MicrostockGroup

I've wondered this for a while. Does anyone know if there is any point repeating "Essential" keywords in the "Main" box and so on, or should we be omitting ones already in a higher weighted category?

I usually start of with my 50 and whittle them down to the character limit for each category.

It would be a lot easier if I knew I could just cull the most important ones from the boxes with the lower weightings. I'm too scared to do it at the moment without knowing for sure that having the most important keywords in all 3 boxes doesn't help with search placement.

The only time I "repeat" keywords is when I want them to appear next to different words or in different order, or with variety of punctuation, such as (to be extreme):

Mohonk Mountain House Lake Mohonk Tower [Mohonk Mountain House] [Lake Mohonk] [Mohonk Tower] "Mohonk Mountain House"  "Lake Mohonk" "Mohonk Tower" Mohonk Lake "Mohonk Mountain" "Mount Mohonk" ....

Scrambled eggs fried eggs fried egg ....

I thought Alamy took out speech marks and I didn't realize that word order made a difference, I've obviously got a lot to learn!
So should we be putting phrases in square brackets, or speech marks or will just putting them in the correct order and repeating do the trick?
I couldn't find any real guidance about any of this stuff on the site or in their forums.

They didn't take out the delimiters, they never activated them.

I keep using them and adding phrases in quotes and the only reason is just in case they add them some day, so I don't have to go back and do everything over again.

The various boxes have different weights, so if something is not as important and I don't want those words to give bad searches, I move them down. Problem is Alamy changed what shows in the search. I had names and places and events in the third box, and it showed. Now they changed to the second box showing. I also used the second box because the keywords didn't show, and they could be kind of crafted for targeting specific images to show higher in different searches. Now they are showing, so anyone with similar images can copy or compete for placement.

Word order does count for Alamy. Make your first words the most important and relevant words. Also as mentioned, words together, which is word proximity, also counts.

Adding 50 keywords will hurt your placement, rank and isn't recommended. Alamy designed their search and ranking to penalize keyword spam. At least that's the way they explain it.

You can't put as many keywords in essential as you can in main. Also, your CTR is better if your image is zoomed in - what will happen only (in general) when your image matches what the buyer is looking for, what is more likely to happen according to relevance.

I just found this thread....
I am one of the people for which the keywords automagically populate the 3rd box on image upload.  Then I copy and paste the more relevent words up to the 2nd and 1st boxes.  Often the same keyword is in all three boxes.  I don't take the time to remove duplicates.  I don't know if this creates a problem or not.

Coming out of my source database, the 3rd and second boxes may also contain repeats of keywords within the box.  I don't fix those either.  For example I may have NEW YORK together for a phrase and also NEW and YORK elsewhere separated in the same box.  This is an anomaly of my source database that I do not take time to fix unless I need space in the 2nd or 1st box for other words when doing my copy and paste.

Over the years, using the BHZ game, I was on page 1 for a while and on page n-1 for a while.  I actually sold more when I was at the bottom of the rank than at the top.  I don't get to excited about the ranking of contributors.  Perhaps this is just my image types and your mileage may very.  Perhaps the rank system at Alamy just neutralizes such things as my multiple same keywords in their search algorithm.

I thought it was automagic if you had keyworded your file in Bridge?

So all of you are being good Alamy citizens, and separating your keywords into 3 distinct groups?

I keyword in irfanview and it doesn't copy all of my keywords into that third box.  I have to cut and paste from the computer :/

Yes, and I see no reason not to do so. For those interested in optimizing their keywording for Alamy should check Racephoto's extensive hints in other threads.

I use Exifer and the old editor also loaded my keywords in the third box. They don't load anymore in the new editor. ;(

from LR they ALL end up in box3 !  I then select a few for box1 and sometimes copy box3 contents to box2 (or maybe cut & paste) !

sometimes I just leave them in 3 and 2 empty !!  No idea if it helps or hurts !?   

We have a little neat tool to help with sorting the keywords for Alamy - it saved us tons of time. You can see how it works here:
http://www.elenaphoto.com/software/epks/
Please PM me if you're interested.