I’ve published many posts about the perils of using copyrighted images and photos. Several bloggers I know have been fined for downloading copyrighted images and photos, including when they reblogged posts.
Did you know that WordPress offers free, high-quality images and photos to enhance the visual appeal of your WordPress website or blog?
You’re searching for the right image for your new blog post. Rather than doing a Google search in a separate tab — and running the risk of using an image you don’t have rights to — use the free images and photos WordPress offers.
To avoid any chances of being fined for using copyrighted images and photos, the best advice is to always try and use your own photos and images in your blog posts.
Of course, you could choose not to include any images or photos, but given that posts that include photos or images get 70% more traffic, you should add at least one image or photo to all your blog posts.
Where Do I Find The Free Images And Photos WordPress Offers?
- Add an Image block to your blog post.
- Click on the ‘Select Image‘ link to open a new menu.
- The free images and photos are under ‘Pexels Free Photos‘ and ‘Openverse‘.
Pexels Free Photos
- When you click Pexels Free Photos, a new window will open that includes a search bar.
- Add a description of the image or photo you are looking for in the search bar and click the ‘Search‘ button.
- Look through the results, click the image you want to use and click the ‘Select‘ button.
- Click the ‘Load More‘ button at the bottom of the page to see more results.
When you select an image from Pexels Free Photos, it is downloaded to your media library. Remember to add information about the image to help readers with sight impediments and who may use speech software on their devices.
WordPress will have already completed the title of the image or photo and added credit details, so the only information you need to add is Alt Text and Description.
Openverse
Openverse works like Pexels Free Photos. It’s a search engine for openly licensed media, which gives access to over 600 million Creative Commons licensed and public domain image and audio files. All files can be used free of charge.
You can use the search box to find content licensed for commercial use and content that may be modified.
If you use any images or photos from Openverse, they are downloaded to your media library. You’ll need to complete the Alt Text and Description boxes, giving the image/photo details.
It’s Not Only WordPress That Offers Free Images And Photos.
Several websites offer free images that you can use on your WordPress website. These websites curate collections of high-quality images that are free to use, often under various Creative Commons licenses. Here are some popular websites you can explore:
Review and respect the license terms associated with each image when using images from these sites. Providing proper attribution to the photographer or the source is always good practice.
WordPress Plugins
Another convenient way to find free images within your WordPress editor is by using plugins specifically designed for this purpose. These plugins integrate with popular free image websites, allowing you to search and insert images directly from your WordPress dashboard.
Some notable plugins for finding free images include:
Installing and activating these plugins will add additional options to your media library, making browsing and selecting free images for your content effortless.
Note: Plugins are not available on all WordPress plans.
Image SEO Best Practices
While finding free images for your WordPress blog is essential, optimising any images or photos you use for search engines is equally crucial. Following some basic image SEO best practices can improve your blog’s visibility and attract more organic traffic. Here are a few tips:
- Use descriptive filenames and alt tags that reflect the image content.
- Optimise image file sizes to improve site loading speed.
- Add relevant captions and descriptions to provide more context.
- Ensure images are responsive and look good on all devices.
By incorporating these strategies, you enhance the visual appeal of your content while improving your blog’s overall SEO performance.
Let’s Wrap It Up.
- Finding free images and photos for your WordPress website or blog is easier than ever.
- Whether you explore the WordPress options, leverage free image websites, or use dedicated plugins, the possibilities are abundant.
- Adhering to image licensing requirements and optimising your images for SEO will ensure a visually appealing and optimised blog.
So go ahead and utilise the resources available to you, and make your WordPress blog shine with stunning images that complement your content!
Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Disclaimer: Always review and respect each image’s terms and conditions and licensing rights. The information provided in this article is for educational purposes only and should not be considered legal advice.
Where do you get the images and photos you use on your blog? If you have any questions about using free images and photos on your blog, leave them in the comments section. Alternatively, please join the discussion and conversation if you’d like to add any information about using free images and photos.
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this is awesome blogging advice, hugh! many thanks for it!
I’m glad it has helped, Carol anne. Enjoy all those free images.
Excellent advice and you are smart to remind readers that your post is not legal advice, Hugh. Once WP added pexels and the other plug-ins, adding images to blog posts became much easier to do. Since I run a photography challenge I use my own images of course, LOL! I haven’t tried Openverse yet. Sometimes I like to use Bitmoji or clip art for my blog signatures. There are image sites with public domain licensing that give permission to use. Some government-sponsored sites like this one https://www.loc.gov/free-to-use/ offer free images, some historical. This may be a US site but it probably doesn’t matter. I read somewhere that copywritten images may expire after 50-100 years. Very helpful, Hugh.
I do like your blog signatures, Terri. They are fun and certainly give your blog a friendly and welcoming feel.
The best advice is to always use our own images. Free image sites like Pexels Free Photos are great, but SEO tends to rank blog posts lower when they contain images from free sites. That’s one reason why I only use them if I really don’t have anything of my own to use.
I know of a few bloggers who continue to use images they’ve picked up from search engines and that are probably copyrighted. Some think their blog is so small that nobody will come after them, but that’s not the case. I think it better to be safe than sorry.
Thanks, Hugh, that’s very nice if you to say so. I didn’t know about the SEO rankings. Good to know. When I was working on my fitness book, I tried to capture images of people walking, etc. But often I used Unsplashes images for those fitness posts. Even with these free image sites, I don’t use images of people’s faces. Bloggers argue they were paid for but I wouldn’t take the chance. But free-use images have come a long way. Thanks again for the informative post!
How did I not notice this? I have a Canva membership so I often use photos and images from there, but with this I don’t even have to leave my blog. I really don’t know why I’ve never tried it, thanks so much!
