Stock Images Are Great for Your SEO. Here’s Why. Feat. Roxana Stingu
“Stock images? They’re a no-go for SEO, right?” Think again. This long-held belief in the digital marketing world is up for a reevaluation. Let’s dive into a candid chat with Roxana Stingu, the Head of SEO at Alamy, about stock images and SEO. This article explores the real impact of stock images on SEO and how they can be a powerful asset in your digital marketing strategy.
Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIlVerxr8Tc
Stock Images and SEO: The Case for Relevance Over Origin
Stock images are often misunderstood as mere fillers or aesthetic enhancements to web content. However, Roxana, with her extensive experience at Alamy, reveals a different perspective. She emphasizes the versatility of stock images, explaining how they serve not just as visual elements but as crucial tools in both external and internal SEO strategies.
3 Common SEO Myths About Stock Photos, Debunked
Watermarked Images Negatively Impact SEO
This is indeed a widespread myth. Many believe that watermarked images can negatively impact a site’s SEO, but in reality, this isn’t the case. At Alamy, like many of our competitors, watermarked images are used extensively. The key here is relevance and integration into the content. A watermark doesn’t automatically diminish an image’s SEO value.
Stock Images Are Less Effective Than Original Photography in SEO
The common misconception here is that stock images, being more generic, might not offer the same SEO benefits as unique photographs. However, it’s not about the image’s origin but its relevance. Whether it’s a stock photo or an original image, if it’s closely aligned with your content, it will contribute positively to your SEO.
Using Stock Images Can Deceive Users and Harm SEO
This is a crucial aspect to consider. In scenarios where authenticity is key, like product reviews, using a stock photo can indeed be misleading. It might suggest firsthand experience that doesn’t exist, which can negatively impact both user trust and SEO. However, in cases like travel blogs, where the objective is to visually represent a location, stock images can be perfectly suitable and effective.
AI in Stock Photography: Training Data, Copyright, and the Future of Attribution
Currently, the industry is buzzing with AI advancements. Many services now allow you to transform any photo, including stock images, to make them more unique. This technology isn’t just about tweaking the images; it’s about enhancing their potential to fit different contexts.
The entire stock photography sector is eyeing these developments. Alamy’s competitors are already experimenting with how AI can morph stock images into something more personalized and distinct.
Getty Images vs. Stability AI: The Copyright Dispute Reshaping AI Training
Getty Images, for instance, has taken Stability AI to court. The contention is about the use of their watermarked images to train AI models without proper attribution.
“This is a significant concern,” Roxana mentions. “Almost every stock photography website, including ours, has had its images unknowingly used in training various AI models. There’s a growing need for proper attribution to the original creators of these images.”
How Shutterstock Built an Attribution-First AI Training Model
Shutterstock created its model using images from their own photographers. This way, they can ensure proper attribution back to the original sources. It’s about creating new images but having a clear trace back to their origins.
Digital Watermarks and the “You Can’t Stop Progress” Problem
With the rapid advancement of AI, there’s a sentiment that progress can’t be halted. Despite the copyright infringements, AI has already reshaped the landscape. But it also brings up the issue of how we protect the rights of creators. For instance, digital watermarks are being experimented with as a means to prevent AI models from misusing images.
IPTC’s Plan to Label AI-Generated Images in Google Search
Recently, there’s been talk in the industry, especially among IPTC members, about embedding metadata to mark AI-generated media. This could be a game-changer, as it would allow platforms like Google to identify and label AI-generated images distinctly.
The challenge lies in the implementation. How do you ensure that this metadata or digital footprint remains intact through various modifications?
The protection of creators’ rights in this rapidly changing digital age remains a focal point of the discussion. Watermarking is one way, but we’re also looking at more robust methods. As creators, it’s crucial to be aware of how your images are being used and to seek legal avenues if necessary.
It’s clear that as much as AI brings new possibilities, it also brings new challenges, especially in terms of copyright and creator rights.
