Tips on keyword tags and tagging

As well as adding descriptive narratives to your images, categories, subjects and product groups it has also proven highly beneficial to add as many accurate keyword tags as possible to each product in your catalogue. These tags create new page unique pages in the search engines featuring all of the images that are similarly tagged with the same term. You can also change the way in which the headings for this tagged-page are entered into the search engine using the SEO settings available in your admin. All of which helps to make tags a very useful SEO tool and one which is also very HELPFUL for people wishing find your to relevant content.

When it comes to keyword tagging the Magnolia Soft search engine is optimised for speed and designed to recognise conventional plurals. For example, if you’ve added “dog” there’s no need to add “dogs” (and vice versa) when performing a search. This also applies to verbs, e.g. a search for "walk" will also find images tagged with "walking".

However, if you are searching for “octopus” then you wouldn’t also get the word “octopi”. Therefore, when tagging with keywords it is often best if in any doubt to also add the plural for good measure.

As potential customers use a number of different techniques for searching, it’s also advisable to try and include as many relevant words as possible; some of which may have the same meaning. For example, if you add “mother” you would also be advised to add “mum”.

As websites are international it is also worth considering both UK and US variations of meaning, so in the example above, you should probably also add the term “mom”. The same applies to differences in spelling, for example “colour” (the correct version) and “color” (the US version!)

Finally, I came across the following checklist of tips that is very useful to consider when applying keywords to images:

Literal: Simply describe what you can see - e.g. boy, girl, children, beach, sun, sand, sky, car, shadow.

Attributes: Attributes of the objects in the image - e.g. happy, smiling, walking, blue, young, old.

Location: That may be specific - e.g. The White House, Washington DC, USA; or it could be more generic - e.g. office, school, home.

Interaction: What’s happening in the image - chasing, playing, moving, touching, shouting, flying.

Concepts: Describe the concepts that the image evokes - think around the subject and don’t be afraid use concept keywords such as heat, power, happiness, strength, humour, teamwork, tranquillity etc.

Broad subjects: It’s amazing how many travel images we have without the word “travel” as a keyword. Describe the broad subject areas the image fits under such as lifestyle, travel, sport and business.

Techniques: Look at the photographic aspect of the image, e.g. predominant colours or shapes, black and white, grainy, blurred, digital manipulation.

In summary, it is always worth taking the time thinking carefully about your keywording to ensure that you do more than simply describing what you can see. Equally, it is very important that you do not use words that have no relevance to the image being described. We are always trying to help our browsers and generate focussed potential buyers, as these are the ones most likely to convert into genuine customers.