Which of Title, Description & Keywords matter for search? The short answer is:
“All of them”
Here’s why.
As you can see from the table above, all of the fields have a role to play in either the Page Title or a site’s search. As a result, so you need to make sure that they all contain the top keywords for your image.
Page Title Tag
This is the sentence that shows in the top of your browser when viewing a web page. If you view the source of a web page, it is the <Title> element
The Page Title Tag is the most important on-page factor from a search crawler’s perspective. As a result, the words in your title tag are crucial for searches on Google and other search engines. Three of the four sites above use the IPTC title for their browser title tag and Shutterstock uses the description. So, regardless of what you think of them, those fields matter a lot. Even though iStock, Shutterstock and Fotolia ignore everything but the keywords in their search results, the fact that Google cares means you need to care.
Oh, one more thing – Dreamstime and Fotolia both have a character limit and truncate inputs. So, the bottom line? You have 50 characters in which to be relevant. Put your most important terms up front.
On-site Search
As you can see from the table, the microstock sites use some or all of the meta data fields in their search algorithms. I think we are all sold on the value of keywords, even for on-site search but Title & Description also have an important role to play. In fact, at Dreamstime, I think an exact match on title gets you the highest placement in search results (even above keywords.) I was able to get searches to return for words that only existed in the IPTC Title.
Talk is Cheap – Show Me the Searches!
All this becomes very clear with a few examples. I did a search on istock for ‘friendship’ and I picked the image highlighted below.
The title tag for this image is: “Two Women having Fun Outdoor (XXXL).” If you search google images for “two women fun outdoors”, this image is the second result. (This is a good thing.)
If you search iStock for “two women fun outdoors” the image is nowhere to be seen. While it has ‘fun’ in its keywords, it doesn’t have “two women.” And if you search for images on Google with keywords like ‘friendship’ you are not going to find that image.
Conclusions
- Title, Description & Keywords should all contain relevant terms
- Your page titles matter more than you think – for on site & for Google search; don’t ignore them
- You have 50 characters for the title – make them count; put important keywords first
As part of our Back Office Services, we pay attention to these items. You should too.
Which IPTC Fields Matter & Why
The short answer to this is
ALL OF THEM
Here’s why. Each field has a role to play in Google search or on site search. As a result, you can’t ignore any of them.
[table]
Browser Title Tag
Three of the four sites I looked at use the IPTC title for their browser title tag. Shutterstock uses the IPTC description (potentially an interesting unique content SEO strategy.). This automatically means that you need to pay attention to your IPTC Title & Descriptions.
This is because the browser Title Tag <link> is the most important on-page factor from a search crawler’s perspective. As a result, the words in your title tag are crucial for searches on Google and other search engines.
So, even though iStock, Shutterstock and Fotolia ignore everything but the keywords in their search results, the fact that Google cares means you need to care. (Even if you don’t sell direct, Google drives traffic to stock sites.)
On-site Search
As you can see from the table, the sites use some or all of the meta data fields in their search algorithms. After experimenting with searches on Dreamstime, I think the title might actually be the most important field there. I was able to get results returned for images that had the words in the title and not the keywords.
Dreamstime and Fotolia both have a character limit and truncate inputs. So, the bottom line? You have 50 characters in which to be relevant. Put your most
Talk is Cheap – Show Me the Searches
I did a search on istock for ‘friendship’ and I picked the image highlighted below.
The title tag for this image is: “Two Women having Fun Outdoor”
If you search google images for “two women fun”, this image is the 2nd result. That is good.
If you search istock for “two women fun” the image is nowhere to be seen. While it has ‘fun’ in its keywords, it doesn’t have “two women.”
Conclusion
When keywording your images, you need to pay attention to all of the IPTC fields and you should make sure your most relevant search terms appear in your title, description and keyword. As part of our Back Office services, we make sure that we pay attention to not just microstock site performance but also SEO benefits. You should do the same
