Image by geoftheref

Aside from organically spreading through social media sites and SEO-ing their links offsite, one of the best ways individual blog posts can get attention from the Internet is by optimizing your actual content. This involves creating original write ups intended for both human readers and search engines to go through and then polishing them with relevant images. Depending on their quality, context and relevance, images will definitely help magnetize both your existing audience and attract new, untapped markets to read your piece.

Unfortunately, not all bloggers are created equal and some may lack the creative skills and/or the proper equipment to craft illustrations, render animated elements or shoot photos of their own. Unsurprisingly, its vastness, the Internet, is just a browser click away to aid you.

Using images from third party sources online can benefit both bloggers and artists the same way guest blogging can gain leverage for both parties. Link exchanges are obviously here as artists, when attributed properly within the blog, can jumpstart reader interest and drive traffic to their own sites as well as gain potential paying gigs. In the same regard, your blog can be promoted to these artists’ networks and you get to discover talents that you may want to tap for employment or partnerships for future marketing endeavors.

But where do you find relevant images? Well, launch your Web browser of choice and get ready for some eye candy as we bring some of the best places online to get images.



Perhaps one of the most popular image and video repositories nowadays, the Yahoo-owned Flickr is fast becoming a very reliable service bloggers turn to for hosting and image sourcing. Late last year, they announced that they’re hosting four billion photos from an expansive network of users from around the world. This gives you a vast array of image options although you’d have to rummage through a lot of personal photos of ranging shoddy qualities. Its handy search box and dead-simple interface make sure you find gems easily.

As copyright issues and privacy concerns from users in fear of losing ownership over their photos are notoriously touchy online, Flickr enables its users to specify different types of licensing for every photo upload via Creative Commons. In addition, Flickr also has a dedicated attributions page that organizes photos by license type; it would be best if you start your image search here. Simply click through a desired photo to find out what type of licensing it’s under and just be careful in following the terms it states and you’re good to go. This should save you from takedown notices and other legal actions later on.

Nota bene:
The lovely image you see on top of this blog post was actually discovered using this method under the Attribution-NoDerivs license that permits anyone to use it as long as it’s not altered in any form and that the creator is given credit for it.

When doing any kind of searches online, we’re naturally drawn to the big three of search engines. As search technologies scale up, they’ve all come out with image search features: Google Image Search, Yahoo Image Search and Bing Images. Each one runs its own image indexing engines and protocols which will give you different results per inquiry. With every search term, all three would yield results pages with large thumbnails with good filtering systems that run the gamut of qualifiers like image type, file size and resolution, among other, to help you get the images you need.

As of writing, only Yahoo and Google Image Searches feature dedicated filter options for finding licensed images specifically allowed by their artists for reuse and repurpose. This is readily available within Yahoo’s search interface and under Google’s Advanced search option. Bing Images, meanwhile, has yet to include this in their latest version, though you can probably find a way around this by way of your specified search terms.

No talk of photos, image searches and online media usage would be complete without mentioning stock photos. For years, stock photos have been the image source of many in both the traditional print media and it’s still in heavy usage in today’s digital landscape. As you may know, there a lot of sites online that house stock photos and they range from the services that offer pay-per-image and carry wide selections of good quality images, to those that run on royalty-free, attribution-based systems.

Stock.xchng
With over two million registered users, Stock.xchng currently carries around 400,000 images for you to scroll through. Registration is free and you can be sure the photos on its database are of good quality as they need to go through an approval process before they make it to stock photo primetime.

StockVault
Geared for providing images for personal and non-commercial design uses, StockVault carries good quality stock photos in medium and high resolutions. Its images are sourced from participating emerging and professional photographers which are also featured through the site’s frequent Photographer Focus series of posts that detail their chosen equipment and, at times, photography tips.

iStockPhoto
A subsidiary of Getty Images, iStockPhoto is a service that lets you buy stock photos, vector illustrations, videos, audios and both animated and interactive graphic Flash files ala carte. Signup is free and files are purchased with credits which you can procure by either going the buy-as-you-go model or through various subscription options. Pricing varies depending on the size of the photo you would like to buy.

DeviantArt fosters one of the largest online social networks of traditional and digital artists, photographers, filmmakers, 2D and 3D animators, interface designers and comic book creators. With 10 years of existence online, the site now houses 100 million uploads (or “Deviations”) from its 14.5 million members from all over the world. I’ve been a member of this site for over seven years, and I can vouch for the excellent quality of work an impressively large number of members upload into it. That being said, it’s a great place to jump onto whether you’re looking for a great-looking image that’ll definitely visually attract readers or you’re just looking for something beautiful to look at.

Here, images are organized by art type though there’s the ubiquitous search textbox for your use. As this acts like a showcase for passionate artists, DeviantArt also has Creative Commons ingrained into its interface to enable its members to permit or forbid reuse and indicate how they’d like their works to be used.

As a good measure, it’s best to contact the artists if you intend to use their image whether they’re subscribed to certain licenses or not. Simply tell them where and how you intend to use their works and provide them with links to your site before you upload their image and after you’ve posted it on your blog. After all, your blog post will technically be a collaborative effort with them providing the visual element/s and they can even offer up advice on image use for your future blog posts. This can leave a good impression and will help you build a relationship which can later evolve into healthy partnerships for your other campaigns.

Tags: Artworks, Bing Images, content, content creation, DeviantArt, Flickr, Google Image Search, Illustrations, Images, iStockPhoto, Photography, Photos, search engines, Social Media, Stock Photos, Stock.xchng, StockVault, Yahoo Image Search