t have someone linking to your page, Google doesn’t even index it. As critically important as it is to have at least one link, the more links you have from relevant sites the higher your placement in the search rankings.

Search engines consider pages that are linked to from related sites are “higher quality” and they rank these pages accordingly. You will want to take care when looking for opportunities for others to link to you because “link exchanges” or direct link swaps are discounted and can even be penalized by the search algorithms.

Look for an upcoming post where we’ll explore responsible linking strategies in greater depth.

Note: If your potential clients are agencies who will be searching by detailed shoot information then the Keyword Generator in LicenseStream in the “Activate Content” process can be a big help. This keyword set is leveraged when visitors search your LicenseStream Gallery. You can also copy and paste these keywords and use them right on your site or blog – wherever you have that particular shot displayed.