IPTC Metadata: The Three Fields Google Actually Reads
When delving into the intricacies of the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) data and its interaction with Google, two main aspects emerge prominently: licensable tags and copyright information.
Licensable Tags
- These tags are crucial elements within IPTC data, providing clear information on where an image can be licensed from, and the specific rules that apply to its licensing.
- This feature enables a direct and transparent pathway for users. They can be directed to distinct pages on a website: one detailing the licensing terms and another showing where the image can be legally obtained or licensed.
- This system offers a simple way for image creators and stock photography platforms to communicate licensing details, ensuring users can access and utilize images within the legal frameworks.
Copyright Information
- Another key aspect Google looks into is the copyright information associated with images.
- This includes detailed data on the creator of the image and the specifics of the copyright that applies to it.
- Google uses this information to inform users about the origin and ownership of images. You can view it in Google’s image search, where clicking on an image reveals its creator and copyright details, sourced directly from the IPTC metadata.
The integration of IPTC data with Google’s image search functionality represents a significant step in ensuring proper attribution and legal use of images across the web.
Unfortunately, if someone manipulates the image’s metadata to appear as the creator, it’s difficult to counter.
Technical Breakdown: What IPTC Fields Does Google Use?
According to Roxana, Google currently reads three specific categories of IPTC data from images — and a fourth is in active development:
- Licensor URL — Points to the page where a license governing the image can be found. Enables Google to show a “Licensable” badge in Image Search.
- Licensing Page URL — Points to the specific page where the image can be purchased or licensed. Together with the Licensor URL, these two fields power the licensable tag visible in Google Image Search preview panels.
- Creator and Copyright fields — Google pulls the creator name and copyright holder information and surfaces it in the image preview panel in Search. This is currently live.
- AI-Generated / Synthetic Media flag — In development. IPTC has proposed a metadata field to mark AI-generated content. Google intends to read this field and display a “AI-generated” label in Image Search, analogous to the current “Licensable” label. Implementation is pending adoption.
Important note: Google also accepts the licensable and copyright data from Schema.org structured data (HTML), not only from embedded IPTC. If you cannot modify the embedded image metadata, using schema.org/ImageObject markup on the page is a valid alternative.
Google Lens: Search Intent, Referral Traffic, and SEO Implications
Google Lens progressed from a feature within the Google app on phones to its integration into Google search on both mobile and desktop platforms. Google Lens is now a ubiquitous tool across various Google services. It’s accessible wherever you encounter images, offering a direct way to explore and interact with visual content.
Google Lens in SEO and Traffic Analysis
When users utilize Google Lens in image searches, it affects how traffic is categorized. Instead of contributing to organic traffic, activities through Google Lens are often reflected in referral traffic. This distinction is crucial for SEO professionals who analyze and strategize based on traffic sources.
Determining the original source of an image can be tricky with Google Lens. Unless users actively engage and interact with the image, tracing back to the originating website is not straightforward. This presents a challenge in understanding the user journey and the effectiveness of images in driving traffic.
While Lens traffic is captured, it’s not separately identified, blending with other search traffic. This makes it challenging for SEO experts to precisely quantify the impact of Lens in their strategies.
How Google Lens Prioritizes Product Results Over Image Results
Google Lens has tendency to occasionally prioritize product links in search results. Sometimes, when searching for a person in an image, Google Lens offers options to buy similar clothing instead. The search intent plays a significant role in what Google Lens displays. It’s capable of discerning between a query looking for images and one with potential commercial intent.
For those seeking specific imagery or looking to understand image usage patterns, Google Lens can be invaluable but its effectiveness diminishes without a clear search goal.
Bing vs. Googlebot: Image Crawling Speed and Indexing Differences
Bing’s image search functionality is effective while its crawling capability not so much. Bing’s approach to crawling the web can be described as lazy. Unlike Google, which actively seeks out and indexes web pages, Bing often falls short unless the content is straightforward and easily accessible.
