Need a link from a PR5 page? Try Flickr…
Still not convinced you can use Flickr as a marketing/SEO tool? Have a look at this:
What is it? It’s a screenshot showing that this photo has a PageRank of five (5).
Don’t you think you could benefit from a link on a PR5 web page, especially a link that doesn’t have a nofollow tag?
Note: I’m not suggesting you spam this photo or any other. I am suggesting you read this, if you haven’t already:
[tags]flickr, seo[/tags]
How about posting a small image (250×350) and say that a much larger resolution image of the photo is available for Free on Your-Real-Website.com
Credit tip to Graywolf:
http://www.wolf-howl.com/tools/how-to-drive-traffic-with-flickr-photos/
Your article suggests giving your Flickr photos a link from your site, effectively giving it a lot of Pagerank.
This is at the expense of your other pages, especially if you include the link globally from your sidebar.
It might not be advisable to leak pagerank from your site if you haven’t got a lot of it to waste.
As an example Robert Scoble’s Flickr is PR6, but at the expense of a sitewide link from his PR8 blog.
The Flickr internal search is based on folksonomy.
You should upload pictures to Flickr, but the page they are stored on isn’t going to have any PR unless you give it the PR.
I would think carefully before giving a Flickr page that much PR at the expense of your own search results.
Thanks for your comment, Hawaii SEO — I remember reading that post on Michael’s blog way back when, and as much as I respect his opinion on most SEO things, I disagree with that post. I don’t think uploading photos with your phone number or even your URL stuck into the image (“Call us today!”) is an effective way to go about it. The Flickr community generally frowns on that kind of blatant advertising. Better to upload quality photos and be an active member of the community. The phrase I use in my SES presentation is “Market without making it look like you’re marketing.”
And thank you, Andy, for your comment, too.
I understand the point you’re making, but in my opinion, using Flickr as a marketing tool is useless if you’re not willing to get the crawlers into your Flickr profile and photo pages. If that “costs” some PR, so be it. If you don’t put any value into Flickr, you’re not likely to get any value out of it.
If you’re serious about using Flickr for SEO, not linking to your Flickr photos would be like starting a company blog but not linking to it from your main web site.
(Semi-related: I have no idea how my personal Flickr profile got to be a PR 5. I’ve linked to it from 3 pages on 3 separate domains, and each page is only PR=3….)
Having lots of local images on Flickr and now video clips of local canoe races, parades, events gives the viewer a front row seat on what the area is all about.