The latest search engine updates have made it very clear recently that the fewer images you have on your website, the more Google will ignore you. It seems pretty tough, doesn’t it? Before you get too discouraged, or take your feelings to the other extreme, and start overloading your web pages with irrelevant images, you better take a hard look at which steps will positively affect your SEO and which steps will hurt your SEO. Google’s last bottom line has made it pretty clear that unless your website has at least one relevant, high-quality image on every page, your SEO will fade and quickly.
For all the website owners who find it easier to put pen to paper than finger to flash, here’s the scoop on why Google loves images and why we better follow suit. Before getting into the nitty-gritty, the last fact is that the images look good. The world is a very different place than it was before, and that daily newspaper is no longer filled with column-by-column black and white text. Today, images feed our society. Capturing a different moment in time, these small frames captivate our minds, attract our eyes, and hypnotize our senses. Most of today’s online society relies on a delicate juxtaposition of text and images to truly relate to what they see on screen.
To add to society’s ever-growing list of dependencies, “sharing” is a trend that has recently taken on new life. Sharing posts online has become so popular that a website without a sharing tools option is considered as outdated as parachute pants. The key to allowing website users to share your posts effectively is to attach each post with a relevant image. Ultimately, by leaving a well-written post without images, you are doing yourself a great injustice. All the time and effort you put into researching, writing, and editing will go to waste if no one can successfully share your post with others. Also, that very post you tried so hard to write on will be ignored on my Google Almighty if the post lacks a high-quality image to complement it perfectly.
Since images have become the not-so-secret ingredient in website success, it makes sense that one of the biggest trends spreading across the internet today is “free images.” This more recent popular trend gained its fame thanks to its more direct counterpart; the image protected by copyright. It has simply become too risky for website owners to fill their pages with copyright-protected images, which is why the internet world now follows a very simple rule: “take your own photos or spend your time searching the internet for photos. free “. Unfortunately for those who don’t know the way with a Nikon, option “B” is easier said than done. Obtaining suitable royalty-free images on the Internet is now more difficult than ever, yet the demand for these images continues to grow. On the other hand, website owners with a knack for photography have certainly cracked down on anyone wanting to get a free ride. So when Google closed the door, and made it almost impossible for someone to steal, and republish copyrighted images, new services and developments appeared and opened a window.
Do you remember all those times your mother used to remind you that nothing good in life is free? With royalty-free images in such high demand, it was only a matter of time before startups started popping up left and right to fill the gap. Website owners jumped at the idea of signing up and gaining access to a free library full of images that they could use anytime, anywhere. The sad truth is that most of these stock image websites that advertise the “Free Images” offer actually offer false dreams. Most of the time, after signing up, a website owner will be hit by subscription fees and image costs. Some website owners will eventually pay the 99 cent fee for each image, but for the handful of website owners hoping to capitalize on their website before investing more pennies in it, the 99 cent fee becomes the deciding factor. .
The next step often taken by the desperate looking for free images is to fill their web pages with whatever images you can find, but keep your horses there too, cowboy. Google is too smart for that. Today, filling that well-written tech post with a photo of your furry cat, Pebbles, isn’t good enough. Google is getting smarter by megabytes and can now recognize the images you are using to fill your pages. The images you place next to your posts need to be correlated for your pages to get the recognition they deserve.
The good news is that there are a select number of service providers that can be considered the “good guys” when looking for free images. Among them is Foter.com. This free stock photo website offers completely free images and is also available as a WordPress plugin. However, unsurprisingly, with the good comes the not so good, and in that sense Foter.com has a limited library of photos, some of which are not of the best quality. Website owners considering starting browsing Foter.com’s photo database should also be aware that any image they decide to use for their website requires attribution information in order to be published on their website.
PhotoDropper is another website that teeters between good and bad. PhotoDropper is also offered as a WordPress plugin and has an extensive photo library. However, before you set your sights on that highly relevant image, be sure to read the fine print. PhotoDropper has quite a large library of photos, the problem is that most of the good ones are only available in their “premium package”. You’re sure to find some useful images from their free photo collection, but ultimately, if you go to the candy store only to find that you can fill up on just gum worms, you’ll walk out of the store with nothing but a toothache.
Stock.EXCHNG and Stock Vault have also managed to place themselves firmly in the race to become key players in supplying free images. Sadly, as with their adversaries Foter.com and PhotoDropper, these free image supply services also have their fair share of downfalls. Stock.EXCHNG requires each image to be accompanied by attribution information, and the service is not available as a WordPress plugin. On the other hand, however, Stock.EXCHNG offers a large selection of high-quality images, and you can use any of the images from their website, if you have the patience to scroll through their database, whose search options do. make. it does not allow you to limit your selection very easily. Stock Vault also prides itself on its library of high-quality images, and this service is available to all WordPress users. However, there is a catch here, and it is one that can force many stakeholders to continue their search for the best option. The Stock Vault is available for non-commercial use only, so if your game plan is to start selling homemade soap online, don’t bother wasting your time searching for images of bubble baths in the Stock Vault.
So what does it all come down to? You have great ideas, your content is well written and ingenious, but without images everything goes adrift. Fortunately for the many caught up in an SEO grind, there are two new kids on the block who could be the light at the end of the tunnel. Zemanta and imonomy are two relatively new services, which have been sweeping the web one site at a time. Both Zemanta and imonomy are the first to provide an automated service that allows you to instantly add royalty-free images to your pages. Both services have the ability to scan the typed text of your web pages and instantly find suitable related images. Before you jump the gun and click on the catchiest-sounding service, here’s a little breakdown of what can and can’t be done of each of these automated services that provide free images.
Zemanta scans the written text of a website as it is published and offers website owners to choose from a smaller selection of images, which Zemanta’s automated system pulls from the database. The automated system, for the most part, offers highly relevant images and a large enough selection to please most website owners. There are some disadvantages to be aware of before entering Zemanta’s royalty-free image library. Zemanta does not work retroactively, this means that when you start using Zemanta, all subsequent posts will have access to Zemanta’s automated image service. However, if you are the owner of an adult website, your older posts and archives won’t be spoiled with the same makeover as your newer posts. On the subject of makeovers, it is important to note that Zemanta requires attribution information for each image. Furthermore, these attributions are sometimes up to three or four lines in length. In addition to providing free images, Zemanta’s secondary function is to insert external links related to its posts. Hyperlinks, depending on location and quantity, will work to harm or aid your SEO. Ultimately, the links lead to other websites, so with Zemanta’s free images there is a risk that users will find themselves redirected.
The Zemanta showdown, imonomy, offers similar services with a twist. Unlike Zemanta, imonomy technology automatically scans the content of the entire website and instantly matches the most suitable image for each post. imonomy works retroactively and you can refresh web pages with just a few clicks. Also, because imonomy is capable of scanning the entirety of a website, it offers a secondary service that allows users to be recognized by other related posts on the same website. Imonomy royalty-free images, which do not require attribution credits, become interactive components of the website and stimulate SEO by providing intelligent internal links. Free images come with a catch no matter what service you are using, and for that purpose, Imonomy inserts little ads alongside the free images. Ads are content related and the website owner takes most of the profit once all is said and done.
Having relevant, high-quality images to accompany your website posts is a must, and it seems that finding free images is the new name of the game. There are certainly some booby traps along the way, but finding that treasure chest isn’t impossible. For those of you still struggling with denial, it’s time to move on to that glorious stage called “acceptance.” Google has developed some really high standards when it comes to what a website should look like. Call it shallow all you want, but the new laws of the image are here to stay, and in order not to slip through the cracks, it’s time you started doing some homework on how you’re going to revamp your pages.