Learn how to create metadata that helps your content get noticed on Adobe Stock.

Crafting descriptive titles.

Titles are short, factual descriptions of your content, like Family playing football at the beach. Your titles can impact buyers’ decisions to license your content, so it’s important to craft them with care.

Here are some title dos and don’ts:

Do: Use titles to introduce your content to customers. Titles are searchable and become part of the Adobe Stock URL.

Do: Keep titles relevant, descriptive, objective, and precise.

Do: Limit titles to 70 characters or fewer to help customers find your content via web search results.

Don’t: Treat titles like lists of keywords.

Don’t: Include trademarked names, brand names, product names, or people's names.

Here are a few examples of descriptive titles:

Using the auto-title feature in the Contributor portal. (English only.)

Unless the file you upload already has title information in its metadata, the Adobe Stock Contributor portal will suggest up to three English-language titles per file. Click in the title field to see the suggestions and select the one you’d like to use. Or, ignore the suggestions and type in your own title.

Creating effective keywords.

Buyers use keywords to search for the stock content they need, so it’s important to choose your keywords carefully.

Here’s what you need to know to create keywords that will help potential buyers find your content:

Keyword order is critical: Arrange keywords in order of importance. This is the most important thing you can do to help ensure that buyers can find your content on Adobe Stock. 

Be descriptive but not verbose: We recommend using 15-35 keywords, although you may enter up to 49.

Use a single language: All keywords need to be in the same language — the one you selected under Keyword Language. Our search engine will automatically translate them into other languages available on Adobe Stock. We support titles and keywords in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Korean.

Follow these additional guidelines:

Nouns: Use singular nouns only (e.g., tiger, laptop, rainbow, cocktail). 
Verbs: You only need to include one verb form. Use the infinitive form to describe actions (e.g., run, jump, sing, smile). 
Phrases: Enter phrases of two or more words as a phrase and as separate terms (e.g., arctic fox, arctic, fox). 
Evoke the narrative: After describing the basic elements, add conceptual keywords that describe feelings, mood, or trends (e.g., solitude, childhood, milestones, conservation). 
Uncommon words: Don’t use uncommon phrases. If it wouldn’t appear in a dictionary, it probably shouldn’t be in your keywords. For example, “monkey bars” would work, but “red dress” wouldn’t.
No people: If there are no people in the image, include the keywords “no people” and “nobody.”
People: Don’t include people’s names in keywords.
Describe the setting: To help set the scene, use keywords like indoors, outdoors, day, night, sunny, cloudy, interior, and exterior. 
Viewpoint: Include the viewpoint depicted in the shot (e.g., high angle view, directly above).
Additional information: If you're aware of information such as ethnicity, age, or location, include these specifics in the keywords.
Title words: Be sure to include all important words from the title in your top 10 keywords for an extra bump in search relevance.

Finally, to get keyword tips for specific subjects like people, animals, places, and food, check out our field guide to titles and keywords.

Here are some examples of effective keyword sets:

Adding keywords in the Contributor portal

There are three ways to add keywords in the portal: automatically, using copy and paste, or by doing bulk uploads via CSV.

1. Using auto-keyword suggestions

The auto-keyword tool powered by Adobe Sensei suggests up to 25 keywords for each image. Accuracy is important, be sure to review suggested keywords and only select words that apply specifically to your asset.

Select all keywords that are relevant to the file you are indexing. Once a recommended keyword has been added to your file, the word will be highlighted with a black border. If all recommend keywords are relevant to your file, you may select the “Add All” button to attach all keywords.

NOTE: It is unlikely that all recommended keywords will apply. Attaching irrelevant keywords may have a negative impact on your search placement and diminish your opportunity for sales.

Importing keywords from Adobe Creative Cloud apps:  If you’ve added keywords to your images in Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, or Adobe Bridge, you will see them listed automatically in the keyword box and they will already be highlighted if included in the list of suggested keywords.

2. Copying and pasting keywords.

If you use an external text file to create your keywords, you can copy and paste them into the keyword box.

3. Uploading keywords via CSV files.

You can also use CSV files to track and upload your keywords. Learn more 

Ordering Keywords

It is very important you list your keywords in order of relevance from most important to least with an emphasis on the first 10 keywords. These will have the most weight in search placement.

To re-order keywords and move the most relevant words to the top 1o, click the “Reordering Tool” toggle switch.

You will now see the order of the keywords:

Click on the number to the left of the keyword you want to move and drag it to the position you desire (1).
To move a keyword to the top spot, click the up arrow icon to the right of the keyword (2).
To remove a keyword, click the X icon to the right of the word or deselect the highlighted word in the Keyword suggestions box (3).

Title and keyword tips