Do you put your name in your keywords?

redleash

I'm updating my site and working on keywords. I'm wondering if you include your name or your business name in your keywords? For digital downloads, would you include words like "web" or "facebook" in your keywords?

FYI, I'm following Andy's suggestion and setting up a separate gallery for digital downloads. Once I got a couple of actions built, it was pretty quick. Thanks, Andy!

If these keyword questions are answered elsewhere, maybe someone could direct me to a link.

Thanks,
Lauren

Art Scott

yes I do.....several variations of my name from full (Arthur D Scott) to just Art, Art Scott, A D Scott and so on (Artur, Arturo....Arther).....that way google and other search engines can index it all......and the "D" is my full middle name not an intial needing a period.wink

I als use all the variations of photography and fotografie including Czech and
German and other European languages just incase of misspelling.......

pilotdave

redleash wrote:

I'm updating my site and working on keywords. I'm wondering if you include your name or your business name in your keywords? For digital downloads, would you include words like "web" or "facebook" in your keywords?

FYI, I'm following Andy's suggestion and setting up a separate gallery for digital downloads. Once I got a couple of actions built, it was pretty quick. Thanks, Andy!

If these keyword questions are answered elsewhere, maybe someone could direct me to a link.

Thanks,
Lauren

You can't put web as a keyword even if you take pictures of spiders. It's a reserved keyword, automatically filtered out by smugmug. Presumably because it ends up in keywords lists automagically from filenames and not by human beings most of the time.

I don't put my name in my keywords. I think any keyword that ends up on all your photos defeats the purpose of keywording. I mainly use keywords to name the people in my pictures, so they can find themselves. I do keyword my first name when I'm actually in the picture. But I don't put last names... I still believe in that online privacy stuff...

Dave

redleash

Thanks, Art and Dave. I appreciate the tip on "web" as a keyword--hadn't thought about it in that way. As for people, I seldom shoot anything with people unless it's my family--then I put them in a locked gallery and tell them where to look. It's interesting that you both have a different view on using your own name. That's why I posted here--I want to see what people's ideas are and why they do/do not use certain keywords.

My thought on including the photographer's name or studio is that it might help locate images by that person. For instance, if someone saw Art's shots in that Wichita city guide and wanted to find more, they might search for "Art Scott" + Wichita + landmark if they wanted to find other shots by him but didn't know his web site name. Of course, if they used "Art Scott" + photography they would ideally be driven to his home page, which would accomplish the same thing.

I can see both sides here: use the photog's name in keywords to help searchers locate him/her (since we can't anticipate people's individual search paramters) OR don't use the name because potentially it would result in every image showing up in results.

Anyone else have ideas or suggestions? I'm very interested in exploring this idea further.

Thanks,
Lauren

Luc De Jaeger

redleash wrote:

Thanks, Art and Dave. I appreciate the tip on "web" as a keyword--hadn't thought about it in that way. As for people, I seldom shoot anything with people unless it's my family--then I put them in a locked gallery and tell them where to look. It's interesting that you both have a different view on using your own name. That's why I posted here--I want to see what people's ideas are and why they do/do not use certain keywords.

My thought on including the photographer's name or studio is that it might help locate images by that person. For instance, if someone saw Art's shots in that Wichita city guide and wanted to find more, they might search for "Art Scott" + Wichita + landmark if they wanted to find other shots by him but didn't know his web site name. Of course, if they used "Art Scott" + photography they would ideally be driven to his home page, which would accomplish the same thing.

I can see both sides here: use the photog's name in keywords to help searchers locate him/her (since we can't anticipate people's individual search paramters) OR don't use the name because potentially it would result in every image showing up in results.

Anyone else have ideas or suggestions? I'm very interested in exploring this idea further.

Thanks,
Lauren

Lauren,

I have my full name included in my tags/keywords for some years now. As far as I can tell, it did not help to find my photos through the search engines. I'm not sure if I will include it further as it seems not to make any difference.

Luc

redleash

Thanks, Luc. I appreciate your comments.