The Biggest Faa Tip I Found...

Good thinking Karen, we spend to much time talking seller to seller. I think sellers forget that there is a human at the other end of the equation.

Thank you so much Karen...you explained the perfectly!!! Until this moment I really didn't get it...now I will have to go image by image and fix it all...good thing I don't have the hundreds of pieces I wish I had finished :)

Good to know - for so long I've never taken the time to put a description in much. Probably worth it to go back and add in descriptions to everything already posted!

thanks Karen ... helpful & informative information ... cheers,,, cheryl

Lauri:
It is very important. When I started doing this is when I really saw an increase in my sales. I am still going back and entering new and better descriptions on all my images and I am approaching my 400th sale on Fine Art America very soon...

Yes, good info. However,the biggest search engine,Google, no longer uses the key words or meta data in it's searches as I've recently discovered.

Exactly, Karen, you are absolutely correct! People don't like to be sold, but they love to buy. Understand how your product is used (not just what it does) so you can understand how to harmonize with your prospect.

thank you Karen for your help!!

thanks very much for taking the time to post this!!

Thank you Karen. I've got lots of views each day, but few sales. Images I sell like crazy in my gallery here in Cody, Wyoming just don't move here on FAA. Maybe I need to go back and edit my descriptions and add to my keywords. You've just created another project for me!!!

Peter:
The Google search engine uses the "description" of the image to find the artworks...
I also use the title at the beginning of each of my descriptions, just in case it uses the title as well. This was also a good way for me to know which I had posted good descriptions on and which ones I hadn't done as of yet, those without the title at the beginning of the description needed more work and another evaluation from me.

Thanks for sharing...will be following this discussion!

Thanks Karen for this helpful information.

Karen. We thank you for your dedication to art and artists, alike. This last bit of information, with the opening idea of descriptions vs keywords is a revelation to me. I truly appreciate the help this personally provides me. Great work!!

Thank you Karen. I will start looking over my descriptions with the buyer in mind.

Google also matches keywords to the title and description, so be sure at least 2 or 3 keywords are exactly the words used in description and/or title.

But 400 sales?? WOW! I have not yet reached 40. I get rave reviews everywhere but cannot sell like you do, Karen. :'( I promote like crazy on social media, my websites, with business cards, brochures, face to face with people and businesses, by writing magazine articles, and giving away promo prints. I have 140,000 views here and

Great advise especially if you are an artist who has not been discovered yet. Thanks Iris

i've been saying add descriptions for years now, so many don't have them listed. a simple story no matter how made up will keep a person there longer and will engage the image better.

many make the mistake of giving a long drawn out history lesson of a location. but this isn't school, and people don't have the time to read all that. i like making a funny story usually. or try to connect them with the piece.

---Mike Savad

So would it be wise to keyword / hashtag in the description as well as the keyword area?

To clarify, in the past I have added a quick blurb / sentence to each image. But from reading it needs to be more, so I thinking just adding the keywords in two locations.

I agree with Mike. I am guilty of overlooking my own descriptions too often, but I would rather have no description at all than post paragraphs from Wikipedia that I see so many artists do.

So true Karen.

Wonderful advice Karen, and the additional comments are great. Thanks so much. :))

and if you do quote from wiki, they punish you and send you to the back of the search for plagiarizing. i feel that the description should never be longer than the image.


---Mike Savad

The description can be on the FAA site or a blog post surrounding your link to the art (or both of course). But what about those sales we see where there are no keywords, title or description? Who knows how the piece is being marketed. The sale could be coming directly from a email marketing piece, a paid ad, a blog etc.

Writing a Hubpages is a good lesson what works and what doesn't. If you copy and paste there, they flag it, because they know it will work against them if they have "unoriginal" content.

Thanks Karen....wonderful advice....(back to the drawing board,lol)

Thanks Robin :) Glad you found the links useful.

Steve as far as writing long winded descriptions go, I'm really not sure how necessary it is. Something to keep in mind is that all the major search engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo and I beleive the internal FAA search only use the FIRST 70 CHARACTERS in the title and the FIRST 160 CHARACTERS for the description. You can write a 5000 word essay about your image but the engines couldn't care less, they only see those 160 characters. Doesn't matter where you post online, Flickr, your blog, here on FAA, wherever, when the bots crawl the site, that's all they pay attention to. The extra embellishment is a nice to have but the only ones who are going to see it are the folks that have FOUND your image in the first place (some groups here on FAA ask for camera data or the photos city and country of origin to be included for inclusion in the group. That info can be added at the end of the description).

