Dan Perry

Underneath each image on Flickr, there’s an area to add a Description. If you maximize this space, you have the ability of defining the text under the link in a Google result. If you don’t maximize it (or don’t add enough characters), Flickr fills it for you. Here are a couple examples:

In Flickr, the description for the above photos reads as follows: The first image reads “Harborside International Golf Center, Chicago, Illinois” and the second one reads “Harborside International Golf, Port Course, Chicago, IL”.

You’ll notice that there is some additional text that Flickr is adding to the SERP. In both cases, it reads “Click this icon to see public photos and videos tagged with golf il golf…”. Not the end of the world, but not optimal either.

Now let’s look at an optimized description for an image.

As you’ll see, there was enough text in the description of this image to keep Flickr from adding any of their text. I’m not sure what the threshold is, but one thing is clear:

When it comes to Flickr Descriptions, better too long than too short.

Hope this helps!

Digging through my Flickr stats for yesterday, I found that my pictures of Cantigny golf course had already been spidered, and were ranking. I also noticed something else which was much more interesting.

Specifically, someone had typed in the term “cantigny golf course in illinois“, and my Flickr account was appearing in the 2nd and 3rd position. Here’s a shot of the 2nd result.

The important thing to note is that there is a TITLE to the image above it (Cantigny Golf Course, Wheaton, Illinois) and a description beneath it (Picture of the 4th tee sign on the Lakeside Nine, Cantigny Golf in Wheaton, Illinois.)

Here’s the interesting part. In the Google SERP, it displayed BOTH of these. Here’s a screenshot of the listing:

As you can see, the TITLE of the image is showing in the TITLE of the result, and the Description of the image appears underneath it.

Taking this one step further, I could maximize my Description, so it was more keyword-rich, and more “clickable”.

So get out there and start maximizing your images on Flickr! You know you want to.

I logged into my Flickr account this morning and had a new comment on one of my pictures from the WSJ Small Business blog. It read:

Fantastic. The Wall Street Journal’s blog on small business used this to illustrate a post about schmoozing clients — with credit and link back to this page.

The article is about finding new ways to schmooze clients, and they used a picture of mine that I took at Sandpiper Golf Club in Santa Barbara.

How exciting is that? A lot!

Flickr groups are a great tool for collecting similar photos. For example, I run a group called Great Golf Pictures. It’s open to the public, has about 300 Members, and roughly 1,100 pictures in its pool.

Seeing how Flickr recently announced the addition of videos, I’d suggest starting a group related to your area of interest specifically for videos.

Why? Couple reasons.

1. If you want to be considered a thought leader, you need to be ahead of the curve, and by being the Administrator, it shows that you were thinking about this as soon as it happened.
2. It gives you the opportunity to lock in a great URL for your group. For example, I am ridiculously interested in golf. I started a group for videos, and reserved the following URL:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/golf-videos/

Currently, there aren’t any videos in the group, but over time, there will be. By adding my own videos, coupled with others adding theirs, this group will grow. Within a few months, it will be THE place to go on Flickr for golf videos.

If you want to be ahead of the Flickr video curve, start a video-specific group today!

This may not be new, but it’s new to me. Looking through my Flickr Stats, I noticed that Yahoo News had sent me a visitor.

So I clicked on the link, and low and behold, on the right side of the page there is a widget showing local pictures.

My picture is the one on the far right, from Atunyote golf course in Verona, which is close to Utica.

Remember, geotag your photos. Quality local content will always be in style.

In mid-December of 2007, Flickr started showing statistics for Pro accounts (and for $20/year, why are YOU not a Pro?) There is a lot of good info that you can get from these stats. Definitely not the most robust stat platform I’ve seen, but valuable nonetheless. Let’s dig a little.

To get to your stats, select “You” from the top navigation, then “Your Stats”. There are 5 main items:

• Daily aggregate Views
• View Counts
• Most Viewed Photos
• Referrers
• Breakdown of Your Photos

Truthfully, only two of these are very interesting (Most Viewed Photos and Referrers.) It’s nice to see what photos of yours are popular, especially if you’re viewing the stats on a pretty regular basis. Sometimes a picture will get extremely popular, and increase in views by a wide margin in a short period of time. You’ll be able to keep track here.

The Referrer section is the fun one, especially for anyone with marketing running through their veins. You can see by the screenshot that yesterday, Google sent me 6 visitors, Yahoo Image Search sent me 15, etc.

Now for the fun part. By clicking on the Google link, I see that a visitor found my Flickr page by typing in “emerils delmonico steak house las vegas”. It also provides a clickable link, so I can see the result in Google’s SERP. Here’s what it looks like when I click through:

As you can see, my Flickr page is ranked #4 for this query. If that doesn’t get the marketing wheels turning, I don’t know what will. What can I do to take advantage of this? How about writing a review of this restaurant, posting it to my blog, and linking to the post from this image? There are lots of other opportunities as well. (Think of any? Share them in the comments.)

For an additional tip (we’ll call it Tip #2.5), be sure to optimize the TITLE of your image. That’s what search engines pull, and add to your clickable link in the SERP, as shown in the above image. If I would’ve only used “emerils” and “Delmonico” in the Description and/or as tags, I’d never be ranked #4 in Google for the term.

The stats updates once a day, so be sure to check back often. I’ve built it into my daily routine, so I’m checking it daily. This is also beneficial if one of your images gets picked up by a blog, and you don’t know it. You’ll see the name of the blog in the Referrers section.

Hope this helps!

This tip will help you get more comments, and more traffic to your photos.

When you load a group of photos using the upload tool, upload all of them EXCEPT the best one. Once they’re all loaded, go to the next step and add to a Group, add tags, etc., then Save This Batch. After all of that is done, then go back to upload, and add your best picture. Here’s why.

The last photo you post shows up as the first photo in your list. Also, and more importantly, it shows up on your contacts homepage as “Photos from your Contacts”, and also under “Everyone’s Photos”, as shown in the following screenshot.

The reason you can’t just add it to the end of your queue is that Flickr doesn’t upload images in the exact order that they’re added. To make sure, use this little trick, and you’ll almost guarantee more views and comments on your best photos.

If you have the time/inclination, save a couple of your best shots, and upload one a day, or every other day. Lots of extra work, but probably worth the effort (if the pictures are good enough).

For example, I added the above image of gas prices in downtown Chicago as a single photo after uploading all the rest, and within a couple hours I had 20 views and 8 comments. Comments… Hooray!

I’m a huge fan of Flickr, with about 3,500 pictures posted. On their site, they are taking note of this wonderful birthday by hosting a “pin-up” photo exhibit in San Francisco on March 15th, 2008.

If you join the “Flickr Turns 4” group, follow the group rules, and add a picture with a resolution of at least 1500 X 2100 (for printing), they’ll print out up to 5,000 5″ X 7″ photos and pin them up on the walls of the temporary exhibit. How cool is that?

Unfortunately, my favorite Flickr picture doesn’t have that large of a resolution, but that doesn’t mean I can’t try to take another. Time to pose my LOLCat!

The photo must be posted by March 12th for it to be considered for printing. Good luck!