Keyword best practices
Keywords are a subset of metadata. In Acquia DAM Classic, keywords are applied
to your assets as clickable links. When a user clicks on a given
keyword, Acquia DAM Classic will display results for all assets
containing that same keyword. All metadata fields are searchable, but
only keywords are clickable links.
Implementing a controlled vocabulary provides even more search power and
greatly increases efficiency by adding keywords to your assets. After
you build and upload your controlled vocabulary into
Acquia DAM Classic, be sure to also enable the option to display your
controlled vocabulary on the power search page.
Whether you are implementing a controlled vocabulary or adding keywords
freely, it is important to outline some best practices to guide your
efforts. Acquia recommends the following guidelines for your use:
- Be thorough in adding keywords to assets. Cover the who, the what, the
when, the where, and the why.
- Be consistent with acronyms and abbreviations. Don’t keyword one
asset with the abbreviation AZ, and another asset with Arizona.
- Be consistent in plurals versus singulars. Choose one format, or
always use both. For example, either use feet and hands, or
foot, feet and hand, hands.
- Be consistent in how you describe an action or activity. For
instance, either use running and swimming, or run, running and
swim, swimming.
- Don’t be too narrow. A value of Keokuk, IA may be too narrow for
a keyword and unrecognizable to any of your users — Southeast Iowa
would be better.
- Conversely, don’t be too broad. The keyword University may be
too broad, because perhaps everything in your Acquia DAM Classic collection
relates to the University. What will distinguish the assets in this
scenario? Try using the specific college name, such as College of
Engineering, or the campus building name.
- Be mindful of relevance. Even when every asset has a project
code associated with it does not mean it offers relevance to the
users relying on keywords to find assets. If this information needs
to stay with the asset nonetheless, consider adding it into another
metadata field.
- Don’t use too few keywords. Not having enough keywords won’t help
narrow the results.
- Avoid misspellings. Implementing a controlled vocabulary that has
been copyedited will help with this.
- Don’t rely on keywords for every piece of data. More objective
data such as photographer name, location, or designer name can be
added to other metadata fields.
One final comment is to always have your use cases in mind when adding
keywords. This will keep your efforts focused. Use the following sentence
as a guide, replacing the fields with your needs when considering a
keyword:
How likely is it that [insert person or role] will search by [insert
keyword] when looking for [insert asset]?
Going through this exercise will help you consider others’ perspectives
when adding keywords.