Friday, April 15, 2011

Strange (And Entertaining) Long Tail Keyword Searches For Photos

Picture of a Woman trapped behind a bar code and straining to pull the bars apart in order to escape and stand out from the crowd.
Somebody searched for the long tail keyword "person trapped behind a bar code" and ended up on finding this image on my site. The long tail keyword is key to pulling in large amounts of traffic to websites."


Long Tail Keyword Searches
Well over a thousand people came to my website today from various search engines. It can be both entertaining and informative to peruse the search terms that were used. Almost all of the search terms that bring people to my site are “long tail keywords”, keyword phrases of three or more words. Interestingly enough, although my site is all about stock photography, I don’t ever recall seeing the search term “stock photos” bringing anyone to my pages (the closest thing to that on this day was one search for “stock pics”).

Bizarre And Specific Searches For Stock Photos
Most of the people who do find their way to my site don’t actually find what they are looking for, something reflected in my 72% bounce rate (which, from what I understand isn’t too bad).  In some cases the searches seem so specific and unique, and yet fit some of my images so well, that it is hard to understand (artist’s bias here) why the person searching doesn’t go on to license the image.  Some of those keyword phrases are so bizarre it one would never expect them to be searched for…and yet I do have stock photos that fit the phrases!

Strange and Entertaining Search Phrases For Photography
I have put together an edited list of a dozen of the more entertaining and strange search phrases (long tail keywords) for this one day, as well as a list of a dozen of the very specific and often off-beat search phrases that fit images that I actually have in my stock photo collection (though those images still might not be what the person searching for really wants). In the case of the latter list I have linked the phrases to the images on my site that I believe meet the requirements of those searches. In each case the phrases are complete with the original spelling, capitalization and so forth.

Strange (Long-Tail Keyword) Search Requests:
video camera strapped to frypan
elephants sensitive to texture
funny pic cat with shark teeth
who are the men in orange robes
sexy lips due to exercise men with pics
dangerous baby image
dog wearing fire extinguisher
john john surfer father
Pictures of george washington signing the one dollar bill
how to test tube baby real pictures
teamwork cats fishing
picture of a bird running down the road with a piece of chicken
english bulldog testiculs


Strange (Long-Tail Keyword) Search Requests with links to appropriate Images:

Expected Searches and Appropriate Images
Of course, there are many searches that one would expect people to search for, and to find, on my site. These searches are for things like lighthouse in a storm, political elephant and donkey butting heads, and pics of hospital patients in traction. But they aren’t as much fun to peruse!

8 comments:

Jaak Nilson said...

People who searching via search
(Google, Bing...) engines does not know such word like stock images or stock photos.
People who knows this words using a photo portals and agencies ( Getty, Age...)
SEO gurus told that good bounce rate could be at least 40 % and less.
Big photo archives like Getty, Corbis, Alamy and others have very bad results via Google.
Microstock sites are much better oriented for search engines, unfortunately.
It means that if smb. looking for a photos via google then s/he can not find good images which are in premium and traditional stock agencies.

Jaak Nilson said...

People who searching via search
(Google, Bing...) engines does not know such word like stock images or stock photos.
People who knows this words using a photo portals and agencies ( Getty, Age...)
SEO gurus told that good bounce rate could be at least 40 % and less.
Big photo archives like Getty, Corbis, Alamy and others have very bad results via Google.
Microstock sites are much better oriented for search engines, unfortunately.
It means that if smb. looking for a photos via Google then s/he can not find good images which are in premium and traditional stock agencies.

John Lund said...

40% bounce rate is good? Ouch!

Thanks for the additional info Jaak!

John

Jaak Nilson said...

I suspect that SEO gurus actually does not know very much about stock photo business. I remember that Photoshelter has told about 40 % for photogrphers and their stock sites.

John Lund said...

Jaak,

I am unclear on what your saying about Photoshelter...can you explain a bit more?

Thanks!

John

Jaak Nilson said...

John,

I add a text from Photoshelter 2010 SEO Cookbook for photogrphers

"Bounce Rate
Google defines a ”bounce” as a visitor who looks at the first page of
your site and does not click to any other pages (i.e., exiting after seeing
that one page and presumably deciding your site’s content does not
match their search interests). Your bounce rate for search traffic should
go down if your search terms are effectively driving relevant traffic. In
terms of targeting an optimal bounce rate, Google Analytics specialist
Avinash Kaushik has stated: “It is really hard to get a bounce rate under
20%, anything over 35% is cause for concern, 50% (above) is worrying.”
It is also widely quoted that an average bounce rate across all websites
is 40%, and from our experience with a lot of photographer websites,
anything under 50% or so, and you are probably doing ok.

In truth, bounce rate can really depend on the type of imagery you
have. Websites featuring celebrity images, for example, tend to have
very high bounce rates because many non-qualified users are looking for
the images. Yes, they want to see the latest Angelina Jolie picture, but
they aren’t necessarily looking for a rights-managed stock site. This is why
establishing a baseline metric is so important in contextualizing analytics."

John Lund said...

Jaak,

Okay...I understand. So my bounce rate is pretty high. But I would expect that the general public, upon coming to my site, would have a high bounce rate because most of them are not really looking to license stock photos. Most want free photos or entertainment....

People going to Photoshelter sites would be much more likely to be looking for stock photos...so their bounce rate would be lower....

John

Jaak Nilson said...

John,

I am not a SEO specialist, but I think that your bounce rate 60 % is a pretty normal. You site has a 1000 visitors per day. It is very good amount of visitors. But as you mentioned they are looking for entertainment...

I have a 120-150 visitors per day and mostly no sales. Sales comes from direct contacts from existing buyers. Sometimes almost 200 visits per day. It depends what kind of photos I have shared in Facebook.


Cheers,
Jaak

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