As Karen mentioned in the first post on this thread, keywords are for INTERNAL search. Google, Bing and Yahoo couldn't care less about them. Keywords are a thing of the past for the major engines as they are to easy to use by spam sites. As also mentioned, people very rarely search for individual words, they search for terms and in those terms one of the words is always a person. place or thing. So if you were to title your image:

Red Flower In A Green Indianapolis Field

and start your description off with:

Original photography of a bright red flower in a field of green during spring by Indianapolis photographer Steve Archbold.

You've pretty much got everything covered.The title is 40 characters, you can add 20 more. The description is 121 characters, you've still got room to add 39 more (field of green could be changed to green field giving you even more space). You've included your name (very important The more times that search engines see you name, the more relevant it becomes). You've told people where your from (Think globally. Act locally. 75% of searches are by people looking for a product or service in their hometown). You've told the engines what you do (you're a photographer, you do photography). You've added 2 colors (this is an art site. Like it or not, people are looking for something that matches the color of their walls, couch and rugs). You've described the image. Most importantly you have made a sentence that has a bunch of words that can be used TOGETHER to create a search term (Indianapolis photography, Indianapolis photographer, Steve Archbold photography, photographer Steve Archbold, red flower. flower photography, etc, etc and etc).

Thank you for starting this thread Karen. Very interesting. This is something I've been doing a lot of reading on recently in the hope of becoming a bigger needle in a smaller haystack. I'm slowly going through my work here on FAA, on Redbubble and on my blog and reevaluating and changing all the smaller bits that make up the whole (titles, descriptions, keywords etc). It's a slow process and a lot of work but hopefully it will be worth it in the end :)

That is my rant for today now done!!! Time to go take my dog for a walk and get away from this computer thingy for awhile.

that i never heard of. as far as i know google and all, records everything, because you never know what part of the page people are looking for. they may show an excerpt of that many characters. google does and will see the keywords, they care very much for these. they may not see them as keywords but just words on the page. the meta-tags are largely ignored these days.

the description will help be found in google. the description is largely for the customer however, a reason to buy it, will sell it better then telling someone its a photo made by you. they know that, they are in your store so two of those facts are known. there are no limits to what google sees. considering google has newspapers, magazines and huge long blogs in their search. it wouldn't be much of a search if there was a limit to the characters it saw.

and a description like the above - google would totally ignore it anyway, it doesn't have substance and doesn't answer a question, which is what the current platform is looking for now.


---Mike Savad

Thank you for posting this, I will definitely go back and add descriptions I've only been worried about the keywords.

Many thanks for this very informative discussion.

Well, I found my picture on Google, and another artist named Connie Fox who makes jewelry. Including my name in my keywords may be driving business to her. It's certainly not coming my way. With at least 21 people named Connie Fox on Facebook, and at least three in Houston (that I know of), how can I avoid sending business to someone else?

you might have to make up a different name, like - the cunning fox or something like that. kind of a pain when the names line up.


---Mike Savad

This is a great thread. . Following. . My #1 goal is to make it as easy as possible for buyers and potential clients to find me via Google. And to make it easy for my buyers once in FAA to find what they are looking for seamlessly on my site..

Great thread Karen. I have nothing to add, but I thought I would bump it up so those who missed it can benefit from it.

I don't think keywords make any difference whatsoever. Neither do descriptions. If you get seen around here, it's the luck of the draw.

I think that is a wondrrful post i would love for you to join my group

"luck of the draw" - nope, people who have put in the effort to market themselves and post quality work see results.

Great post Karen! Thank you!

Thank you for the tip and information, Karen.

Thank you for the helpful tips.

Karen, your tip on starting each description with the image title and your name is something I've started doing. Thank you! As I review images, I make sure everything is current, error-free, relevant, and so forth. Seeing that title in the description clues me that the job's been done on that image. Very helpful.

Recently (and I don't know the reason), my views have increased five-fold. I did a Google search on both Connie Fox and Connie Steitz Fox, for I include both names in my description. I found a nice photo-spread that includes a jewelry-maker and perhaps another Connie Fox. But my work can been seen, and one simply needs to click on a nice-size thumbnail of the image. I don't mind being in good company, especially if it will lead to a sale. And the jewelry-maker does impressive work. Maybe I'll sell more art and buy something from her.

Hi, Karen.

Thank you for the thread.

