If a customer can’t find you, they can’t purchase your work. Adding Titles, Captions, and Keywords eliminates that risk. Here is some more detail about the 3 types of metadata:
Titles
We define a Title as a unique and accurate sentence describing the photo. A well-written Title will read like a news headline for your photo, focusing on the who, what, when, where, and why. Writing in sentence-form is very helpful for multi-word search terms from customers. Read more tips on How to Write Great Titles for Your Photos.
Captions
Captions are an optional field. If you'd like, use your caption to add more detail about the photo like personal context, gear used, commentary, etc. Captions should be written in sentences.
Keywords
Add up to 10 keywords describing the photo. Put yourself in a buyer's shoes; if you were searching for your photo, what 1-2 word search terms would you expect to use to find this photo? Keywords can be a short phrase, but usually should be 1-2 words in length.
[More than 10 keywords hurts the relevancy of search results]
Photos added with abusive metadata are not eligible to win Challenges or to be added to the Signature Collection.
FAQs
Titles are a new field that seems similar to Captions. Do I need to add Titles to all of the photos I uploaded in the past?
You don't have to, but photos with accurate, unique Titles will perform better over time. Your photos with Captions are still findable in search.
If you've already written descriptive, concise sentences as the captions on the photos in your gallery, first of all, thank you for doing so! Unfortunately, you are among the minority of Twenty20 users. Many have either not written a caption at all or have added content that is more personal or "cute". In order to deliver better search results to customers, we've needed to introduce Titles as a field that we can better trust as being an accurate description of the photo. We've kept Captions as a place for users that desire to express themselves further or add less essential details about the photo.
We suggest that you focus any efforts to add Titles on your best photos. Try starting with your Top Earning Photos in your Dashboard and with photos that have earned Honors. You should de-prioritize adding Titles to any photos that are less than 4MP in resolution, unable to be commercially cleared, or otherwise low quality.
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Coming Soon:
We're planning some improvements to give you a prioritized view to suggest which of your photos could benefit most from having a Title, Keywords, or Model Releases added. Keep your eye out for this to launch soon.
If I'm updating photos that had a good, descriptive caption, should I copy+paste caption info into the Title area and leave both areas identical?
No, please do not set your Title and Caption to be identical. We will penalize this. If you already have a descriptive sentence as your caption and don't want to specifically write a new caption, feel free to copy it as your Title and clear the Caption to be blank.
Any other guidelines for Titles, Captions, and Keywords?
Sure! Here are some additional things to clarify:
- These fields are not case sensitive. Write naturally and our search will take care of the rest.
- All metadata should be written in English.
- Do not use identical metadata for photos from the same shoot. It is much better to try differentiating metadata to emphasize what that particular photo illustrates uniquely.
Still have questions about Titles? Ask them here.