Google goes the extra mile to unearth and index content, ensuring that it’s available to users. This proactive approach is what sets it apart from Bing.
Bing’s search capabilities, especially in metrics, are quite comparable to Google’s. It’s just that Bing needs a bit more help in understanding and indexing content effectively. In fact, the existence of Bing’s Indexing API is a direct acknowledgement of this gap — Bing built a submission API because it knows its crawler doesn’t match Google’s proactive discovery ability.
Image Optimization: Google vs. Bing Requirements Compared
Bing seems to prioritize speed and resource size over image quality. This emphasis on file size and speed, as opposed to Google’s focus on high-quality images, suggests different strategies for optimization depending on the target search engine.
If you’re focusing on Google, maintain the quality of your images, but be aware that this might not align with Bing’s preference for smaller file sizes. There’s a need for a balanced approach in image optimization to cater to both search engines effectively, recognizing that overly compressed images can lead to a poor user experience.
| Factor | Bing | |
|---|---|---|
| Image Quality | Prioritizes large, high-quality images | Not mentioned in documentation |
| File Size | Recommends compression but favors quality | Strongly prefers smaller, faster-loading files |
| Crawling Approach | Proactive — bypasses obstacles to find content | Passive — requires clean, straightforward markup |
| Indexing API | Not needed for most pages | Provides Indexing API to compensate for crawl limits |
| IPTC Metadata | Reads licensable tags, creator, copyright, and AI label (upcoming) | Limited documented support for IPTC fields |
| UX Recommendation | Never sacrifice quality for compression | Compress aggressively — quality is secondary |
| Optimization Priority | Relevance + quality + page authority | Server response time + small file sizes |
Can Stock Photos Rank? The Relevance-First Approach
Stock images are particularly useful for pages where image ranking is not a priority. However, even stock images can be optimized for ranking in image searches. Stock photos can rank effectively if they are relevant to the page content. The key is relevancy. A stock image aligned with the page’s content can enhance its overall SEO performance.
Using stock photos does not inherently hinder SEO efforts. It is important of how the images are used within the content. It’s about enriching the user experience, not misleading the user.
Stock photography, when used correctly, offers significant opportunities for SEO. Just look for balance and creativity in selecting and using images, ensuring they align with the content’s purpose and message.
Key Takeaways: Why You Should Stop Fearing Stock Photos in SEO
The effectiveness of an image in SEO is not about whether it’s a stock photo or an original photograph, but rather how it is utilized within the content. The essence lies in the application. Using images, whether stock or original, should be about enhancing the user experience and not misleading or deceiving the audience.
There are situations where stock images are not only suitable but also beneficial. For instance, in historical articles or pieces on global cultures where accessing original photography might be challenging or impossible. In such cases, stock photography becomes an invaluable resource.
Stock images can be powerful when they’re relevant and authentic to the content. They can bridge the gap in scenarios where original photography is unattainable or impractical.
Stock images, when used thoughtfully and ethically, can significantly enhance SEO efforts and enrich the overall user experience on the web.
FAQ
Can people download Alamy images directly from Google Image Search?
No. Since February 2018, Google requires users to click through to the source website to download an image. Before that change, image search linked directly to the raw JPEG file hosted on a server — not to the HTML page. Getty Images pushed for this change, and Google partnered with them to implement it. The result: image search now drives actual referral visits to the originating site.
Do watermarked stock images hurt a website’s SEO?
No. Alamy, Getty, Shutterstock, and virtually every major stock photography platform serve watermarked images, and they all rank extensively in Google Image Search. If watermarks harmed rankings, no stock photography site would appear in search — and they clearly do. What matters is whether the image is relevant to the content on the page.
Can stock photos rank in Google Image Search?
Yes, but the ranking belongs to the page, not the image in isolation. As Roxana explains: “You can rank a page without an image, but you can’t rank an image without a page.” A stock photo that is contextually relevant to its surrounding content will appear in image search, as a thumbnail in web search, and potentially in Google Discover. The image’s origin (stock vs. original) is irrelevant — relevance to the page is what counts.
