Written by Michael Gray on April 13, 2011

The following is part of a series on image optimization. In this post we’re going to be looking at sources for images.

There are a lot of sources for stock images on the web. On the web, however, there is a huge divide in prices. While the images from this category are very professional, and very high quality, in this author’s opinion, the cost is extremely overpriced and should only be considered if you are a Madison Avenue Advertising Agency or operate with a similar pricing structure. IMHO paying upwards of $10-$100 per photo is highway robbery, but I’m including them here to be thorough. This includes websites like Getty Photos, Jupiter Images, BigStockPhoto, Corbis Photo and many others. If you use a lot of images, some of them offer subscription pricing, but if you compare them to other sources, I think you’ll find much better deals.

These are similar to the premium image sources above and, in some cases, are even owned by the same companies. There is a slight drop in quality; however, this is offset by image or subscription pricing that is much more affordable and within the budgets of most webmasters, publishers, and designers. These include websites such as Istockphoto, Shutterstock and Photospin.

I used Istockphots for a very long time and was happy with the options; however, in recent years, their pricing model has gotten a bit out of line IMHO. Shuttersstock offers two options: a flat rate that you can use over time (that doesn’t expire) or a monthly/yearly subscription plan that allows you to download a specified number of photos per month. You have to look at how many images you’ll need to figure out which is best for your needs. Photospin is a new stock service. While they have significantly fewer photos than the others, they compensate with extremely reasonable pricing (at the time of this article’s writing, it’s $329 per year). Currently I use both Shutterstock and Photospin. Depending on how important the image/project is and what’s available, I choose between the two. Some of these services offer multi-seat licensing. IMHO these prices are just ridiculous. If you really need this just use light boxes and have one person/computer download the light box contents.

Like the paid stock photography services, there are also free stock photography services. The photos offered through these services can really be hit or miss and of questionable quality. In many cases these services are owned by the premium stock services and try to upsell you to the premium services. These services include Sxc.hu, and StockVault.

These services ask that you notify the photographer and get permission and link back in exchange for using the service. In practice I’ve found this to create such huge bottlenecks in the production process that’s it’s just not worth the cost savings. I avoid these services, instead opting to use creative commons images.

Many professional, amateur, or regular people choose to license their pictures under creative commons licensing. Creative commons is a complex beast beyond the scope of this article to explain (see What is Creative Commons); however, there is subset of creative commons that allows you to reuse photos for commercial purposes. It’s important that you know the difference when you are going down this road. Sources for creative commons images licensed for commercial reuse are Wikipedia, Flickr, and Google Image Search. When using these services make sure you select the creative commons for commercial reuse options:

Creative Commons for Commercial Reuse Options

Google advanced image search options

Some people will put their images into the commercial reuse category and put up a note saying not to reuse it. They are confused and create a headache.  Avoid them because trying to educate them after the fact is pointless. If you want to use creative commons images from Flickr, try the PhotoDropper plugin from Markus. It’s awesome and does all the heavy lifting for you. When you use creative commons images you are required to credit the source–do the right thing and do it. If you use a lot of creative commons images, also think about giving back to the image not just taking by kicking some images of your own back into the creative commons pool. To make the most of creative commons images read How to Optimize Using Creative Commons Images.

Sometimes you are unable to find images you want using the services above; in that case, I recommend doing a search on Flickr. If you find an image you like, contact the owner and see if you can reach an arrangement. Explain to the person what you are doing with their image and how you are using it and that you can give them credit and a link. I’ve been very successful with this tactic. Don’t be dufus when it comes to this: link to a commercial website if they ask you to and give them some good an anchor text too. Really don’t be a jerk. Sometimes you can negotiate a price with them that’s reasonable; for example, I’ve paid $50 for a set of 5 pictures.  It was more than I would have paid for a stock service, but I had better and more unique pictures that no one else had. If you hit a professional photographer, they may ask for several hundred dollars per picture. Politely decline and say it’s out your budget (unless it’s not). They will get the hint and drop the price or move on. Don’t be an idiot and use it without permission because this can come back and bite you in the butt down the road.

