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Search engine & Tags

Manage works, descriptions and tags

Search engine & Tags On this page you will find everything about the findability of your works on the Art Heroes website. By adding the right information and details to your works through tags and titles you increase your chances of being found by potential customers. All information about tags, translations and the tagging system can be found here.

The search engine in short

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Artwork management

Go to your account and click on Manage my artworks. Here you will find all the artworks you have uploaded. The works on your shop page are automatically sorted in the order you uploaded them. The newest works are at the top. You can change the order of works in your settings. It is also possible to divide your works into albums and create your own category structure. When uploading and editing a work, you indicate in which album the work should appear. You can specify in which order you want your albums in your settings. You can enter all these details during uploading, but you can also change, replace or delete artworks later.

Frequently asked questions about managing artworks

Every artwork you place in your account is immediately ready to sell. But don’t worry, as long as you don't promote your shop page, you can quietly build it up. Is your shop page you ready? Share it everywhere.

Metadata is data that describes your artwork. These are the title, description, medium, style and tags. You add this data to your work after you have uploaded it. Make sure you do this correctly, otherwise your work will not be saved.

For each work you upload, you can enter the following details: Title, description, medium, style and tags. In addition, you can categorise your works in albums. The title and description can be entered in several languages. Don't forget to read 'In what languages can and should I describe my work?'

EXIF data

Titles, description and tags are extracted directly from your EXIF and pre-filled!

You should fill in the title and description in at least your native language. However, we recommend looking at other languages as well. Giving titles and descriptions in only one language means that you might miss out on potential customers. You can use our helpful translation tool.

Art Heroes is active in a number of European markets, and we are in the process of expansion. We therefore recommend entering information in at least English in addition to Dutch. This is because English is the standard language internationally i.e. if someone views the site in French (and there is no French title) we will show the English title and description.If you speak other languages, we recommend using those as well.

The works in your shop are automatically sorted in the order you uploaded them, with the newest works at the top. You can change the order in which your artworks are displayed, in your settings: it is possible to order by

  • rating

  • date, newest first

  • date, oldest first

You can change the rating of your works using the 5-star rating on the 'Manage your works' page of your dashboard. The rating of your artworks also affects the order in which they appear on the album cover page.

It is also possible to classify your works into albums and create your own category structure. When uploading and editing a work, you indicate in which album the work should appear. A work can be in several albums at once. In your settings, you can indicate the order of the albums you prefer.

Everything that you fill in during the upload process can be edited later. While viewing your artwork, you can click on the edit icon to make changes.

Can I replace the artwork file of a work?

Yes, you can. In the overview of your artworks, you can see a replace-icon

How do I remove an artwork?

Do you no longer want to sell a specific artwork? Delete it by clicking on the bin-icon. Do you have a better version of this artwork? Replace the file instead of deleting the original one to post the updated version.

In the dashboard, you can find the section ‘albums.’ Here you can make and edit albums.

You can indirectly choose which photos are on the cover page of the albums by organising them through categories. To find out more, look at ‘How can I find my work’.

When uploading a work, you will see an overview of your created albums below the work. Select the desired album here and the work will be added. It is also possible to add a work to an album retrospectively. Clicking on edit will bring up the album overview.

The image we have available is in a small format. The original files are never displayed for the public.

No, we deliberately do not use watermarks in our images. In our experience, they lead to customer complaints.

Our policy regarding duplicates is as follows:

  • The person who uploaded the work first has the rights to keep the work in their shop.
  • If the newly uploaded work is an improved version, the artist who already has the work in his shop gets the chance to improve it.
  • If the duplicate work has actually been given a "new look", e.g. incorporated into a collage, or in a clearly different style, an Art Heroes team member will decide whether the work may remain in our collection.

Art Heroes will ultimately adjudicate which artworks appear on the site.

In your dashboard you can choose a 'native language', this is Dutch, English, German or French. Depending on your choice here the corresponding description will follow.

Currently we only have a Dutch, German, English and French language website. If you do not add one of these languages to your description, the other language website will pick up the English version.

There are two success factors for good image descriptions: Quality and length. A text is of high quality if it is "unique", i.e. appears nowhere else online. Image descriptions are picked up by Google and other search engines. Make your description as detailed and interesting as possible.

Tell the story behind your photo or artwork and use appropriate keywords to make your image easier to find! Sophisticated wording is secondary. An absolute no-go (also from a legal point of view) is copying text or text modules from other websites. Be creative and unique.

Data to accompany your art work

The Art Heroes collection is extremely extensive. It is therefore not always easy to make your artwork stand out and attract many visitors to your pages. Make sure you give your work the right information so that your potential customers can find you easily. This information is called metadata: data that describe your artworks (that is the title, description, medium, style and tags). This data is added to your work once it has been uploaded. Make sure you do this correctly, otherwise your work will not be saved. With our helpful automatic translation tool, you can do this easily in Dutch, English, German and French.