What IPTC metadata fields does Google actually read?
Google reads three categories of IPTC data: (1) the two Licensor URL fields that power the “Licensable” badge in Image Search, (2) the Creator and Copyright fields shown in the image preview panel, and (3) an AI-generated / synthetic media field currently being developed by IPTC that Google plans to display as a label in search results. Google also accepts the licensing and copyright data via Schema.org structured data on the page, so embedding IPTC in the image file is not the only option.
Does Google Lens traffic appear in Google Search Console?
Google Lens activity is not broken out separately in Search Console. Visits driven through Lens typically appear in referral traffic rather than organic, and there is no dedicated “Search appearance” filter for Lens in Search Console. You can confirm Lens is driving traffic by watching referral sources for Google Lens entries in your analytics platform — but correlating it to specific images or queries requires manual investigation.
What is the main difference between optimizing images for Google vs. Bing?
Google documentation emphasizes image quality and relevance — large, high-resolution images are preferred. Bing documentation focuses on file size and server speed, with no explicit mention of quality thresholds. For sites targeting primarily Google, prioritize image quality and accept slightly larger file sizes. For Bing, compress aggressively and prioritize fast server response times. If you want both, target a middle ground and use Bing’s Indexing API to ensure your images are discovered, since Bing’s crawler is far more passive than Googlebot.
Full Interview Transcript
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Introduction & Roxana’s Role
[0:00]
OLESIA: Roxana, you are head of SEO in Alamy, right?
ROXANA: Yeah, head of Search and SEO.
[0:07]
OLESIA: What do you like the most about your job there?
ROXANA: I have the freedom to tackle search in different ways. One is external, when it comes to search engines; another one is internal, when it comes to our own search engine and the way our users are finding our products on the Alamy website. And I really like that because I get to see it from both sides.
[0:36]
OLESIA: How often is it that the user is searching something in Google with site: search operator alamy.com, or is your search so profound that they prefer yours?
[0:42]
ROXANA: It’s such a good question. It does happen quite a bit. They don’t do a site search specifically, I don’t think they realize there’s the site operator. But you do see them searching for the brand, so they search Alamy and then they put a descriptive query in there. So I know they’re looking for something and they know we have it, but they just directly search on Google instead of first coming to Alamy and then doing the search. So, I put that down sometimes to just them trying to be more efficient and not have to click around as much. And I think that’s what Google did to people. They created a search that’s so good, you don’t really have to go to websites anymore to search for things.
[1:21]
OLESIA: Can people download from Google your images, or they have to go to the website?
ROXANA: No, they still have to click and come and download them from us. So that is still a good thing. But I don’t know if you remember, but before 2018, images on Google were not linked to an HTML page. They were not linked to a website, it was just a JPEG file hosted on a website, but you just see it in Google. So that changed in February 2018, I believe. And since then, it actually requires you to go to that website if you want that image. So that was a good move. Thank you, Google.
SEO Myths & Realities with Stock Images
[2:02]
OLESIA: There is a common misconception that you cannot promote your websites in search if you are doing that on stock images, and especially if they are watermarked. But your whole website is stock images and they are watermarked. What can you tell about that?
[2:13]
ROXANA: And it’s not just me, right, all my competitors, we all do it. And all of our images are watermarked because this is how we try to protect our contributors or photographers, the people we work with in getting these images. And you search for anything descriptive in image search, you’re going to find a stock photography website, which is proof that it doesn’t matter if it’s watermarked, it doesn’t matter if it’s the same photo in three different places. It will show up in search if it’s relevant to that search term.
Stock Images: SEO Impact
[2:44]
OLESIA: May I ask, like, very difficult questions? Compared to pages where there is a stock photo and the other page that has a unique photo made by the person themselves, is there any difference in rankings for the page, not for the image?
