Image keywording for microstock: a system you can repeat

1. Subject — exactly what is in frame: "golden retriever puppy", "espresso cup", "solar panel".
2. Action — what is happening: running, pouring, installing, presenting.
3. Setting — where and when: kitchen, rooftop, autumn, indoors, night.
4. Concept — what a buyer would illustrate with it: sustainability, teamwork, loneliness.
5. Composition — practical terms: copy space, close-up, isolated on white, aerial view.

Fill the layers in that order and stop when you run out of accurate terms — not when you hit the cap.

Twenty-five to forty-nine. Below twenty you miss legitimate searches; above that you start adding words that are only loosely true, and marketplaces measure download-per-impression against your keywords. Padding lowers that ratio and pushes your whole portfolio down.

• Camera and lens names — buyers never search them.
• Brand or trademark words, unless the file is editorial and released.
• Emotional adjectives with no visual anchor ("amazing", "beautiful").
• Plural and singular duplicates — the index already handles stemming.
• Colour words when the colour is not the point of the image.

Editorial captions need who, what, where and when, with the location and date spelled out. Commercial files must avoid names, logos and specific events entirely. Choosing the wrong mode is one of the most common reasons a technically good file gets rejected.

The bottleneck is not thinking of words, it is typing them 300 times. Metadata World analyses each file visually, writes the title, description and a relevance-ordered keyword set within marketplace limits, and lets you fix anything inline or in bulk before export.

1. Upload the batch — previews are built locally in your browser.
2. Set keyword count and the single-word / phrase mix.
3. Add prohibited words so unwanted terms never appear.
4. Spot-check, bulk find-and-replace, then export per marketplace.

How many keywords should a microstock image have?

Between 25 and 49 accurate keywords. Fewer than 20 limits discovery; padding to 50 with loose synonyms dilutes relevance scoring.

Should keywords be single words or phrases?

Both. Roughly two thirds single words for reach and one third two-word phrases that match how buyers actually search.

Does keyword order matter in microstock?

Yes. Most marketplaces weight the earliest keywords most heavily, so the literal subject should always come first.