Keywords and descriptions are inevitably some of the most important factors in getting your stock footage to the right audience. Imagine uploading a video that hits all the right notes, but not getting any downloads – because when users are looking for stock footage on the site, it isn’t showing up in the search results.
Neglecting proper descriptions and keywords may prevent your video from showing up even if that’s exactly what a prospective buyer is looking for. It’s natural to not know how to insert the right words, especially if you’re new to the stock footage industry.
Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to tag and describe your videos after you’ve uploaded them to indievisual.in :
KEYWORDS
As the name suggests, keywords are one-to-two-word descriptors and play a key role in describing the different elements that are covered by your video. They help Indievisual index your content to make sure it reaches your target audience and is more visible. They are the topics, ideas and words that define what your content is all about.
- Keywords help with making searches give better results – meaning when a buyer searches for a particular topic (even on Google) and your video’s content is providing the solution to that buyer’s needs, your content shows up first or at least amongst the first few search results.
- Hence, while describing your content, enter upto 50 keywords that are suitable to the stock video.
For example, if you upload a stock footage of a sunset timelapse from Marina Beach in Chennai, your keywords should include Chennai; Marina Beach; Sunset; Timelapse; and so on.
The importance of keywords
Keywords are a bridge between your content and the potential buyers looking for the same. Keywords fill the gap of give and take, help you reach the right audience and that too organically, i.e, without paying to run advertisements.
When it comes to stock footage websites, keywords not only help your videos rank in the google search results, but also on the respective stock video websites as a customer searches for their topic of interest on the inbuilt search bar. In this case, it’s absolutely important to embed the correct keywords into the titles and descriptions.
Note : Try not to flood your titles or descriptions with repetition of your target keywords. There’s a term called “keyword stuffing”, which essentially means over-use of keywords. This will make the search results less relevant for users, and they’ll just stop using the site. No one wins in that scenario.
For example, in the above Marina Beach scenario, if you include Anna Nagar and Besant Nagar and Elliott’s Beach (because they’re all in the same city), people looking for videos related to those terms will get irrelevant results in their searches.
Entering the right keywords
There are a few ways to go about keywords.
There are two types of keywords:
- General – General keywords include one to two words that define your content. Example: beach, temple, mountains, etc.
- Specific – Specific keywords include three to five words that define your content more specifically. Example : Juhu Beach in Mumbai , Kedarnath temple during snowfall
To summarize the keyword section, they’re not as complicated as they might seem to be. Just keep a few pointers in mind while writing the Titles and descriptions :
- Write the descriptions with only the keywords that resonate with your videos.
- Use short tail and long tail keywords as required.
- Don’t be hesitant to use some unique words used in India. Eg: chai
- Avoid keyword stuffing
- Write your title and description keeping in mind a real person on the other side and what they would like to know your video is all about.
DESCRIPTION
Description is what provides the factual details to the buyers and also an opportunity for you to give your best when it comes to keywords. The 200 character description limit on Indievisual gives you ample words to describe your videos in the most relevant, descriptive manner.
Here are some description prompts you can choose to incorporate. It’ll help you not only provide information about every aspect of clips, but also use variations of technical and non-technical terms so the buyers searching accordingly, can find your video.
- Place– desert, forest, park, houses, market, etc
- Location– State, city, name of the exact location
- Actions – Walking, dancing, worshipping, singing, enjoying, exercising, playing, etc.
- Describe speed- slow motion, time lapse, hyper lapse, long exposure
- Feelings of the video that describes the visuals – beautiful, colorful, scenic, misty, peaceful, aesthetic, etc.
- Technical terms – daylight, night, outdoor, golden hour, evening, sunset, sunrise, early morning, late night, noon, etc.
- Angle – low angle, high angle, flat lay, close up, zoom in, zoom out, aerial, eye level.
- Describe people- African, American, Indian, multi- ethnic, no people. In case of India- describe the different cultures, states, regions, celebrations, etc. Try not to be too descriptive to a point where it’s too Dis respective or controversial.
These are some examples of what you can mention in your descriptions to reach your target buyers. If you’re completely new to this, it may seem a little overwhelming. Hence, taking inspiration from other video descriptions will never hurt. But the more carefully you curate your own clip’s descriptions, the more optimized it will be.