ROXANA: I think the problem is we’re focusing on the image and not on the whole story. So, let’s say you have the same one image used in two different articles. In one, the image is highly relevant to the article, in another, the same image is not that relevant, it’s just like a fluff thing you add on the page to break the text. From a user point of view, if I’m searching in image search, I’d like to find an image that’s relevant to the article, because if I see that image and I’m thinking, “Yeah, I want to read about stuff that has to do with that image,” I want a relevant article. I would hate to find the image, click on it, and then realize it’s just for decor, it’s just design, it doesn’t actually relate, it’s not relevant, right? So I think it’s the same, even if it’s different images. If you just use it to break text apart, to make your page look nice, you shouldn’t rank with that image for anything related to your text if the image is not absolutely relevant. But that’s, you know, that’s my opinion, and I think that’s what Google’s looking at, right? Users should get something that’s relevant.
[4:18]
OLESIA: But can you like promote the whole website on stock images at the moment? I have some content. I don’t have that much photography skills. I don’t want to hire any person to go around somewhere and make photos for me. It’s quite difficult, and then it’s quite costly. But if I use stock photos, will it impact my rankings in a negative way?
[4:40]
ROXANA: I’m going to say the dreaded thing that we all say: it depends. I know, and I always make a point, I try to say, “Let’s not go there. Let’s find a better answer than ‘it depends,'” but it does depend. Let’s say you have a review website, and you’re providing product reviews, and we know Google really cares about these types of websites. There’s a whole update around just product review websites. Instead of you actually buying that product, using it, and then giving an honest review, you use a stock photo of that product, and you give a review of that product. But because it’s a stock photo, I have no trust that the person reviewing it actually ever touched the product. So in this case, I would say a stock photo should not rank for that product review ever because the product review itself shouldn’t rank for anything ever. So it’s not about the image itself, it’s about the fact that they’re using a stock photo to deceive the user. But if, let’s say, I’m writing a travel blog, I’ve visited Turkey, and then I get an aerial image of Turkey, of a city in Turkey, from a stock photo website because I don’t have a drone, I can’t afford a helicopter ride. But my review is about my experience in that city. In that case, I think that photo is highly relevant to the review, it’s not deceiving anybody. It does bring value because it shows you kind of how the city is laid out, or it gives you a nice idea of what this thing that’s being reviewed looks like. And I think in that case, it doesn’t matter it’s a stock photo. It’s actually better because how else would you get a photo like that?
AI’s Role in Future Photography
[6:56]
ROXANA: It’s not something I can completely give details about because I think it’s more in discussion at this point, so it’s nothing set in stone. But just in general, the future of stock photography, and if we’re looking at what some of our competitors are already doing and how they’ve come into the market, I think it’s worth pointing out that with all these generative AI services out there, there’s a problem of copyright currently that’s being disputed at different levels. You have Getty Images that has taken MidJourney to court because a lot of the images that Getty has out there, even though watermarked, have been used to train MidJourney. And that’s one example. We know pretty much every stock photography website was caught in some sort of training for any of the models that we have out there now. And there is a problem of attribution, I guess, who you know, you have all these photographers, they created all this work that’s now being used by generative AI with no attribution back to them. And that is something that Shutterstock, for instance, took and they created their own model using their own images from their own photographers. And now they are able to calculate attribution back to the original images and who those belong to. So I think that’s kind of a model to look at when it comes to stock photography because you can create new things, but to create those new images, you need a basis in reality, the images that went into training, and those belong to somebody, and those people deserve recognition, and you know, they deserve to be paid for it as well.
[9:10]
OLESIA: If they are taken to court at some point in the future, like, it will take several years for all these hearings, for everything. You can’t like, uh, some people who are proponents of this thing, they say, “You cannot stop progress, you know?” So it’s already happened. They already stole the content, they have already trained these models, and you cannot take them down or do anything. There appear lots of open-source versions of these models, yeah, and all these kinds of things. It’s inevitable that some people will eventually not get paid for their impact on this progress. Like, um, do you plan to make any kinds of digital watermarks for the images? Some authors, they started to insert digital watermarks, that their images are generated, so that when these MidJourney bots or other bots meet their images, they don’t take them into the training set. And what’s your stance on it?
