Photo Tagging

[ian in lancs]

Is there such a thing as a standard list of words for photo tagging that by using it might get more hits or is it entirely up to the tagger and random?

[Craikeybaby]

In what context do you mean?

I usually go for location and what the image is of for meta data tags, which are then used on my website/Flickr.

[MartinP]

If the image is for my website/blog, then I'll use the SEO keywords that the page is targeting in the tags. It needs to be part of a bigger SEO strategy than just tagging the images though to make any difference. Also don't overdo it with those keywords on a single page, or Google will penalise you...

[ian in lancs]

Craikeybaby said:

In what context do you mean?

I usually go for location and what the image is of for meta data tags, which are then used on my website/Flickr.

For example; should I tag an individual image 'Black and White' or 'B&W' or 'B+W' etc. Is there an industry standard or is it as i suspect the search engines are much smarter than that.

[ian in lancs]

MartinP said:

If the image is for my website/blog, then I'll use the SEO keywords that the page is targeting in the tags. It needs to be part of a bigger SEO strategy than just tagging the images though to make any difference. Also don't overdo it with those keywords on a single page, or Google will penalise you...

My sites have a few words tucked away for the search engines that describe the general nature of pics on the site but im considering tagging individual pics so engines can find them directly. A big job, thats OK but I was wondering if there is an industry set of words they select from too search for images / togs.

Plus I'm thinking the folder structure in LR is a bit old hat and now becoming a bit unwieldy so I'm considering tagging and switching to smart collections instead.

[MartinP]

Why not pick a small list of keyword phrases that you'd like to be found for and then use them consistently, but not excessively on your pages/images. If you spread yourself too thin the search engines won't rate any of those keywords very highly. You'll need those keywords in your page text, page titles, page addresses etc as well to get search engines to really rate them.

I know my website doesn't contain enough text for optimum SEO, but I try to make up for it on my blog which does get me a lot of organic search visitors.

Do you have Google Analytics on your site? You can then use that to track which keywords are getting you visitors from organic searches, which page they're landing on etc.

[Craikeybaby]

You can use the synonyms feature in Lightroom, so that if you tag an image B&W it also tags the black and white for example.

[ian in lancs]

Craikeybaby said:

You can use the synonyms feature in Lightroom, so that if you tag an image B&W it also tags the black and white for example.

Thanks; I'll check that out.

Thanks everyone for you advice