Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Creative Commons Images Good for SEO?
-
I've been looking at large image packages through iStock, Getty, Fotolia and 123RF, but before spending a bunch of money, I wanted to get some of your feedback on Creative Commons images.
Should be worried that something found on Google Images > Search Tools > Usage Rights section can be used without issue or legal threats from the big image companies so long as they are appropriately referenced?
AND will using these types of images and linking to the sources have any affect on SEO efforts or make the blog/website look spammy in Google's eyes because we need to link to the source?
How are you using Creative Commons images and is there anything I should be aware of in the process of searching, saving, using, referencing, etc?
Patrick
-
Hey Federico! Thanks for your note about the images linking from a site to the author's site with a NoFollow link. We thought that was the answer, but wanted to get confirmation and appreciate you reassuring our gut feeling.
I may have not been too clear in my question, but we aren't trying to rank images for SEO as we know the original authors will get top priority (hopefully).
Per the stock photo accounts, we have spoken with the copyright teams from iStock/Getty and 123RF and they are of the same nature. If we, the company, buy images on behalf of our clients, then we are not allowed to send the client the raw file or a copy of the raw file, as that would break their copyright rules. However, we can use that said image for any number of websites or blogs as we choose since we have the royalty free rights to that file. It really is such a grey area, but when we talk with clients we inform them that if they want any images for the website/blog and wish to use those same images for any print material (brochures, magazine ads, flyers, etc) then we ask them to open an account with the respective site and purchase the images, so they hold the rights. We then upload the images and then delete from our systems. It's too much of a hassle.
I will review the link you shared for the FlickR CC images. Thanks for sharing that! - Patrick
-
It won't make your site look spammy if the content you are publishing isn't spam. CC images require you to link back to the original source, you can even use a nofollow attribute on those links.
But still, as the images are not yours, you won't benefit from image search, as Google will list the original image posted by the author instead of yours.
There are royalty free stock photos that you can use and they aren't that expensive if you are on a subscription. Like Fotolia offers a subscription for 5 images at $25 per mo. But you can download a lower resolution one, which will deduct half a credit and then you can download 10 images. Most likely, you don't need the one that's worth 1 entire credit as the 1/2 credit one is large enough.
PS: Here's a post from Ann Smarty about how to use CC images from flickr: http://www.seosmarty.com/flickr-creative-commons/
Hope that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO on dynamic website
Hi. I am hoping you can advise. I have a client in one of my training groups and their site is a golf booking engine where all pages are dynamically created based on parameters used in their website search. They want to know what is the best thing to do for SEO. They have some landing pages that Google can see but there is only a small bit of text at the top and the rest of the page is dynamically created. I have advised that they should create landing pages for each of their locations and clubs and use canonicals to handle what Google indexes.Is this the right advice or should they noindex? Thanks S
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bedynamic0 -
SEO for multiple languages [Arabic]
Hello all, I am currently managing a Marketplace that comes in two different languages: English & Arabic. The English website is, fortunately, doing quite well in terms of SEO performances but, not the Arabic one. The website has two kinds of content: Static content: controlled by me. It includes menu items, navigation, static pages etc which is properly translated among the two languages User-uploaded content: It includes ads/news posted by the user which may not be translated to Arabic if they chose not to do it. Now if somebody goes to the Arabic website and check a news item that doesn't have an Arabic translation, it will show the English title. I am assuming, serving content in a different language that is specified in the hreflang is a straight no, right?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MozammilStorat0 -
Onsite SEO vs Offsite SEO
Hey I know the importance of both onsite & offsite, primarily with regard to outreach/content/social. One thing I am trying to determine at the moment, is how much do I invest in offsite. My current focus is to improve our onpage content on product pages, which is taking some time as we have a small team. But I also know our backlinks need to improve. I'm just struggling on where to spend my time. Finish the onsite stuff by section first, or try to do a bit of both onsite/offsite at the same time?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey1 -
Images with a token in the url, in Drupal. How does it affect to SEO?
Hi everyone! I am checking now a website that works with Drupal, and I found that images have urls like this... http://www.brandname.com/sites/default/files/styles/directory_xyz/public/name-of-the-picture.png?itok=T89RpzrK I was wondering how an URL like that with the token at the and, can affect to SEO. I cound't find anything. Anyone knows? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite0 -
Are these URL hashtags an SEO issue?
Hi guys - I'm looking at a website which uses hashtags to reveal the relevant content So there's page intro text which stays the same... then you can click a button and the text below that changes So this is www.blablabla.com/packages is the main page - and www.blablabla.com/packages#firstpackage reveals first package text on this page - www.blablabla.com/packages#secondpackage reveals second package text on this same page - and so on. What's the best way to deal with this? My understanding is the URLs after # will not be indexed very easily/atall by Google - what is best practice in this situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
SEO Advice for Angular JS
We are changing our homepage (and gradually the rest of the site) to Angular JS.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | theLotter
In order not to lose anything in terms of SEO we are implementing Hashbangs + escaped fragment snapshots. Are there any other SEO considerations you think we should have and/or additional elements that we could add to the page to improve it in terms of SEO?0 -
What should I cover in a SEO proposal ?
What should I cover in a SEO proposal? Is there any sample SEO Proposal template in SEOMoz?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kashyaplakkad1 -
Migrating online store to subdomain using shopify and effects on seo and energy down the road for seo
I'm looking for some clarity... Looking at using Shopify for an existing online store that we have to migrate. Setting up the store with shopify means we will be using a subdomain such as shop.mywebsite.com instead of mywebsite.com/shop. The following are points to consider when responding The client currently has an online store, however it's a proprietary shopping store and CMS that has since gone defunct and they need to migrate to an alternative in order to survive online against new CMS systems that allow the site and its content to be better optimized. There is a lot of existing SEO done on the current site that we don't want to loose PR on. There is roughly 2000 products Client has a fixed budget, dealing with checkout issues, custom work and various other "bugs" seems to be easier controlled with Shopify...thus budget can be used more on content/strategy and migration We want to run the main site in Wordpress and are wanting to use Shopify since it supports a gateway, has great features and seems like it would allow us to get more bang for the buck and can focus more on the main site and content strategy and drive traffic to the subdomain store if needed Or main concern is the effort of migrating 2000+ products to shopify and the traffic and PR it gives the current site will have a negative effect on the main domain itself. Should we really be considering this path? The domain is diveidc.com One main benefit to the subdomain is the ability to clearly segment products from the service portion of the site in the analytics and focus 2 clear strategies and track it in a very defined manner. We're really on the fence with this...any thoughts are welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MAGNUMCreative0