Sometimes you need a local picture when you aren’t a local. In cases like this, hiring a local amateur photographer or complete novice can work out. Ask to see some sample pictures so you have some idea of the quality of their work. Be very detailed and descriptive in what you are looking for. Too much detail is always better than too little. For example “take a picture of Joe’s restaurant” is not as helpful as “a clear, in-focus, daytime picture centered on Joe’s restaurant with the complete sign and without any pedestrians or other obstructions in it” will get you two completely different results. Despite the best instructions in the world, you will have a “chuck rate” if you go this route. My advice is to ask for 2-3 times the amount of pictures you want. If you need 5 but ask for 15, you should be able get 5 usable shots unless the person taking pictures really sucks.

So what are the takeaways here:

Check out several premium and paid stock services and find one or two that are in your budget range.Use creative commons in the absence of good paid stock photography.Turn to Flickr to see if you can get access to non creative commons photos.Get custom photos from people using classified services like Craigslist. How to drive traffic with Flickr Photos While Flickr is really a photo sharing, community building tool,...Adding Revenue Streams Into Your Website or Blog One of my more popular posts from 2010 was about...How to Use Tags on Your Blog or Website In my opinion one of the more powerful and underutilized...Optimizing for Creative Commons Images The following post is part of a series on image...Blog News Reporter: Promotion and Growing your Blog In part two we talked about your your blogging approach...Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting ServicesLink Building- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for $295Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory Glass Whiteboards - For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard ReviewLinks From PR9 Sites - - Get In Top 3 Google ASAPKnowEm - Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.Tagged as: Image Optimization - SEO for Images, SEO

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Written by Michael Gray on April 14, 2011

In the most recent 12 months, Google has taken steps to reward websites that are brands, or at least give signals that they algorithmically look like brands. If you’re not national, regional, or local brand, here are some steps you can do to look more brand-like.

… if you’re going to put your eggs in one basket, it better be one you’re holding–not Facebook…I’ve written about Google giving a bonus to websites that had a matching real world address on their website and Whois information. While the example mentioned in that article doesn’t rank as well as it did, it does still rank in the top 50 without any geotargeted inbound anchor text. IMHO having and using a real world address is still an important signal. A post office box isn’t going to cut it: you’ll need a real world street address. If you work out of your home, I understand not wanting to publish that. In that case, investigate using a UPS Store, Regus Business Center, or other local mailbox rental service. I’ve seen them charge as low as $50 a year in some places and as high as $1,000 in others, so shop around. Make sure there is some way for the mail to reach you if anything important gets delivered. Most places will “process” the mail for you for an additional fee. For bonus points, get a local phone number.

Does your website have pages for about us, contact us, privacy, terms of service, disclaimer and other boiler plate pages? People look to see that that they are there and may glance at them to see if you are legit. They don’t want to see the page say “paste your privacy policy here“. If you’ve got a budget, having those pages custom written is never going to hurt you. If you are bootstrapping, use one of the online privacy policy or terms of service generators. Uniquify them by adding your company name, website name, and physical address in them. Personally I keep those pages out of the index with robots “follow,noindex” and the noindex protocol in my robots page, but that’s ’cause I’m anal and OCD about indexing, not because I’m trying to control the flow of pagerank or do any link sculpting.

Hopefully your website is doing press worthy things on a regular basis. Hopefully you’re issuing press releases about those activities as well. Don’t worry about which press release services pass the most link juice, just be concerned about the citation and the secondary links that come from you actually doing something link worthy. Make sure you include that real world address and phone number too.

Do you have a press page and media kit? Wendy Piersall, aka eMom, recently tweeted about a really good press kit she came across. I agree that was a nice press kit. But, while it’s not something you need to launch a website, you should have one soon after launch. Chances are good that it will be a PDF, so make sure it has active links and that real world address and phone number matches your information.

