Keywords help search engines find your photos so your admirers get to the good stuff faassst!
When you tag photos with a keyword like Hawaii, you can flaunt every photo you took in Hawaii, right on your homepage.
Note: The keywords section of your homepage starts off hidden, but you can choose to show it by clicking the "Homepage Layout" button on your homepage, and then checking "Top Keywords".
Gotchas: Only you, as the account owner, will be able to search for any keywords from unlisted or password-protected galleries. We only index the first 30 keywords for each photo. Non-English characters cannot be included in keywords.
Get your photos keyworded
- One at a time:
When you're logged in, you'll see an "keywords: add" link under the main image in SmugMug viewing style. Enclose each keyword in quotes, or separate keywords with commas.
- In bulk:
Find the Tools Menu and choose Caption/Keyword. Look for that Quick Entry box at the top.
The rules are a bit different with Quick Entry. Every quick entry you add will be enclosed in quotes. So add sweet car and you get "sweet car" as a keyword. Add sweet then add car and you'll get two separate keywords.
- Before adding to SmugMug:
If you added keywords in a program like iPhoto or Photoshop before adding the photos to SmugMug, we'll do our best to find those and automatically apply them. Specifically, we look for keywords in the IPTC keywords field. Please note that keywords added on SmugMug do not get embedded in the IPTC data.
We also look at the filenames of your images. If your filename is "Alvin_Birthday3.jpg", for example, we'll add the keywords "Alvin" and "Birthday" automatically. If your filename is "IMG_23987234.jpg", we'll ignore it.
I want all the details.
We have a great page on the nitty gritty of keyword searching here on our wiki.
Here's a guide to how we interpret keywords:
Key points:
- Words beginning with numbers will be ignored unless you enclose them in quotes. Words ending in numbers will have the numbers removed unless the word is enclosed in quotes.
- 1 and 2-character words, and common words such as and are also ignored unless you enclose them in quotes.
- If there is a space in your keyword, like "beautiful sunset", searching for beautiful sunset will not return a handy keyword link. It will still return all photos that match, though, and you can always browse that keyword by clicking on your keyword cloud, or going straight to the URL: http://smugmug.com/keyword/beautiful+sunset
Examples:
| You enter: |
You get: |
| New York London |
new |
york |
london |
| "New York" London |
new york |
london |
|
| London2005 |
london |
|
|
| "London2005" |
london2005 |
|
|
| london "2005" |
london |
2005 |
|
| 2005London |
|
|
|
| 1st trip to London |
trip |
london |
|
| "1st trip" to London |
1st trip |
london |
|
| For London and Paris |
london |
paris |
|
| "London and Paris" |
london and paris |
|
|
Unleash the power of related keywords
If you tag a photo with two or more keywords, you give your admirers the power to drill down to just what they want.
Let's say your visitors saw the keyword "2004 Concours" on your homepage and clicked it. They'll be able to browse all 181 photos with that keyword: http://concours.smugmug.com/keyword/2004 +concours.
If you're viewing in SmugMug viewing style, SmugMug serves up gorgeous cars and neat links, shown at right.
If your visitor is a Ferrari fiend, one click on +ferrari serves up every Ferrari featured in the 2004 Concours d'Elegance, including this beauty:
Gotcha: The related keywords will only show in SmugMug viewing style.
What about gallery keywords?
The Gallery Keywords box you see in your gallery settings is for hidden keywords to help people find that gallery when they search. You can include words that pertain to your gallery, but didn't get mentioned in the gallery title or description.
Ask a real person about this topic.
