Captions are an important accompaniment to our files at microstock sites. Even though all artist tends to add artistic names to their photos or videos, this is very bad practice as it does not describe what actually that file contains and does not improve the ranking of the files in any way, it can even downgrade it as buyers are not able to even see it after searching. Instead, they should detail who or what is in the image, what is going on and where this is happening (if relevant). Depending on the caption, the buyer can decide if that image has what he needs to describe in his article, magazine etc, before he/she interacts with it in any way, and more interaction our file has, it will be ranked better in search engines. Relevancy and accuracy is the key here. Here are some tips for a good caption and what you should avoid:
1. Adding 4Ws in your caption: What, Who, Where and When
When speaking about 4Ws, we are asking ourselves what is the subject, what is subject doing, where and when is action happening. Let's do it together with my newly approved photo belove :
So lets first answer questions about the subject - who or what?
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Turtle educational toy early development concept close up |
So lets first answer questions about the subject - who or what?
Clearly, there is a turtle toy in the image. It is an educational toy.
What is this image represent? Is there any concept in the image? Education and Early development of children.
Where and when are not really important for this image, but the image contains a close up shot of the head of the turtle. So instead of those two, it would be nice to include technical side in a case that buyers want a close up shot.
2. Keep it short
After analyzing the photo and understanding what is in it we can add a caption like :
We should keep it short and describe it as better as possible in 7-10 words. Buyers are not going to input long and complex sentences in the search box but few words that describe what they need. Also, buy keeping it simple you are helping the stock agency to provide better SEO optimization for their site for the page where your content is shown as most of the agencies include a file caption in the URL of the page where the file could be found. | |
| Turtle educational toy early development concept close up. |
As you can see, in the URL address bar in your browser ( link bar, address bar, where the link to the site is shown) after the website address comes the name of your file. So if someone is searching for the stock image outside of the stock sites, for example on google, this result is most likely to be included as the page is SEO optimized. I will not write here about SEO optimization for websites as the subject is very complex, but what is important to know is that metadata of our files are doing a huge role for the stock agencies as well which is in our favor as we want them to be found.
To show you how it works, I inserted caption of that image on the google search page. ( this is the newly approved image and doesn't have any traffic jet so I am searching with a full caption to show you how it is displayed on google search)
You can see real time search if you follow this link:
Turtle educational toy early development concept close up on google
As you can see the almost all listed results lead to my portfolio on different stock sites where I have this image submitted. Also, it will show some of my video files where I used similar keywords as they are related to each other, like the videos shown of my sons playing with that toy. What is worth paying attention for is how Shutterstock display a link to my portfolio although I think it will be better to show simply "about me" text instead just "explore their .... and repeat title" )
The first two video files from Shutterstock are also mine.
If I switch to images, the first three photos are mine as they have similar captions, and all of them lead to the stock site where it can be purchased. The 4th photo is also mine as it has an "educational toy" in its caption and keywords for photos are similar.
That is why it is really important that the caption contains all necessary information so it can be searchable for buyers but also including similar keyword and one unique keyword for all similar files in the batch. ( more about keywording later)
To show you how it works, I inserted caption of that image on the google search page. ( this is the newly approved image and doesn't have any traffic jet so I am searching with a full caption to show you how it is displayed on google search)
You can see real time search if you follow this link:
Turtle educational toy early development concept close up on google
As you can see the almost all listed results lead to my portfolio on different stock sites where I have this image submitted. Also, it will show some of my video files where I used similar keywords as they are related to each other, like the videos shown of my sons playing with that toy. What is worth paying attention for is how Shutterstock display a link to my portfolio although I think it will be better to show simply "about me" text instead just "explore their .... and repeat title" )
The first two video files from Shutterstock are also mine.
If I switch to images, the first three photos are mine as they have similar captions, and all of them lead to the stock site where it can be purchased. The 4th photo is also mine as it has an "educational toy" in its caption and keywords for photos are similar.
3. Do a keyword research
Yes, you need keyword research before adding a caption. When I was doing metadata for those images I made small research using https://keywordtool.io/ website which lists similar keywords and shows search volume for and how high is competition. Also, it lists various similar expressions ( multiple keywords) with not that high competition. So if I decided to add only "educational toy" in my title, most probably I will end up on the 50-60th page of google results. Keyword " turtle educational toy" has many fewer competitors, which makes it a good keyword to include in metadata, especially in the caption. But be careful with choosing similar terms as those terms need to describe exactly what your file contains otherwise it will be again skipped from buyers, which means negative rating.
The next post will be about description as it is also an important part of metadata. what is even more important is that some sites doesn't even have caption requirement so instead, they use short part of the text from description for the URL. read more about it here:
The next post will be about description as it is also an important part of metadata. what is even more important is that some sites doesn't even have caption requirement so instead, they use short part of the text from description for the URL. read more about it here:
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