Having a professional logo and design go a long way toward instilling trust in your website visitors. I’m a big fan of thesis (see thesis theme review) and there are lots of thesis designers who can take an out of the box thesis framework and give it a unique, non-thesis look. Again these may not be day 1 expenses, but they are 6-12 month must haves.

Getting a professionally designed logo can run several hundred to thousands of dollars. If it’s in the budget, you might consider it. If your budget is a bit tighter, try a service like 99designs. You can run contests or choose from a wide variety of readily available logos that can be customized for a nominal fee. If you really love the design, you can pay more to get exclusive use of the logo. That’s your call. Personally I choose a design that has a square element that can be easily converted into a favicon. Make sure you make a transparent version of your logo available for people who want to use when they write about you. I’d also have a series of images optimized for your product, images, or location (see building links with creative commons images).

If you still think social media is only a fad, you need to get your head out of the sand and step into reality. At the bare minimum, you should have an active presence on Twitter and Facebook and update them regularly. I’m not saying that you should let Facebook replace your company’s official website. If you’re going to put your eggs in one basket, it better be one you’re holding–not Facebook. Use them as satellite programs as part of your outbound marketing campaign. If you have the resources, and it’s a good match, use LinkedIn and YouTube as well. I also suggest using a service like KnowEm to protect your intellectual properties and trademarks across hundreds of platforms.

Hopefully you had your own Sister Miriam in your life who challenged you to be the best you that you could be…I went to Catholic School. I know–that explains a lot. My math teacher had been around as teacher for a while. In fact, she was actually one of my friend’s mom’s teachers when she was in school. Sister Miriam was a tough cookie to please. If you were REALLY trying, she would cut you some slack. However, if you were a slacker trying to pull one over on her and trying to take advantage of her kindness, she was merciless. She had been around a while, and she had seen every scam that students ever tried to pull to get out of doing work and not live up to their potential. Let’s just say I spent a lot of time in “detention,” and Sister Miriam took an interest in me. She had figured out quite correctly that I was a smart kid who was able to get by without really trying, and that just didn’t sit well with her. Her message didn’t get through then, but I do admire her for trying to get me to actually give a damn about making something out of myself. It may have taken a few years but I learned the lesson and appreciate the effort she took trying to straighten out an angry, mixed up, know it all punk kid. Hopefully you had your own Sister Miriam in your life who challenged you to be the best you that you could be. If Sister Miriam saw your website, would she believe you were legit? Or would she look down at you over a wrinkled nose and bifocals, knowing you took short cuts and tried to pull a fast one over on her? Does your website pass the sniff test? Would you give your credit card number to the site and be reasonably confident it wouldn’t come back to bite you in the butt? If your child was sick, would you trust the information on this website enough to use it?

So what are the takeaways from this post:

Get yourself a real world address and phone number, then use it everywhere.Get yourself the boiler plate privacy, about us, and other associated pages.Make sure you are doing press worthy activities and issuing regular press releases.Get a media kit, make it look really professional and embed links to web content.Get a professional looking logo, then use it consistently in your favicon and social media profiles.Secure your social media profiles and support as many as you can. Do one thing well instead of four things half-heartedly.Make it easy for others to use and share your logo.Make sure your website passes the sniff test and instills a sense of confidence and trust, not just an I-showed-up-but-I’m-napping-in-the-back-of-class feeling. Website Informational Pages Now that I’ve covered long term content and short term...How To Silo Your Website: The Masthead One of the more powerful tools an SEO can use...How To Get Customer Reviews on Your Website While UGC and Reviews can often be a mixed blessing,...How To Silo Your Website: The Breadcrumb Trail In Part 1 we looked at How To Silo Your...How To Silo Your Website:The Sidebar The following post is part of a series on How...Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting ServicesLink Building- Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for $295Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory Glass Whiteboards - For a professional durable white board with no ghosting, streaking or marker stains, see my Glass Whiteboard ReviewLinks From PR9 Sites - - Get In Top 3 Google ASAPKnowEm - Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites.Scribe SEO Review find out how to better optimize your wordpress posts.TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.Tagged as: SEO

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