Giles

Forgot to say that most Flickr members are a wonderfully generous lot: ask nicely with no expectations and nearly all will willingly give you permission to use their great photographs. I have made some great new friends that way!

Otherwise there is the Flickr Creative Commons collection where you are free to use the photographs with credits etc.

Donna

Well, I’m certainly no “big name” in the travel industry, but I have always believed that lots of great quality photos are really important. Primarily because that is what I look for when I do a search for a destination and it is the first thing – before reading any of the content – that determines whether I hit the back button or not.

So I have built my website as I would like to find it. In fact having an image at the top of every page I write so that it is the first thing my visitors see under the page title has become my site “signature”. The only places where I haven’t are where I am still looking for a great shot.

It means, however, reaching a balance between longer page loading times which Google and other SE’s mark negatively and not placing advertising in that normally lucrative “top of the fold” spot. But the balance of that decision is for each author to make.

50% of my visitors each month find me from a Google image search, and most of those then stay a while.

And, yes, always always use the ALT tag – honestly though, or it will backfire not only in potential reports to Google but also in your bounce rate. And, incorporate your profitable keywords in those alt descriptions. If you have more than one photo for a great keyword focused page, use different associated keywords (with high demand and low supply) for the alt tags to maximise your potential of being found.

Regards
Donna

Every website, every blogger, needs a constant supply of pictures, quickly, and PRs can exploit that…but often don’t.

Yesterday a PR emailed me some photos I’d requested. “Can you tell me where you are going to use them?” she asked. I replied with a url. “Here. 5 days ago”.

That is not an isolated example. It is the norm.

The other problem area is image library registration. I’m registered with loads of travel organisation image libraries. Very useful… but strangely the images you need for a story are always in a library you don’t have a login for. That means a registration process that rarely gets completed inside 24hrs. Too late. If you have relevant images (or other resources) for a news story in a library, put a generic login/password on the press release.

Some organisations invest heavily in their imagery and one stands out in particular for me. I’d like to take this opportunity to tell the Austrian National Tourist Board that the money and effort they have always put into all their press and promotional photography is admired and appreciated! :)

Two more points before I finish this ramble…

I don’t know if Jim Cruickshank covered it, and most people know about it anyway, but I’m amazed how many websites miss the opportunity – usually because of lazy CMS systems – to make the most of the (now required) ALT attribute in IMG tags. Always write a full description of the image in there! That’s how Bing will find it.

and…

Hope you don’t mind me riding your coat-tails on this but, at the British Guild of Travel Writers we have some truly amazing travel photographers. They often have particular expertise in subjects or destinations and are usually out in the field doing it right now – maybe in your new tour destination. If any of the Travolution Summit attendees were inspired to source more photos I’d be happy to point them in the right direction.

I’m not really supposed to, because it theoretically dilutes sales of the BGTW yearbook (so don’t tell our Chairman or Treasurer!), but I’ve extracted a list of guild photographers and their ‘special interests’ from our database and I’ll slip it to any Travsummit attendee who’d like to email me – webmaster@bgtw.org