How To Find Royalty Free Images For Your Blog
We all want free images, but what images are free and how do we find them?
If you are a professional blogger you probably know by now that it can be difficult to make your blog look attractive. In the last year, there has been a huge increase in the amount of royalty free images on the web, and for obvious SEO reasons everyone wants top quality free images.
Every webmaster knows by now that Google is less likely to rank your website if there are few or no images on your pages. Blocks of text can make Google’s Penguin suspicious about the quality of content being generated on your website, even if the text was in fact a unique piece of writing. No matter the site, images are something you just shouldn't give up on. Websites without pictures are also unlikely to draw new readers as the content will be generally unattractive to look at.
Just think about how many Pinterest shares you are will be missing out on without any images in your posts. Pictures draw the eyes in a certain direction and can provide a lot more information to a reader than a few paragraphs of text can.
Images add a level of quality to websites that not only makes web pages look more official, but also relays information on a more visual and somewhat subconscious level that text is incapable of doing.
So how do you get free images on your website? The first method is simply doing an image search in Google, saving the pictures that are relevant and uploading them to the server of your blog. However, this violates copyright infringement, and can result in legal action being taken against you, even if the infringement was unintentional. Perhaps you have come across articles on the web such as this post, “How to Find Free Images with Google’s Advanced Image Search”.
Beware, this is a risky path that can lead to some serious copyright violations if you are not careful. More and more Internet users are becoming very protective of the images they have published on the net. So if you want to stay safe the Google Advanced search option is out.
Stock photos are now becoming the attractive option for website owners. However, their use requires a license payment to use the the copyrighted images.
These licenses can be expensive, and while you do get access to a vast library of photos sometimes that cost just isn't worth it for smaller blogs of niche sites. Too many images on a web page can make a site look clustered, and make it hard for users to relate to the topic and text on the page. Because these stock photo licenses are so expensive, this option is usually only viable for big name companies who can afford the expense. This leaves smaller-budget site owners with very few options for finding the right images for their pages.
Taking your own photos is another option. I used to take photos from my smartphone when I was running a couple of amateur blogs, but I stopped taking my own photos when I finally moved up from the blogging little leagues.
As you might imagine, not every blogger is a professional photographer. Not every phone has the capabilities to produce high quality images.
I know some online publishers that just can’t afford to take professional photos to post on their site. The ROI of taking your own images is really dependent on the content of the website. For niche blogs such as cooking websites, or traveling sites taking your own photos can be a simple way to decorate your pages without breaking your budget.
However, for niche blogs that focus on more elaborate topics, such as animals near extinction, or ancient artifacts, finding the source and being your website’s photographer may not be as cost efficient. When deciding whether in-house photography is right for your site, you also need to factor in the cost of equipment.
The more professional the equipment used to take the photo, the better your chances are for establishing good looking site. This is not to say that you can’t become a pro blogger with some good photos and an iPhone for snapping pictures, but let’s face it, not everyone knows how to edit the perfect picture on Instagram.
Today, there is a new service providers called imonomy, who specializes in copyright free images.
The company offers publishers easy-to-use stock photos entirely for free, and the best part is you don’t need to worry about the copyright. The process is quite simple and requires very little work on the part of the publisher. The service is scans the content of your blog automatically and instantly adds stock photos to your page. No more Internet searches for relevant photos; imonomy does all of the work for you, providing you with the highest quality images that are relevant to your web pages. imonomy even works retroactively by generating new images for content that was previously published without an image.
Stock photos come without watermark credits on them, and provide quality links to other posts within the same blog, which enhances the quality of your SEO content. Your readers gain access to more content that interests them and you receive more page views. The bonus of using these stock free images by imonomy is that placing the cursor on them will generate links to external content that is still relevant to your blog’s content, making your blog appear even more professional and less likely to be caught by Google Penguin’s parameters. imonomy takes full responsibility to provide you with royalty free images with proper size and a good resolution.
Another great website you really have to be introduced to is Pixabay, this is one of the only websites on the web that can promise you that all their images are actually free.
What I am happy to inform you is that you can use their free image images without any legal worries, any other site you stumble across will probably try and give you some samples and then push you to pay for the images. Many bloggers today are using Pixabay and in my opinion they are just not getting enough credit for their work.
Having relevant images on your blog that are both high quality and free is not an opportunity that should be passed up. Because you’re not likely to find this kind of service through another stock photo provider. Royalty free images don’t have to be an elusive tool that prevents your website from getting the attention it deserves. Using imonomy will improve the quality of your blog content without having to pay exorbitant prices for this kind of service. Let imonomy provide you with the stock photos that are guaranteed to improve engagement on your blog and increase page views in a way that no other method can.
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Written By Avishai Sam Bitton and Edited by Leytal Ross
