Laser Focus
Sorry, this is not a post about achieving photographic focus. You and your camera will have to figure that one out without me. This is about achieving content focus in your iStock images.
Content focus is, in short, the subject of your image; the content or concept that the image is meant to convey. One of the most important factors in a stock image is how quickly, clearly and concisely the image conveys a concept. If the image is about a college graduate entering the workplace for the first time, for instance, you’re going to want the image to convey that concept quickly and unambiguously. Because if your image does not, someone else’s will and that’s where the customer will spend his credits.
Because of the way the latest iteration of iStock’s “Best Match” algorthm works (the so-called “BM 2.0″), images will move up the rankings the more clearly they are associated with a given term. Images that are muddled in their presentation or that do not clearly convey a concept will find themselves languishing near the bottom. If you want to appear near the front of a Best Match sort, be sure your file is unambiguous in its meaning.
Lets look at an example. This image is a pretty good match for “Paperwork”, showing up in about the 15th place in a Best Match sort for that keyword as of this writing. It’s also a fine match for “Drowning”, currently occupying the #1 slot there. It also appears in a search for “Emergence”, but while “Emergence” is an appropriate term, this image isn’t really the best image in our database to convey that concept. For exactly that reason, it doesn’t even show in the first 500 results for that term.
The million dollar question, of course, is how to get your own images to move up the rankings? There are a few techniques you can consider:
- Trim the fat: One of the best things you can do is remove keywords that are unlikely to be of any help at all. If I had “Life Vest” on that drowning image above, that would be a prime candidate for removal (and let’s be frank, a term like that should be removed before you even upload). There is no “Life Vest” in the image, and no one searching for “Life Vest” is likely to buy an image that doesn’t contain or even relate to the term.But what about “Photography”, “One Person”, “Vertical”, and those other meta descriptors? No one is likely to search for “Vertical” to buy this image, right, so should that be trimmed? Nope, those kinds of meta terms are fine to keep on because they are usually used in a boolean mode – “Drowning NOT Illustration” or “Paperwork AND Vertical”. Those terms are not subject and concept terms, so they don’t muddy the subject and concept focus of the image.
- Consider Underserved Niches: It’s a whole lot easier to move up the results rankings when there are only a hundred or so images between your image and the top. Lets say you’ve hired a model, and you have a prop closet and wardrobe full of options. You can dress your model in a suit and tie and do a “Businessman” series. Upload that as your concept and you’ll be up against some 77,000 files. Might take a while to climb that ladder. Or you can put him in jeans and a flannel shirt, plunk a guitar in his hand and sit him down by a campfire to make him a “Camp Counselor”. Go search on iStock and see how many files you’re up against in that case. I’ll wait here.Back so soon? Now, it’s clear that “Businessman” is a more common search term than “Camp Counselor”. I’ll grant you that. Is it 20,000 times more common? Let’s look at this from the view point of expected value. This is an Econ 101 concept that seeks to describe the expected potential for a given action. For easy math, let’s first say that the average royalty per sale is $1. Now let us imagine that the search term “Businessman” leads to 100,000 sales per day. That comes to $1.29 per “Businessman” image per day (assuming that sales, on average, will spread out to everyone in the search results. Which they will not, of course. If your image is on page 50+ for that search term, you’ll be very lucky to have “Businessman” lead to any sales at all).
Now lets say that “Camp Counselor” gets 1% of the search traffic that “Businessman” gets. That would be 100 sales per day for that term*. If there were just 10 matching files, they’d each have an expected value of $10/day. Much sweeter return than the $1.29 “Businessman” average. Of course, this example uses some assumptions. You’d have to make your own assumptions about the numbers in order to determine your own expected value.
- Generic is A Focus: I was recently chatting with another inspector about the notion of a generic file and specific keywords. The file depicted a series of generic spice rack spice jars. The keywords included every kind of spice imaginable. Now, we had to remove all those spice keywords, because the image didn’t actually depict them. The focus of the image is “Spices” in the generic. There are plenty of times when a buyer needs an illustration depicting a parent term in the generic, and not the specific instantiations of that parent. A wise contributor, however, would see the opportunity in this. Illustrate the generic parent term, and keyword it just for the generic, then also create the specific instances of the child terms (the parsleys, sages, rosemaries, and thymeses). The contributor would have to be careful not to make the specific instance illustrations too similar to each other, to avoid the “Duplicate/Serial” rejection, but I think a talented illustrator should be able to do that without much problem.
- Keep The Content Clutter Free As Well: Clutter-free keywording is important, but let’s not forget the content of the image must also immediately convey the concept. Take care to include just those image elements that lead the viewer to that concept, and eliminate everything else that doesn’t support the concept. This isn’t to say that all images must be isolated on white. That would be horrible. Keep in elements that set the stage and make the photo convincing, but if that coffee mug on the table isn’t helping to set the stage or sell the concept, lose it.
If you find that you’d like to improve your Best Match standings, try implementing some of the above. Feel free to drop a line in the comments to let me know what you find.
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* Cry Foul! How can I claim the term Camp Counselor gets 100 sales a day when the few files keyworded with “Camp Counselor” together have a total download count of less than 100? One of the assumptions in the calculations above is that the demand for “Camp Counselor” is 100/day. The existing files in that search may not be suitable for the customers looking for that term, so they may not be buying any Camp Counselor images at all.