[10:16]
ROXANA: So, I’m not speaking for Alamy specifically here, but because I’m in the industry and keeping an eye out on all advancements when it comes to this, the IPTC people, uh, the ones that kind of keep track of metadata that gets embedded in images and kind of format and what kind of information is being passed through that, they’ve had a conference a few weeks back, so this is quite recent. And they were talking about introducing metadata to mark AI-generated, synthetic media. So you would apply for anything that’s created by AI, and they want to introduce this metadata in IPTC, and then Google wants to grab this metadata from IPTC and then show it in search as a label that says AI-generated, similar to how they have a label now that shows that the image is licensable, for instance, that you can just go and license an image. So there are plans to do that, but that’s of course if people do add this information, and a lot might not add it. So I know there’s also work on creating, like, I don’t know how to call it, like a digital footprint, that’s added to images generated through various models.
[12:16]
OLESIA: I actually tried the digital footprint, at least those versions that are available right now, so you can download them and, like, create an image with them. So you have already an image, and you can insert this digital footprint into the image. It takes lots of time, but what I found out, like, for me, maybe I’ve used the wrong version, but when you try to change the format of the image, like, you had a JPG, and you make it PNG, for example, convert it into PNG, it loses the digital footprint most of the time.
[12:51]
ROXANA: It gets rid of it.
OLESIA: Yeah, so it’s very hard to maintain. There are different versions of it. Some of them remain when you change the format; some of them do not. But for others, the hardest thing, like, it’s programmatical and quite hard to explain, but some of them, you just move the image slightly, then you resize it, and then you cut it, and it again loses this footprint. So it’s like, so I tried a few of them, and they all failed at one time or another.
[13:44]
ROXANA: Yeah, we’ll have to see what happens because you said, you know, taking somebody to court might take years before we have a resolution. But remember how I said about image search actually linking to a page now, to a website, rather than just showing the image file? That was actually something that Getty pushed as well. So they kind of wanted to sue Google on it and said, “You know, it’s not fair. You link to my images, and you use my images in search, but I have no attribution whatsoever. Nobody can click through, see my website or anything.” And that was when Google said, “You know what, you’re right. Let’s partner up and come up with a solution for this.” And that’s how we got HTML pages to be linked from image search. So I’m kind of, you know, I’m more hopeful that when big organizations get involved, people are not necessarily going to drag it out, but they will try to work together to find a solution.
IPTC
[17:08]
OLESIA: IPTC, because we were talking about IPTC, and you’ve mentioned that Google is looking into these data. What do you know about if they are looking at every other data in IPTC? IPTC is quite extensive. They have lots of fields, lots of attributes there. Does Google look into every other field, or do they ignore some of that?
[17:29]
ROXANA: They look at three things that I know of. Well, two things. This is the third one that they will be looking at, so it’s not yet happening. But they did say they have an interest in it. One is the two fields that give you that licensable tag on images, so that’s where you can license an image from, and what rules apply to that licensing. So you can embed information, sending users to two different pages on your website. One will talk about how does the license apply, and one shows you where you can get it and license it from. And to give a clearer example, if I have a portfolio of images on my website that I’m ranking with, I might point to my page to show what type of license governs those images. But then, if you want to buy that, I might point it to a stock photography website that I’m using for that because I don’t have my own e-commerce platform. And then, I might point it to Alamy and say, “You can buy my image from here if you want to.” So that information can be given through IPTC. But Google also accepts that from schema, from HTML, so just using schema.org with structured data. Then, you can also get information about the creator of an image and the copyright, who it applies to. And that kind of stuff, and this is currently coming from IPTC.
