Victoria Smith

How to Write Killer Keywords for your Stock Footage: Best Practices

Hey Nick! These screenshots are gorgeous! I bet you found so many great clips on that hard drive. I don't know what your competition is for NY landscapes, but I would guess that's a good category to publish in! Let's take a look at your descriptions first: Aerial view over the East River of midtown Manhattan skyline at sunset (70 char) • This is great! Articles like "a" and "the" don't help the search engine, so I normally remove them, but as long as you're under 70 characters you're good to go! Aerial view of fireworks over the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York (72 char) • Nice! Here's a case of where I'd delete "the" to optimize for display under 70 characters. EX. Aerial view of fireworks over Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York (68 char) Aerial top down tracking shot of small motorboat traveling under a bridge at dusk (81 char) • Good info packed into this one. I'd tweak it to make sure it's under the 80-character limit for Pond5 and ideally under 70 for general display on Adobe and Google. EX. Aerial top down tracking shot, Small motorboat under bridge at dusk (67 char) EX. Small boat sailing under bridge at dusk, Aerial top down tracking shot (70 char) Very strong descriptions here! Let's move on to the keywords: CLIP #1 New York City, Manhattan, NYC, New York, aerial, aerial view, skyline, drone, east river, sun, sunset, city, dusk, skyscraper, empire state, urban, America, architecture, wide shot, scenic, real time, pink, orange, 24fps, 4k, UHD, editorial (27 Keywords) • I noticed you wrote "editorial" here. This course only covers commercial clips, but I wanted to point out that the Empire State Building can be commercial when featured in a cityscape (assuming that's why you made it editorial). <a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/known-image-restrictions.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">https://helpx.adobe.com/stock/contributor/help/known-image-restrictions.html</a> • "24fps, 4k, UHD" aren't technically needed since the agencies will allow buyers to filter for these specifications, but they also won't hurt your SEO ranking at all if you want to include them! • Adobe very recently made their titles searchable and increased their number of weighted words from the first 7 to the first 10! Any keywords that appear both in your title and your keywords have an even bigger boost. It's a good idea to have all the important keywords from your title also appear in your first 10 keywords, ie. "aerial, East River, river, midtown, Manhattan, skyline, sunset". • I'd love to see a few more conceptual keywords in here about what Manhattan and NYC represent. I really like the keywords you included and think you would also see good results from these! CLIP #2 Fireworks, Aerial, aerial view, night, 4th of July, independence day, celebration, celebrate, Hudson River, Poughkeepsie, New York, United States, USA, America, drone, beautiful, colorful, holiday, happy, pyrotechnics, festival, show, wide shot, outdoor, real time, no people, nobody, 24fps, 4k, UHD (30 Keywords) • Great! I'd add a couple more general location keywords, like, :"city, cityscape", but otherwise, I'd submit as is! CLIP #3 Aerial, Aerial view, top-down, top down, high angle, motorboat, boat, bridge, cable bridge, river, Hudson River, dusk, water, blue, red, drone, fly over, wake water, New York, Poughkeepsie, Mid-Hudson, Mid-Hudson Bridge, America, United States, Hudson Valley, outdoor, wide shot, real time, 24fps, 4k, UHD (31 Keywords) • I don't think it's necessary to include both "aerial" and "aerial view", but it wouldn't hurt your ranking either! I'd personally just go with the first. • Nice use of compound keywords! • If there's continued room for text, like in this screenshot, I'd add, "copy space, copyspace". This is really lovely work, Nick! I think you have a real talent for keywording. I had to be really picky to come up with any suggestions!

Thank you so much for the feedback Victoria! I was very confused about what to do with the first image of the NYC skyline since it had the Empire State building in it so thank you for that article link and the clarification! 

I had a more difficult time with the conceptual keywords since I found myself responding with 'I'm not sure' a lot when asking if someone searching for those specific conceptual keywords would be disappointed in my clip. I'll make sure to think a bit more openly when keywording &amp; ask friends what they think when possible. 

I was also a bit confused about the '24fps' keyword so again thank you for the clarification :) The copy space keyword was a great tip as well! 

Your resources were amazing in helping me find similar keywords. I have those saved for keywording in the future. Thank you so much for this course. I feel much more comfortable entering the stock footage world. Also, the Grammarly tip was huge! I'm not the best at spelling so that was a lifesaver.

For conceptual/mood/emotion keywords, one of my favorite tricks is to Google search, "[subject] meaning/significance/symbolism/etc." and see what kinds of language the top results use! For example, if I search, "NYC skyline significance" and then "symbolism", I can skim some results to find, "iconic, modern, modernity, symbolic, symbol, cosmopolitan, etc." Then you can pick from those. To get started, you can also browse some similar clips on the agencies to give you some fresh ideas. Once you get the hang of it, you won't need to check any other clips - they'll start coming more easily! I'm so glad the course has been helpful to you! If you practice consistently, keywording becomes second nature! Best of luck!!

Thank you again! I'll be sure to practice the techniques you outlined to get the most out of keywording my clips. Your resources are immeasurably helpful. Thank you for your responses and thank you for making this course!

I'm so glad the course and feedback were helpful to you! Definitely feel free to write any other questions you might have in the community section or to share any wins you have! Best of luck!

Hey Victoria,&nbsp;
Thank you for this course! Coming from a filmmaking background, your videos opened my eyes up to the world of metadata &amp; keywording. I'm just starting out in stock footage so here are some screen grabs of drone footage I was able to mine from my hard drives from past shoots. Looking forward to the feedback :)&nbsp;
<img src="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/f5d93851" alt="Nick's keyword project submission - image 1 - student project" srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=600,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/f5d93851 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/f5d93851 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" loading="lazy">
Aerial view over the East River of midtown Manhattan skyline at sunset
New York City, Manhattan, NYC, New York, aerial, aerial view, skyline, drone, east river, sun, sunset, city, dusk, skyscraper, empire state, urban, America, architecture, wide shot, scenic, real time, pink, orange, 24fps, 4k, UHD, editorial (27 Keywords)
<img style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" src="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/6cf7e6ef" alt="Nick's keyword project submission - image 2 - student project" srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=600,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/6cf7e6ef 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/6cf7e6ef 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" loading="lazy">
Aerial view of fireworks over the Hudson River in Poughkeepsie, New York
Fireworks, Aerial, aerial view, night, 4th of July, independence day, celebration, celebrate, Hudson River, Poughkeepsie, New York, United States, USA, America, drone, beautiful, colorful, holiday, happy, pyrotechnics, festival, show, wide shot, outdoor, real time, no people, nobody, 24fps, 4k, UHD (30 Keywords)
<img style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;" src="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/b0485b7c" alt="Nick's keyword project submission - image 3 - student project" srcset="https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=600,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/b0485b7c 600w, https://static.skillshare.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=80,width=1000,format=auto/uploads/project/f4fd1d0327982c2d63e8eb58bd30036d/b0485b7c 1000w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 600px, 100vw" loading="lazy">
Aerial&nbsp;top down tracking shot of small motorboat traveling under a bridge at dusk
Aerial, Aerial view, top-down, top down, high angle, motorboat, boat, bridge, cable bridge, river, Hudson River, dusk, water, blue, red, drone, fly over, wake water, New York, Poughkeepsie, Mid-Hudson,&nbsp;Mid-Hudson Bridge, America, United States, Hudson Valley, outdoor, wide shot, real time, 24fps, 4k, UHD (31 Keywords)
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I hope to have more (non-aerial) footage soon but these were in the first batch of clips that I was working on. Thank you in advance for your feedback!&nbsp;

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