These days, it’s rare to find a blog post, or even a web page that doesn’t have some kind of image included. Whether it’s a simple image under a headline, or multiple pictures throughout a post, using visuals is an important part of your content strategy.
Why are blog images so important?
The impact images can have on your blog is huge. From making your content easier to digest, to increasing engagement through social platforms, there are so many benefits to including images in your blog posts.
Strategic use of images can:
- Make your post more accessible
- Make your content easier to read and understand
- Enhance your messages and ideas
- Increase engagement and promote shareability
- Help people find your content through image searches
So, where can you find high-quality images that are free to use in your content?
Explore 6 free stock image sites
There’s nothing worse than finding the perfect image, only to realise you don’t have permission to use it. We’ve made a list of some of our favourite high-quality stock image sites, so you can find the best commercially-licensed images for your content.
Below are some of our favourites.
1. Unsplash
Unsplash provides high-quality images that are easy to search for, and the image tagging is well utilised, making related images easy to find. Unsplash prioritises quality over quantity, so while you may find fewer images than on other stock image sites, you know you’re getting good quality consistently. There’s also an Unsplash app for IOS.
2. Reshot
Reshot positions themselves as built for freelancers and marketers who are sick of tacky stock photos – and they’re definitely not that. Reshot provides high-quality images with a decent selection. The site is easy to use, with lots of popular categories found in the menu for quick searching. They’re also looking into adding free icons and illustrations in the future.
3. Picography
Picography hasn’t been around for too long, but it’s another reliable source for good-quality, free stock photography. Just keep an eye out for promoted images that can appear at the top of your search. These images aren’t free, and do require a subscription to download.
4. Pexels
Pexels is completely free, and anyone’s allowed to upload images. But this doesn’t mean low quality. Pexels only chooses the best pictures to make available publicly. This means you may find a bit more variety than other stock image sites, but the image quality is still great. The layout of Pexels makes it easy and quick to find the images you’re after. Some photos are limited-use though, so make sure to double check before you download.
5. Pixabay
Pixabay has one of the bigger collections of freely available stock images, graphics, videos, and illustrations. The quality may vary on Pixabay a little more than other sites, but if you’re happy to filter through the options, there’s a great range to choose from. Images can be modified, and you can even donate to the contributors if you wish.
6. Foca
Foca provides not only photos and videos, but also templates, which can be great for creating eye-catching social media posts. The template editor is very user-friendly, and is a great place to start if you haven’t had much experience in this area.
Make use of other media where appropriate
While free stock photography sites have so much to offer, don’t forget you can also make use of screenshots! If you’re writing a ‘how-to’ blog post, using screenshots can be a great way to show the process for users to easily follow along.
Video is another great way to engage your audience and enhance your written content. To find out how to make your content stand out even more, read our blog post on how to boost your audience engagement with video content.
If you would like to find out how we can help you with creating engaging, winning blog content, you can get in touch with us today.