Google Lens
[21:12]
ROXANA: Yes, so, yeah, it was Google Lens, right? So first of all, Google has pushed Lens everywhere. It used to be just kind of in the Google app on the phone, then they put it in the Google search on mobile, and now it’s in Google search on desktop as well. It’s pretty much anywhere you see images, you can just use Google Lens. You can see it in traffic too. If you use Google Lens in image search, instead of anything you do through Google Lens in image search coming to your organic traffic, it actually goes to your referral traffic, and you can see it as Google Lens. And at every stage where they’ve done a change in where Google Lens appears, I’ve seen traffic change as well. So clearly, people are using it, and it’s a growing source of traffic at the moment.
[24:39]
OLESIA: And the traffic, the traffic is not shown in Google Search Console. It’s only in these referrals.
ROXANA: Yeah, I always wondered. I think it is captured there. It just, it’s not separated as Lens, so you don’t know it’s Lens. Like, there’s, it’s not in search appearance, or you know, like it’s not in any of those different areas of search console to tell you. But I think anything you search and then you go to Lens, that search is going to be in there. You just don’t know somebody went to Lens from it.
Bing
[25:27]
ROXANA: I have problems with Bing. I have a love-hate relationship with Bing, because I think its image search is great, but its crawling capability is lazy, um, at best. So, I think Google is more proactive when it comes to crawling the web and identifying pages and wanting to get that information out there for users. And it does, it takes that extra step and it bypasses some issues, and it really tries to find that information. With Bing, I think if it’s not pristine, or easy, or straightforward, Bing won’t put in the work to find it. And I think that’s where I’m not loving it. Because I have a lot of images, but Bing doesn’t know about most of them, whereas Google does, because Google has taken the extra step, has done the work, has found them, and Bing just kind of gave up quite quickly.
[28:13]
ROXANA: If you read Google’s documentation, they always say large and quality images, right? So they do talk about compression and stuff, but they always also push the idea of images have to be great quality, which means you can’t really compress too much because then you lose this quality. In Bing’s documentation, they never talk about quality. They always talk about file size and speed and things like that. So I think that’s where the difference is. If you’re aiming for Google mostly, then keep quality, but that might hurt your Bing experience for images. But if you’re primarily targeting Bing, compress those images to nothing if you can. But that might give you a bad UX when your images look all grainy. So, you know, there’s always, there has to be a balance.
Ranking with Stock Images
[29:57]
ROXANA: Yeah, absolutely. And I’m not just saying it because I work for a stock photography website. I’m saying it because since I started working here, I really looked into this debate because everybody says, “Don’t use stock photos if you want your SEO to work.” And I’ve been looking into it and trying to understand, is it true or not? And it’s not. You can rank stock photos, no problem, as long as they’re relevant for your page. Because the thing that most people forget is that you can rank a page without an image, but you can’t rank an image without a page. And that’s the important bit, because you’re not actually ranking the image, you’re ranking the page as a whole. And if that image is relevant, then you’re also going to have that image in image search, or it might be brought in as a thumbnail in web search, or it might show as a beautiful image in Discover, or whatever it might be. But it’s related to the page itself, not just to the image.
Stop Being Afraid of Stock Photography
[39:56]
ROXANA: Um, probably going to repeat myself, but just to tell people to stop being afraid of stock photography when it comes to SEO. Because the problem is not the image, the problem is how it’s being used. If you use it to pretend you’ve done something, or to kind of fool users in any way, you don’t deserve to rank anyway. So it doesn’t matter if you’re using a stock photo, or you did a quick photo, or whatever it might be. But if you need a relevant image for something, and there’s no way for you to get that image but you have to go get it from a stock photography website, and here, you know, archive and historical, in news for instance, that’s a very easy example. But it might be that you’re writing about some tribe from somewhere, and you get an authentic image of that tribe from a stock photo website, because we have images from all over the world. So, whatever the situation, don’t be afraid of stock images as long as you use them to enrich user experience and not to fool users into believing you’ve done something that never happened, if that makes sense.
[41:01]
OLESIA: Thank you so much, it was so nice to have you, and I was so happy to see you as well.
ROXANA: Same here.
