Flickr v. On-Site Images

[BrianWhitaker]

My apologies in that I have searched for this, have seen discussions on it and haven't seen a definitive answer on the question of hosting & displaying on-domain images v. using a source like flickr to host all of your images.

I have a client that is mostly a local search play in a very tourism heavy area.

I'm investigating this option for a few reasons. 1. Ease of use. The new flickr app is brilliant. So if he's out giving a tour, takes a picture, it can be seamlessly integrated to his account & then shot off to all of his portals (website, facebook, twitter, etc.). It's a small client & he's not tech savvy, so this option suits him very well.

2. SEO. With all of the tagging, geo components, and it playing nice with Google Images search, I thought this was a viable option in hosting the majority of his on-site images.

I've seen opinions on this before. But I was wondering if there any further opinions on the subject. Not sure if there's anything 'definitive', but any help or insight would be appreciated.

[interactivemarketing.us]

For frequent posting this would be fine. For your main site images - you should focus on optimizing those separately and self host them.

Create a guide to using the Flickr app for your client so the client can generate and post these images when they want to with real content - their actual thoughts at the moment.

The goal of the guide would be not using the Flickr App, but using it to achieve the client's goal which you are facilitating. When your client takes pics, then they will be posted with useful parameters, metas, tags, and naming conventions. If you need to adjust them later you can always do that.

You can use a Flickr image or gallery to build content around on the site and link social posts to that page. This is what will help get your images ranked. You could self host a main category image on a category page about a spot and then build your content use Flickr images so the most relevant image will be your self hosted image if you optimize properly.

More benefits include ensuring fast loading images and good participation from your client which is what will matter in the end, with the pics being the same either way.

[BrianWhitaker]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately this isn't the issue I'm having. We actually DO have capable images to use & it's really just a matter of whether we want to host them on-site or using flickr.

Thanks for your help!

[BlueprintMarketing]

Hi Brian,

I pride myself on my work and I'm sure you do as well stick with the small cost of stock photos. I recently found a companys similar to I stock photo for much less money. Give a look on Google for some of those. If I had the name which would just look for I would give you it but I can't seem to find it. However I stopped window has decent prices as well.

there are too many variables using Flickr images that are not taken by yourself,  your client or a professional you  hired for the job. My opinion is stick with stock and just so you know it's been proven that illustrations are far more effective than photographs. So you might want to throw some those things well.

I hope I was of help to you,

Thomas