Title

Provide a unique title

Description

Describe what you see in your artwork and add background info

Medium

Choose the most appropriate medium

Tags

Choose the 12 most relevant tags

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The tagging system of Art Heroes

You've created a beautiful artwork, uploaded it to your account, and you're ready for your first sale. But how do you make sure you get found by potential customers? Tags can help! All tags are automatically translated, so your works can also be found on German and French sites using the translated terms. This makes you more findable in the other countries where Art Heroes is active. What do we mean by findability? We mean how easily someone can find your work when using the search bar on the Art Heroes website. Works are categorised on the basis of their tags. See all frequently asked questions and find out exactly how the system works.

Tip from Jesper Krijgsman: "Take a critical look at your tags. The website itself can recognize the colors of the image, and since the work is already placed in the "Photography" category, there is no need to specify this as a tag anymore. Here you could use other tags that reflect the mood or emotion, or why you as creator believe your work is special (this is not a criticism - as this also applies to my own work)."

Use specific tags

Combine specific tags

Use up to 12 tags

Choose a suggested tag

Tip from Jesper: "Try putting yourself in the shoes of a potential viewer - how would such a person search for something and come across your work? If you are unsure, I recommend looking at other works by artists and studying their tags. If you don't know yourself which tags are best, you can easily test this different combinations of tags on different works. That way you can keep track for yourself if there are works that are better viewed afterwards."

Frequently asked questions about our tagging system

You've created a beautiful artwork, uploaded it to your account, and you're ready for your first sale. But how do you make sure you get found by potential customers? Tags can help! All tags are automatically translated, so your works can also be found on German and French sites using the translated terms. This makes you more findable in the other countries where Art Heroes is active. What do we mean by findability? We mean how easily someone can find your work when using the search bar on the Art Heroes website. Works are categorised on the basis of their tags.

What you should do:

  • Try to be specific (e.g. "North Sea" instead of "Sea"), but focus on the essential parts of the photo (e.g., if a small mountain is visible in the background of your Northern Lights photo, don’t add "mountain" as a tag).
  • Use appropriate names of places, landscapes or landmarks (e.g. "San Francisco", "San Francisco Bay" or "Golden Gate Bridge").
  • Special art techniques, if applicable, are also suitable as tags (e.g. "Digital painting", "digital art", or "aerial photography").
  • Check for spelling mistakes
  • Know when to stop.

What you shouldn’t do:

  • Don’t describe your camera equipment.
  • Don’t use brand or company names.
  • Don’t add too many tags.
  • Delete duplicate tags, but be careful; overlapping tags can sometimes be helpful. For example, the tags "Amsterdam" and "Amsterdam (city centre)", although apparently duplicate, are useful for reasons of relevance, findability and translation. Such tags do not contaminate search results, moreover, because they can be filtered.

Location tags

Location tags should only be added when the location is relevant to the context of the photo. For example, if you have a close-up of a tree that happens to be in Amsterdam, but nothing else of Amsterdam is visible, the artwork should not be tagged "Amsterdam".

In cases of landscape shots, however, location tags can be relevant even if the precise location cannot be determined. For example, a photo of a beach tagged with "Zeeland" is potentially helpful, even if this location is not obvious to the casual observer.

Spending time on your choice of tags will boost your visibility to searching customers. This can lead to sales

If the content of the photos has no real relation to the location tag, please do not use this location tag. Example: In macrophotography of a poppy flower, it is irrelevant where this photo was taken.

In other cases, tags referring to a location may be relevant, even if the exact location is not discernible from the photo. For example, consider a beach scene with dunes and sunset. Potential customers may associate this with fond memories of certain holiday regions. Specific names such as "North Sea", "Zeeland" or "Texel" are then useful.

At Art Heroes we link tags to Wikipedia articles to automatically get a suitable translation.

The tagging system works in two ways;

  • You can type in a term, and then pick one of the proposed terms from the list.

  • If you type in a term, and don’t pick from the proposed terms, you can make your own tag terms. The disadvantage of this, is that it can't be translated, so it is not as discoverable in the site with a different language.

Tags can easily be removed. In your dashboard, you can remove tags under "manage works". For each tag, you will find an option to remove that specific tag. To do this, click on the cross at the top right of the tag.

We use a maximum of 12 tags because we want you to stick to the core of the image. You should be able to do this in 12 tags!

Search engine: how it works

Our collection pages and search engine (on the main site) try to present the most relevant results to visitors as possible. The algorithm that displays the results is personalized and may be different for each user. We are constantly testing and improving our search function, so it isn’t possible to definitively describe its workings.

Want more control over the findability of your artworks? Then get started with your own shop! Every artist at Art Heroes has his or her own shop with only their works in it. Check out the tips for setting up and promoting your own shop here.

Didn't find your question?

Go to the forum and ask your question! Among thousands of artists, there is always someone online who knows the answer.

View all frequently asked questions

Go to the forum

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