Pro tip: edit in!

This one comes from my experience as a photographer, so bear with me for a minute here…

"Editing" in professional photography has 2 distinct meanings: you "edit" an individual image, or you "edit" the photoshoot. Latter means culling the image pool, choosing "keepers" and "rejects". Sounds familiar? That's right, this is what we do with keyword research.

The average pro and nearly all amateurs "edit out". This is a process of elimination: you look at the photo and decide if you want to remove it from the pool. That process is usually very slow and often stressful. Lots of photographers have to go over their average photoshoot at least 20 times before it starts looking more or less tidy.

Top pros, on the other hand, "edit in". This is a process of not elimination, but inclusion. You mark photos that you think are "keepers", not the other way around. Once you went through the whole set, you delete, move or just hide the rest, and go over your selected photos again, this time editing out whatever might stick out as subpar. This process is extremely fast; most of my colleagues cannot believe their eyes when they see me spending less than 1 second per photo…

So today's tip is to apply the same principle to the laundry lists of keywords. Don't focus of which ones to eliminate – just mark the ones you that want to keep.