Meanwhile, this thread has some useful information regarding using more than one keyword, without commas.

The information Jeff shared here was very valuable.

http://fineartamerica.com/showmessages.php?messageid=2090316

Just wanted to add a different viewpoint.

Google adapts search patterns and posts sites and subjects that comply with the searchers customary interests and previous search patterns.
Not 100 percent,.....but noticeably in our searches.

We can each type in the same identical search words,.....and our individual returns on Google will be somewhat different,...somewhat tainted by our individual historic search habits as seen and applied by Google.

Google can easily inject sites favoring personal past search interests.

How many times have you as well as me,....performed a search for something in particular,...and gotten a mix of returns that have ...a various mix of subjects and sites favoring forgotten past search sites and items from months ago.

Remember,......Google collects information,....yours,....and mine,......it's what they do,....we are a (commodity)....Google applies habit patterns in creative ways to direct you based on knowing you. in addition to what you really specifically want in your search results.

They also market nondescript behavior information to those who seek the advantage knowing or understanding public behavior trending .

We are all,.. data based per (our historic) search interests by Google.

To Google,.....we each are a readily available commodity of information,..that is useful...collected and capitalized on thru stockpiling of our internet information and behavior patterns and ,....using it at their discretion on a predictability basis.

The internet is a wonderful tool,....not just for us,......but others who can use our behavior information and personal likes to their gain.

Thank you, Karen.

Thanks Karen.

Thanks to everyone for their helpful hints. I have started to go through all of my images fixing my descriptions and rearranging my tags.

Thanks for the helpful tips Karen, and others that have replied with tips as well!

Hi Karen - I am new to this site and would appreciate you taking a look at my galleries and giving me some advice. I will definitely look at adding more keywords and more lengthy descriptions like you say, but I am wondering how you set up the related tags section you have and also any other tips for how to drive more traffic my way? Your photos are very beautiful.

http://henry-inhofer.artistwebsites.com

you really want to emphasize that this is for a firefighter - and mention as many words as you can explaining that, it's only seen once. and the description is really weak. explain that there is a firefighter bravely taking out a fire, in where this was located. and push the hero and brave aspect of it.


descriptions get people to you images, this is a nice shot, but there is no description at all. for people that don't know you can ride these things, explain it to them. google will ignore this because it has no content. i see evidence of increasing the size of this. don't do that, while i think this picture is safe, others may not be. add more keywords, as many as you can that describes the event, location, town, state, cowboy, etc.


whenever possible ID the critter, look it up on wiki or google, and tell us what kind of thing this is, and add that and the latin name to the keywords.


technically you have spam words in here because it's only a head shot, which isn't even mentioned.


mention the town name, the state in the description and the tags. also mention the truck brand, sunny, outside, rural,rugged, and any other word that makes it unique.

increase the prices you have.

the bio - i would remove the gift part, as it sounds pretentious, its doubtful you would say - i have a gift.

otherwise you have to advertise yourself to get people to you.

---Mike Savad

Thanks for the input Mike. I definitely plan on going through and cleaning up the key words and descriptions, and as suggested I've bumped up my prices a bit.

I realize I need to market my work, but trying to figure out if some of you successful sellers can provide tips on what works best. Has anyone tried Fiverr gigs to help promote? Is it worth getting on Pinterest? What else besides creative descriptions and key words help get things sold? Obviously, having a good selection and good photos, but beyond that?

I am open to any and all suggestions and appreciate your time. If there is anything I can do for you in return, I am willing to return the favor.

Henry

there is no best. same way how coke advertises on all products, medias, etc. all of it is needed. no single one, just as many as you can. usually it starts with a style that people recognize is yours, then people start following that.

i've never heard of fiverr, pinterest i consider a waste of time because it's hard to search for things and hard to find things. that said, i do have an account and post things. it helps get people to know who you are, there have been many fan boards with just my name there.

http://www.pinterest.com/search/boards/?q=mike+savad

how many of these people are buyers is unknown, but they are really my little elves advertising my work for me. adding it to blogs and such. name recognition.

getting on facebook, twitter, any social site you can understand. blogs, forums, mailing people, sig lines, etc. it takes a while to build it up.

beyond that is to have that style. looking at the image and knowing who made it just at a glance. and that takes a while.

---Mike Savad

Thanks for your post. Never realized that the description could be so vital. Will be updating my images ASAP.

beware though - changing the title name breaks the link. and if anyone has links to you - it will die when you change the title.


---Mike Savad
MikeSavad.com