Adding engaging images is one of the best ways to improve your blog posts and make the content more eye-catching. But finding high-quality, royalty-free images you can use legally takes some work.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll cover where to get stunning free images along with insider tips to optimize, edit, and properly size photos to make your WordPress site faster and more SEO-friendly.
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Why You Need Great Images on Your Blog
Images do more than just visually enhance your blog posts. Well-chosen graphics provide essential benefits:
Increase pageviews and engagement
Articles with images get 94% more views than text-only posts, according to HubSpot. Images pique reader curiosity and make content more scannable.
Improve SEO
Posts with relevant images rank higher in Google search, improving your overall traffic and search visibility.
Set your blog apart
Stock photos used by everyone quickly look generic. Unique images reflect your brand and theme better.
Deliver information
Infographics, charts, screenshots, photos allow you to illustrate concepts and teach readers visually.
Clearly, effective use of imagery is vital for successful blogging. But you want photos that are legal to use, relevant, and optimized. Let‘s discover how to make that happen!
10 Great Places to Find Stunning Royalty-Free Images
Royalty-free means you can use an image in your content, including for commercial purposes like blogs, without paying ongoing royalties. Here are the best sites to find royalty-free stock photos:
1. Unsplash
Unsplash offers beautiful high-resolution photography sourced from its global community of generously contributing photographers.
Key Features:
- Totally free for commercial and non-commercial use.
- Over 2.5 million images and growing daily.
- Great quality photography from talented creators.
Unsplash makes it easy to discover unique, relevant images with its intuitive search and handy browser extensions. All photos are covered by the Unsplash license.
2. Pixabay
Pixabay has an enormous library of over 2.7 million stock photos, vectors, and illustrations you can use completely free.
Key Features:
- Hundreds of thousands added monthly.
- Advanced search tools to find the perfect image.
- Handy browser extensions.
- Download full-resolution photos easily.
Pixabay images are pre-sorted by categories, themes, and file types so browsing is a breeze. Everything can be used for free under Pixabay‘s license terms.
3. Pexels
Pexels is another one of the largest free stock image sites with fresh content added daily.
Key Features:
- 360,000+ high quality images and videos.
- New content added daily.
- Hand-curated images organized by categories.
Pexels offers plenty of options like lightbox and the ability to search by color for the perfect pic. The Pexels license allows both personal and commercial use.
4. Burst
Burst comes from the team at Shopify and focuses on beautiful, high-resolution images and vectors useful for blogs, websites, and other projects.
Key Features:
- Totally free including for commercial use.
- Updated with 30+ images daily.
- Library of over 337,000 photos.
- Handy mobile apps.
Burst is another excellent option with a clean UI and plenty of versatile royalty-free images.
5. Life of Pix
Life of Pix offers a curated collection of free high-resolution photos you won‘t find elsewhere. Updated weekly.
Key Features
- Completely free for personal and commercial use.
- Minimal interface makes finding photos easy.
- Categorized images with search.
- Mobile apps available.
For striking high-quality photography, Life of Pix is a great choice.
6. Gratisography
Gratisography provides stylish imagery for blogs including travel photos, food pics, and motivational quotes.
Key Features:
- Free high-resolution photos.
- Updated weekly with new images.
- Images sorted into categories.
- Creative modern images.
Gratisography won‘t work for all blogs but is fantastic for travel, food, and lifestyle niches.
7. FoodiesFeed
For blogs and sites about food, cooking, restaurants, and recipes, FoodiesFeed offers gorgeous photography of food.
Key Features:
- Thousands of high-quality food photos.
- Detailed metadata for all images.
- New images added weekly.
FoodiesFeed simplifies finding mouth-watering food photos and makes them free to use.
8. StockSnap.io
StockSnap provides a large collection of free stock photos in a range of categories including travel, nature, lifestyle, technology and more.
Key Features:
- Beautiful high-resolution images.
- New photos added weekly.
- Browse by category or color.
As the name suggests, StockSnap offers snapshots perfect for many blogging needs. The images are public domain CC0.
9. Picjumbo
Picjumbo is home to thousands of totally free stock photos including lifestyle, business, food, nature and more.
Key Features:
- Free for commercial and personal use.
- Diverse range of categories to browse.
- Handy lightbox display.
Picjumbo simplifies snagging unique royalty-free images with its clean interface and handy search.
10. Kaboompics
Kaboompics offers an eclectic library of over 9,000 free stock photos including people, cityscapes, animals, and nature.
Key Features:
- Growing collection of photos.
- Browse by category or search.
- Helpful lightboxes and filters.
Kaboompics has new images added every day making it a solid choice for royalty-free graphics.
Even More Great Sources for Royalty-Free Images
- NegativeSpace – High-res photos for free.
- ISO Republic – High quality free stock photos.
