Flickr Axing Business Use of Photos for SEO

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News Source: http://www.searchenginejournal.com
Published: Dec 03, 2008 - 04:13 pm
Story Found By: UtahSEOpro 3539 Days ago
Category: SEO

One of the tools of the SEO trade has apparently been axed by Flickr. It seems like every SEO conference I have attended since Flickr went live included recommendations that Flickr photo submissions be treated much like HTML pages. The title of the photo, description, tags and any links in the description text work just like a standard web page and can show up in the search engine results. Here’s how I described it in my post SEO 101 – Image Optimization:

8 Comments

Comments

from dannysullivan 3539 Days ago #

Votes: 1

So I assume this was Obama’s real account:http://www.flickr.com/photos/barackobamadotcomWas that all "personal" or was it a business thing?

from bnownlater 3539 Days ago #

Votes: 0

I wonder how overly promotional framesdirect account was? Did they list every product?

from weboptimist 3539 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Nope. There were images of products, of course, but also screen captures from videos, celebrity photos, etc. In all there were only about 50 photos up and the account had been live for maybe a couple of years. Yes, there were links back to the site’s blog and main site, too, but mostly to articles and information posts.

from obannonsleap 3539 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Free rides never last forever.

from graywolf 3539 Days ago #

Votes: 0

reposting comments on the original articleSo were you using flickr because you wanted to share something with the community, and maybe get a little side benefit yourself … or were you using flickr to parasite SEO off a strong domain and drive traffic to your website?Did the majority of your pictures have links back to your site or the minority?no need to answer just rhetorical questions.

from graywolf 3539 Days ago #

Votes: 0

as an educational moment here’s how a company can use flickr to benefit themselves AND the communityhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/fordmotorcompany/

from Gab 3539 Days ago #

Votes: 1

And this is why I do my best to nofollow links I give to Flickr when I have to. Tools. All fine and good to rely on the biz community to hit critical mass, then purist bumblers come in and tell folks that helped build the site up to piss off. Check out pbase, webshots, fotki and 23hq (hattip Carrie Hill of Blizzard Internet for some better options, as well as Chris Silver Smith’s Photo Sharing Comparison ChartNote: The chart’s a little out of date and it doesn’t reflect 23hq’s breakdowns midway through uploading stuff that force you to start over...

from Silver 3539 Days ago #

Votes: 0

Well, I’ve also been touting Flickr for its SEO value for quite some time now, as Gab touched upon, and I’ve seen other’s accounts deleted for "abuse" as well.However, it’s quite irksome that Flickr is very inconsistent in applying such rules at times. If you’re a model, photographer or artist -- no prob! They have tons and tons of pics used by those types of businesses to promote themselves. Real estate agents, authors, restaurants -- all these people trying to further promote their services, and those folx do not get smacked by the arbitrary application of the guidelines.For that matter, Obama’s campaign used Flickr massively, as Danny mentioned. While it might not be a strictly "commercial" usage, politicians are in the business of promoting themselves and this was one of many means to accomplish that. Effective, too!Despite Flickr’s sometimes random application of their terms & conditions, Flickr is still well worth using to cross promote stuff for SEO benefit. You don’t have to be doing blatant selling of goods or services to derive SEO benefit -- you might have a blog and use Flickr to host your images for articles, just as Search Engine Land does, for instance -- that usage seems to be acceptable to them. Graywolf also points out a very good application of using Flickr for biz in a community-supporting manner.Generally speaking, if you’re using Flickr to share photos and provid photos for folx to find and see, that works pretty well. Blatent spamming with links, comment spam, overt selling of commercial products on photo pages -- all these will incur the wrath in most cases.Oh, Gab -- I don’t think you need to nofollow URLs you put on Flickr -- they automatically started doing that to links added to many of their pages in the last year or so.

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