Drive traffic with Flickr - Another low-lying fruit method for driving traffic

Following my hub about getting traffic from low-lying fruit sources such as Bing (MSN) I'd like to suggest another excellent low-lying fruit method of driving traffic to yourHubPages, blogs and websites: Use Flickr.com.

What is Flickr.com?

Flickr is a free image file hosting site that is owned by the search engine, Yahoo.com. To get your Flickr account simply visit Flickr and log on with you Yahoo! e-mail login/password. In addition to Google's Picasa and PhotoBucket.com Flickr is among the biggest free image file hosting website on the Internet today.

Why upload and host photos for your HubPages and websites on Flick?

When we're given the choice to post image files into our HubPages we're given the choice "from your computer" or "from the web". The advantage to hosting your pictures on Flickr.com is that Flickr is spidered by Google, MSN (BING!) and Yahoo! constantly and with time the URL links to your Flickr hosted images will eventually appear in the organic search engine results. Thus, you get a free traffic source to your Hubs.

A quick tip about your HubPage and website image files

Before you upload your image files to Flickr make sure that they're watermarked with either your website's URL or your HubPages nickname. For example, I usually use the watermark "Dawei888 on HubPages.com" on my Flickr images. If possible put your watermark discretely in the CENTER of your image. There are two reasons watermarking your images this way. A significant portion of the traffic to your images will be other webmaster looking for images for their own websites. If your water mark is in the corner of the image file they can easily crop it out and the image will appear as their own. Secondly, with your watermark clearly appearing on the image an Internet surfer could visit HubPages and simply search your HubPages nickname. You get it - FREE TRAFFIC?

Now the Nitty-Gritty - Uploading your image to Flickr

Once you're on Flickr click on Upload Photos and Videos. Now click on "Chose Photos and Videos." Find the photo you want to upload on your computer's C drive. Scroll down and click on the pink icon that says "Upload Photos and Videos". One quick tip here - be sure to call or "label" your image file with the key words of the title of your HubPage or blog post. This will help it to appear in the search engine results.

Next step - Add title, description and tags to your uploaded image

After it's uploaded you'll see a green check-mark icon. Click on "Add a Description". Here you have the opportunity to give your uploaded Flickr image a title, description and tags. In order for proper search engine optimization you must use all your key words here. Scroll down to the bottom of this hub and you'll see an image. I gave it the title "How to Drive Traffic Using Flickr" because those are the key words I'm gunning for in my organic search engine query. Next add a description. Again, you need to use the key words of your hub or blog post. For this image I put "Learn to Drive traffic to your HubPage, blog post or website using Flickr images. For more information visit for search Dawei888 on http://www.HubPages.com." Now go ahead and throw in a few tags. For my image here I'll use: HubPages, flickr drive traffic, flickr SEO, flickr get traffic. I'm sure I could come up with some better tags but those should do the trick.

How to find your uploaded Flickr image's URL to insert into HubPages

Your next step is to insert your Flickr picture's URL into HubPages. Here's how to find it. In Flickr click on HOME. Under "Your PhotoStream" you'll see all of your uploaded images. Click on the image that you want to appear in your HubPage of blog post. Now, However your mouse over the image and right click and chose "Properties".  See where it says "Location" at the top? Copy that URL and paste it into your HubPages photo inclusion box. You should see your Flickr image appear.

Now - The Dawei888 BONUS for getting traffic with Flickr images! YEAH!

Okay, now you have a few images that you want to appear in your Hubs that have been uploaded to Flickr. If all goes well your Flickr images will get picked up and get indexed by the search engines. But, here's the thing: Each image you have in Flickr has its own URL! So, what you can do is take those image URLs and post them to the best social bookmarking sites such as Digg.com, Mixx.com and Reedit.com. Again, when you social bookmark your images don't forget to use your HubPage title's and contents keywords. 

Let me know how it goes

I hope this hub about getting traffic to your HubPages and blog posts by uploading image files to Flickr has helped you to boost your traffic. If you have any other great ideas for getting traffic to your hubs let us know!

Cheers!
Dawei888 :-)