I’m glad this helped. Sometimes, we don’t know about things until somebody points it out to us. But this free media library is certainly a very useful feature from WordPress.
Your post won the linky party, Hugh!
That’s great news, Janice. Thank you.
Oh wow, Hugh, I did not know that this was a thing offered through WordPress but I am really glad I know now! That is incredibly helpful information. I use free photos frequently and I often struggle to find what I want and then I do get a little nervous that I might be violating some copyright laws. Next time I need a stock image, I will definitely search the WordPress images. Thanks so much for sharing this!
Shelbee
I’m delighted this post has helped, Shelbee. I’d recommend removing any images you’re not sure are free to use from your blog posts. But don’t forget to also remove them from the media library of your blog. Unfortunately, when a post gets deleted, any images on that post remain in the media library.
Excellent information, Hugh. I mostly use Pixabay and then use Squoosh to compress the image. I also like to credit the photographer at the bottom of my posts. I reuse images that I feel are a good pairing with my content.
When I recently deleted a couple of categories from my main blog and moved them to my other blog, I also removed those images taking care not to remove an image that has been used in another existing post,
I think some bloggers forget to remove images from their media library after deleting blog posts, Eugi. Thus, they see no improvement in the storage space in their media library.
Thanks for sharing details of where you get images for your blog and also how you compress them (to save storage space).
You’re welcome, Hugh.
Excellent article, followed
Thank you. What was it that made you think it was excellent? I value feedback about my posts as it’s helpful when deciding what to write for future posts.
When I started my blog, I didn’t use any images. Then, I started adding images but knew nothing about the right size image or alt text so I ended up going back and reworking all my images about a year after I started my blog. These days, I use a combination of my own photos and images I source from Canva, and I use the ShortPixel image optimizer plugin to compress them so the pages load faster.
That’s great to know, Michelle, especially about reducing the size of images so that your blog does not take a longtime to download. Thanks for mention what you use to reduce the size of images too. It’ll be helpful for other readers.
Great information. I almost always use my own images but it’s good to know that these other options are out there.
Have you ever written about a streamlined way to reduce photo image size? I have my method (I load each one into TinyPNG and compress them before loading them onto my post), but it takes more time than I’d like and I wonder if it’s the most efficient way. Also, how about going back and reducing the image size of photos in older blog posts: do I have to delete each one from my post (and my WP image archives), reduce the size of the original (assuming I still have it) and reload them into the post? Yikes!
Have a look at this post, Janis. I think it’ll answer your questions, but feel free to ask any others.
I will check out those free images – I try to use only one own pics but sometimes it’s not possible- so I’ve used Bing. I always cite them as my source but I’ve never felt safe doing so. Thanks Hugh for another informative post!
I do not recommend looking for images or photos to use on your blog using any SEOs such as Google and Bing. It’s a minefield and you’ll probably have already downloaded images and photos that are copyrighted. I’d recommend you remove them not just from your blog posts but also your blog’s media library.
Use only sites like the ones mentioned in this post. It’s a much safer option.
Very helpful Hugh! Thanks!
You’re welcome, Paul.
I am writing a post about using photos and videos on WP. Would it be okay to add a link to this post on mine? It’ll be published tomorrow
Hi Sadje, yes, please feel free to add a link. Thank you.
Thanks Hugh
Very good advice, Hugh. I used Unsplash and Pixabay when creating the trailers for my books. Most of the photos are mine, but I was able to find the ones I wanted with relative ease, and adding an attribution is not much to ask.
I agree about adding an attribution, Dan. It takes little time to do and goes a long way in helping others.
Thanks for sharing details of where you get images from for your books and posts.
Important advice, thanks.
Are you referring to adding a caption under an photo or something else?
Adding captions to photos and images does help those with site impediments and who use speech software. I’ve had a number of blind bloggers thank me for adding captions to all my photos and images. However, adding a description about the image in the alt text box also helps them. This post give more details.
I like to reduce the space taken by photos before posting them (so I don’t run out of space and have to upgrade). I seem to recall being able to do that with WP Pexels pics once upon a time in an edit screen, but that facility disappeared. Now I look elsewhere (usually flckr) and add the credit to the pic itself using using Paint 3D.
Although I must admit to reusing many of the pics in my WP media as often as I can.
There’s no problem with reusing images, if they fit the post. I’ve done the same, plus it saves on storage space.
You can reduce the size of images from Pexels Free Photos but WordPress do not make it easy to find where to do it, although some of the images I tried out while writing this post didn’t take up much space anyway.
Thanks for sharing what you do for images on your blog, Cathy.
Your first post about using photos and risking to post some with copyrights on them (also the “reblog matter) woke me up! I have been only using images of WordPress or Pixaby since. I also worked myself through old posts, deleting those probable copyright images. Thanks for the hint with the information about the image. I have not thought of it yet!
Good to hear you’ve deleted any images from posts you were not sure about the copyright to, Erika.
Yes, it’s so important to complete details about images and photos we add to our posts. Not only does it help with organic traffic to our blogs from SEOs like Google, but it’s also of a great help to those with site impediments and who may use speech software that describes the images and photos on our blogs. If that information is blank, it’s of no help to them.
Not completely through yet. But hopefully soon!
So from now on there will be a description below the images 👍
Great news.
What happened to you post about comments? Did I miss it?
It got published 10 Minutes ago. You might have gotten a pingback. If not, please, let me know!
I went out, and there it was waiting in my inbox. Thanks, Erika. And yes, I got the pingback, which I’ve just approved. Great to link up with you and see what discussions transpire on your post. I’ll be linking to your post, along with another post by another blogger about the same subject, in an upcoming post.
So this subject must really draw attention. And to tell from the comments, many observe it the same or in a similar way. Thank you for adding the link of my post to your post.
You’re welcome, Erika.