- Snapwire Snaps – Free stock photography.
- Reshot – New free photos daily.
- Freepik – Vectors, photos, PSDs.
- pxhere – Free public domain images.
This covers many of the top sites offering gorgeous royalty-free stock photography suitable for blogs and websites. Look for images relevant to your niche and style.
Optimize Images for Web Before Adding to WordPress
Simply downloading and uploading an image to your WordPress site can cause problems like slow load times. Instead, you should always optimize images for web use first.
Follow these tips for proper image optimization:
Pick the Right File Type
- Use JPEG for complex images like photos.
- Use PNG for simple images like logos.
- Use GIF for animated images.
Compress Images
- Use Photoshop, Canva or other image editors to compress JPEGs to 70-80% quality.
- Compress PNGs with tiny quality loss.
- Reduce GIF colors for smaller files.
Resize Wisely
- For full bleed images, resize to at least 2000 pixels wide.
- For insertion in posts, resize to fit column but not smaller than 1024px.
- Don‘t scale images down in WordPress itself.
Crop Carefully
- Maintain important image elements when cropping.
- Use the right aspect ratio for the image space.
- Give images space by avoiding edge cropping.
By preparing your images properly before adding them to WordPress, you ensure they look crisp and load fast for users.
How to Add Images to WordPress Posts
Once you‘ve optimized your graphics, adding them to posts is easy:
1. Upload
- Upload full size images to Media Library. Don‘t scale them down.
2. Insert Image
- Use the media insertion tool in editor to add image to post.
3. Resize Responsively
- Let WordPress handle responsively resizing images for different devices.
4. Include Alt Text
- Add descriptive alt text so images show when embedded.
5. Credit When Needed
- Include any required creator credits or attributions.
And you’re done! Well-sized, fast loading images improve UX and SEO.
Bonus Tips for Better Images in WordPress
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Delete unused images regularly to declutter your Media Library.
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Use a plugin like ShortPixel or Optimole to compress images automatically.
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Resize images properly according to your theme‘s requirements.
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Pick an image CDN like Cloudinary to improve loading speeds.
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Add metadata like titles, captions, alt text to improve SEO.
Why Image Size Matters for WordPress Sites
Picking the right image sizes has a big impact on your website‘s speed and SEO. Here are key benefits of proper sizing:
Faster Page Load Times
Large, unoptimized images load slower and harm site speed. With 53% of site visits abandoned when pages take too long to load, image file size matters.
Better Search Rankings
Optimized images boost your SEO. Smaller file sizes help pages load faster, which improves user experience signals search engines measure.
Lower Hosting Costs
Unoptimized images waste bandwidth which drains your hosting plan limits faster. Downsizing images saves storage space and data transfer costs.
Tailored Image Sizes
Resizing images for each place they appear (like thumbnails vs. full width) ensures a tailored fit. Serving improperly scaled images decreases quality.
Improved Responsiveness
Proper image dimensions let your theme serve the right image size for different screens and devices. This improves responsive design for mobile users.
Better Focus on Important Elements
Cropping images thoughtfully guides the viewer‘s eye by emphasizing key points of interest and information.
In summary, correctly sized and optimized images are better for your site speed, SEO, hosting costs, responsiveness, and overall user experience. Pay close attention to image dimensions!
Recommended Image Sizes for WordPress Sites
Here are some recommended image sizes to use that balance quality and performance:
- Full Width: At least 2000 pixels wide
- Inserted in Posts: 1024 pixels wide minimum
- Thumbnail Size: 300 pixels wide
- Mobile Size: 480 pixels wide
Refer to your specific theme‘s documentation for details on image dimensions it utilizes. Size images appropriately before uploading for best results.
How Image CDNs Improve Website Performance
Once you have well-optimized graphics prepared, you can make them load even faster using a content delivery network.
A CDN stores image files in data centers around the world and serves them from the closest location to each visitor. This provides:
Faster Load Times
Shorter distances between servers and visitors mean images load much quicker.
Improved Site Uptime
CDNs have redundancy so if one server goes down, images still load from another.
Better User Experience
CDNs improve site performance. Fast loading pages convert more visitors.
Reduced Bandwidth Costs
By handling traffic, CDNs save on your site‘s bandwidth requirements and costs.
Enhanced Security
CDNs act as a buffer between your server and users, improving security.
Popular image CDN options like Optimole and Cloudinary often provide WordPress plugins that make integration a breeze.
Summing Up
Well-chosen imagery makes for more engaging and successful blog posts. Using royalty-free stock photos saves money while still providing high-quality graphics.
Just be sure to optimize your images properly before adding them to WordPress. Compressing files, choosing the right format, resizing and cropping carefully, and utilizing a CDN will ensure your photos enhance rather than hinder your site.
There you have comprehensive tips for finding and using the best royalty free images to make your blog shine!
