Long Tailed Key Words and a Tidal Wave of Money

Long-tailed key words are the key to success in generating traffic to monetize stock photos on the Internet.

Searching The Internet For Images...and a Tidal Wave of Money

Every so often I spend a little time searching the net using phrases that ought to bring up one of my photos…a little research as to how things are going and if I can learn anything new. Just now I searched the phrase “Tidal Wave of Money” knowing that I have such an image and that it has been up on my site for a couple of months…long enough to probably have been indexed by Google and other search engines. This is a great example of a “long tailed key word”. Fewer people will be searching for that term, but the ones that are searching for it are more likely to license it when, and if, they find it.

The First Page of Web Search...and Imagekind.com

I was pleased to see my image on the first page of the web search (in position number eight). But I was surprised that it was a link to my image at Imagekind.com. Apparently it does pay to have images on Imagekind, not just for print fulfillment, but for gaining visibility on Internet searches as well!  Perhaps it is because that Imagekind.com is such a larger entity and therefore carries more weight, that the image shows up earlier on the web search at Imagekind than the same image does on my own site…even though it has been up longer on my site.

Image Search...and More Money Images

Next I did the same phrase using an “image” search. This time the image showed up 14^th on the first page, linked to my site.  Two more of my other money images showed up later on the same page…both on the Imagekind.com site. By the way, I have started using the watermarking provided by Imagekind.com on the images I upload there…and with this kind of visibility I am glad I am doing that…though I wish their watermark was even larger!

Bing.com and Number One In Image Search

Next I did the same search at Bing.com. This time my web site came up number eight, but no sign of Imagekind.com. When I did an “Image” search my image came up number one at Bing...and again no sign of Imagekind.com. The same searches on Yahoo resulted in no trace of my image for the first five pages of web searches…but yet again number one under “Image” search.

Quality Content, Long Tailed Key Words and A Lot More Money!

What do I make of all this? Uh…keep plugging away. I am growing in confidence that with enough consistent work on getting quality content up on a site (and sites like Imagekind.com and CafePress.com) sooner or later (probably later) I will be generating the kind of revenue that I used to make in the heyday of stock photography. Actually, I plan on making a lot more (a tidal wave of money you might say…)! I am also more and more convinced that long-tailed key words, and lots of them, will be more important than ranking highly for single keywords.  The only way to get huge traffic numbers with long tailed keywords is by having lots of well-key-worded content, which means you will have to excuse me…I have a lot of work to do!

Long Tailed Keywords, Oddball Searches, and an Ocean of Money (Maybe)

There is a virtual sea of people searching long tailed keywords and they just might be key to your ocean of money.

A Sampling of Searches On My Site

Strongest woman of the world photos
Energy conservation pictures of monkey
Pink French poodle
Image of a bank vault
Funny photos on efficiency
Cats and kittens
Funny pictures com
Cliché friendship funny
Poodle is a car
Blind man stock images
Close picture of two elephants
Strip poker photos
Lion with a crown
Pictures portraying power in business
Moving pics of pomeranians
Nude mature beach photo
Stacks of money
Golf shirts with pictures
Lion sitting throne
Aerial pictures complex interchange


25,000 searches And A Mind Boggling Statistic (To Me Anyway)
The above list consists of twenty consecutive search terms that people put into search engines today and ended up on my site (there were over 400 such searches, I just grabbed twenty from the list). I use a web company named SmarterStats to track this information.  My brother (who is my webmaster and actually looks at these things) brought to my attention that in the last three months over 25,000 searches of keyword phrases have resulted in people ending up on my site. Now here is the, at least for me, mind-boggling statistic: Approximately 24,000 of those terms were searched for only once! About 120 were searched for more than ten times. Now, keep in mind, these are only searches in which people ended up at my site. Only searches for which I had key words that would result in my site coming up early enough for them to see it and click through.

Google Searches, Ego Things…and Oh Well….
Some times I will copy the search term, paste it into my browser window and conduct the same search to see how quickly I come up. This is kind of an ego thing…someone searched this term and came to my site! So I start searching, scanning, page after page, eagerly looking for my name…and usually not finding it by say, page 96 or so. Oh well…. Sometimes I might not find my site because I am searching on Google and the person who did end up on my site was using Yahoo or some such circumstance. But it has become clear to me that a lot of people do search pretty deeply…far more deeply than I would! Now to be fair, a lot of searches do bring me up quickly. But surprisingly enough, those searches that find me on the first page, or even number one (yes, it happens!), don’t bring in all that much traffic.

A Lot of Text and Oddball Searches
What do we make from all this? Well, for one thing, you need a lot of text on your site to be able to "harvest" all the oddball searches (long tailed key words) people do. Remember, Google, et. al., can't see images, they can only read text. Secondly, it is probably a mistake to rely on just the "important" keywords. For example, I only have one key word that brought in more than 200 visits, and that key word was "John Lund".  Coming in second at 118 visits was "pictures of dragons breathing fire", and third at 114 visits was "photo funny".  Now, at the time of this writing I am number 27 when you search Google for "photo funny". That is pretty amazing to me. Number 27 out of 99,000,000!

Energy Conservation Pictures of Monkeys
But what I would think would be a pretty productive key word has only brought 114 visitors in over the last three months. Another way to look at it; all my work has resulted in a few hundred visits for the important key words I have targeted, and over 20,000 visits from key word phrases that I didn't think about, and in some cases never would think about ("energy conservation pictures of monkeys" being one such phrase).

Important Keywords, Relevant Text and An Ocean of Money
Now I have been an advocate of key word research, and I still am. But I think it would be a huge mistake to put all your marbles in a narrow key word basket.  How do you get around that? Target those important key words, then add relevant text.  A lot of relevant text! The more text you have, the greater chance that when someone searches for “Poodle is car” or whatever might bring them to your site, they will find it.  This is all about the long tail keywords and the unimaginable number of people out there searching for them. There is a sea of people out there looking for what you have. If you can tap in to that sea of people, you can bring in an ocean of money.