Why images are important for your website
“A picture is worth a thousand words”.
Image are a crucial part of your website. You can convey thoughts, feelings and emotions with images. You can capture the meaning or essence of what you’re saying with a carefully selected image.
Images might consist of photographs, cartoons, infographics, GIFs or other visual elements.
When images are used effectively, they can help attract more visitors to your site, and retain them on your site.
Here are my top 4 reasons why images are a must for your website:
1. Images bring your text to life
Images break up your text, as well as help your visitors to visualise your product or service, or the intent of your message. Think of images as storytellers. Your images should be carefully chosen and should reflect the story you are telling. They represent an opportunity to quickly grab your visitors’ attention even before they have started reading. Ideally, your images depict emotions that are positive. If it makes sense to do so, images that contain people also help to boost conversion.
2. Images help your website get more views
The research suggests that pages with images on them get more than twice the views of pages without images.
3. Search engines like images
If you appropriately label your images using alt text (see my post about getting your website indexed fast), you are creating more content for search engines to index. This helps you immensely with your search engine optimisation (SEO).
4. Images win on social media
When you post your articles on social media, they need images. People click and are more likely to share when they see an image. The research indicates that social media posts that include images have much higher engagement levels than posts that are text only.
The best royalty free images websites
I have compiled for you a list of sites that contain royalty free images. However, I recommend that you always check the attribution before you download and publish onto your website, just to be safe.
I will start with my favourites first!
Pixabay
This site has truly beautiful images.There are over 1.5 million royalty free stock photos, videos, illustrations and vector graphics.
Pexels
High quality photos. All can be used for free for commercial and non-commercial use. Attribution is not required. You can modify and edit the photos as you like.
Unsplash
Beautiful photos. All can be used for free for commercial and non-commercial use. Attribution is not required. You can modify and edit the photos as you like.
Public Domain Images
These images are free for any one, for any use. They have been placed in the public domain and can be used for personal or commercial use.
Public Domain Archive
http://publicdomainarchive.com/
Free public domain images. New images are uploaded weekly, also has vintage photos.
Freeimagebay
Copyright free images for personal and commercial use. Can be used in any way you want, for free, no atrribution required.
SplitShire
Royalty free photos, no copyright restrictions, free to use.
Picjumbo
Free free stock photos for personal and commercial use, no attribution required. There is option to purchase a premium membership that provides access to more photos.
IM Free
Free images, icons and templates for you to use as you wish.
There are loads more sites for free photos. This is by no means an exhaustive list.
Creating your own images and infographics
Canva
My favourite free tool to help you create your own images and infographics is Canva https://www.canva.com
Canva is free and easy to use. The only problem I have with Canva is that you may become addicted to using it! It is that much fun.
Snappa
Snappa https://snappa.com/app is another cool platform where you can create your own images, infographics, banners, you name it! Snappa is free, and like Canva is highly addictive!
1,000,000+ images are available within the Wealthy Affiliate site content platform
The site content platform within Wealthy Affiliate provides free access to over 1 million images. The images are from a combination of sites including pixabay, pexels, unsplash and more.
For me, that is easiest way to upload my images. Mostly all of the images I need are within the Wealthy Affiliate site content platform, and only rarely do I need to visit another royalty free image website.
What other websites do you know about that allow you to download royalty free images? As always, leave me a comment or a question and I’m happy to help.
Hi Melissa,
What a brilliant post about images.
When I first started dabbling with websites, one of the first things that put my back against the wall was the fact that I had no pictures to put up. Well, that is not completely true as I did find some I liked, from Google, and just used them.
That was fine until I realized that there is such a thing as copyright on images, so I was stuck again. I wasn’t looking forward to being sued over something as daft as using images without authorization. I didn’t know there were royalty free sites I could just go to and choose whichever pictures I desired.
Life was beautiful once more : )
So far, I’ve used Pixabay, Pexels, Public Domain, and some I found on Google and Bing – which could be re-used, even for commercial purposes, so I was OK with those.
Many thanks for writing such a wonderful post, and I’ll have to give those other royalty free sites you mentioned a visit to see if they have what I need.
James
Hi James, when I started out I did the exact same thing. I just googled images, saved them, and put them on my website. Pretty quickly I realised I couldn’t do that! So I had to find images I could use and replace them all. Lol! But it did take me a while to navigate around what I could use with attribution, without attribution etc. And then … as you say – life was beautiful once more!!
Many thanks to you James for sharing your experiences here. You should check out Unsplash – I think it might be very favourite : )
Wishing all the very best.
Cheers
Melissa
Well I never thought that there were so many free sites to get pictures for our posts. I have bookmarked this as I know I will not remember so many. Thank you Melissa for this wonderful information.
Like you, I feel it so important to add images to your posts. It definitely adds something special. Finding just the perfect image can take a while which is not always understood by many new people when they begin this fantastic world of Wealthy Affiliate.
It has taken me rather a lot of time to master Canva but am so pleased that now, Whew! it has sunk into my thick head.
Thank you again.
Hi Jill, you are very welcome. I LOVE the Wealthy Affiliate image library built into site content. It truly makes life so much easier and there are some fabulous images in there.
I’m so pleased you’ve mastered Canva. How awesome is it?!
Thanks for visiting Jill and I wish you all the very best.
Cheers
Melissa
Ooh, fabulous post, Melissa! Bookmarked. Thanks so much for sharing all these links.
I used to download free images from Pixabay but since Wealthy Affiliate introduced their library of images in Site Content, I almost exclusively use their images because it’s just so convenient. I don’t have to hop over to another site to find images, I can find them while I’m creating my content.
I also like to add my own photos every now and then to add that personal touch.
I’m interested to know, have you ever paid for the use of an image?
Thanks so much Lauren! I love the library too. It takes some of the hard work out of hopping between sites to find that perfect image. They think of everything don’t they?
I’ve never paid to use an image. I’ve always found what I’ve needed either in site content, on one of the sites I’ve posted about here, or used my own images.
Thanks for stopping by Lauren and I wish you all the very best.
Cheers
Melissa
Hi Mel,
Thanks for sharing this informative article which I can rely on when needs arises! I have no idea that there are a lot of free site of getting picture for our post.
I’m just starting my way through wordpress, and my next task is all about putting images on post. I can definitely find useful tips on your articles.
Glenda
Hi Glenda, thanks so much. I hope you find some stuff that you can you use in your every day business to help it grow. Wishing you all the very best.
Cheers
Melissa
When I look for free, I usually search google with the advanced filter, but honestly, the quality and selection is limited.
This is a great list, many I’ve never heard of before. I’m bookmarking the page!
Hi JB, glad you found some helpful info here. Wishing you all the very best.
Cheers
Melissa