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Have you ever come across a certain website and wondered where its featured stock images were gotten from because of how eye-catching they were?

Or have you ever seen any site image that has made you cringe or roll your eyes so hard because of how completely generic and cliché they were?

Or just simply because of how they didn’t seem to relate with the content?

Well, they say “pictures are worth a thousand words”. However, using the wrong stock images on your site pages or in your content can easily ruin your online reputation.

Instead of boosting it, they’ll plunge you right down the content ladder. even as this may seem too insignificant to be top priority.

Stock images not only help to beautify your content, but they also help to further pass its message across to your viewers before they’ve even completely finished reading through.

So, it would be quite a comical situation when your content is about “How to look after your tech”, but there’s a low quality image of a girl smiling at the camera in your content.

You can imagine how totally irrelevant that can look, right?

How to find stock images the smart way.

In order to avoid instances like the above, here are our specially handpicked steps to guide you in picking the perfect stock images to feature in your content.

You can also check out our SEO Guide for ranking high by doing little.

1. Searching smart equals quality stock images

Finding the perfect stock image(s) for your content can be quite a hustle. Especially when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for.

If you do, how to find it is a problem.

Well, remember those long end hours in English and Grammar class? Well, they’re about to pay off.

Sometimes, even while we think we’re applying the right words in our search quest, particularly one that’s related to our content, we still aren’t able to find the right stock images in the search results.

So, what should we do next?

Apply synonyms. If that word didn’t work for you, then maybe that image is hiding under the cover of another similar word.

Maybe you can’t find it under “food” because it’s hiding under keyword “edibles”. And speaking of finding stock Images, Pexels is one great site to search for high quality stock images.

2. Be Wise About Size

It’s not advisable to place just any kind of image size anywhere you can think to in your content. Cramming it with the wrong image size and orientation can make your page look messy.

The various image size ranges you can use in your content start from the full-width header images. Those belong way up there at the top of your site, and are responsible for giving your site visitors a good first impression.

Also, they give readers ideas about what your blog stands for. It all ends at the smaller sized pictures that should normally fit into your content.

Every image size serves a purpose. So, misusing them can be disastrous for your page. Canva can give you nice templates for images, and is also part of the best logo designers in 2020.

3. Colour and Contrast with Caution

It’s best to go for those free images whose colours match and best suit your sites own theme colours. This is to enhance uniformity, and also give off a natural vibe.

Over contrasted stock images may seem too unrealistic. Photo editing apps like Photoshop’s very own Lightroom can help you tweak and improve things like that, if you’re good with them.

4. Choose Text-Friendly Images

If you’re going to include texts in your stock images, then pick pictures with subtle backdrops. It’s the safest option.

It can be very confusing to any eye viewing your content when you’ve placed a “stay safe” message on an image, but your text is too entangled with a shouty background. Your viewers will be stuck trying to figure out what in the world you’re trying to say.

Or even where your texts begin from and end in the picture.

To make it easier for them to figure it out, select pictures with simple backgrounds where viewers can tell what they are looking at.

5. Choose a Reliable and Stable Source

Have a unique theme of your own. Let all the images you feature in your content have similar feels and styles to them.

So that if anyone were to see them anywhere else, they can easily think, “Hey! This reminds me of (insert your site page or content name)!”.

This works best if you have contact with a particular photographer or uploader of a certain style of stock images. Or even better, you can create your own stock images!

This way, all your featured images have similar looks to them and are not overly generic, or too cliché.

Because let’s face it, there are thousands of pages out there that use the same types of images.

Standing out among them will boost your site rep. Creating your own stock images will also help to reduce your chances of violating copyrights.

The big idea.

Often times, the most important question we can ask ourselves, when stock image hunting, is, “what do I want my site to be remembered for?”.

Is it that funny picture of a guy tripping over his own shoelace in my “Falling for Him/Her” relationship article?

Or that image with a girl cleaning her phone screen in my “Tech Hygiene – Your Techvantage Over Techfection” write-up?

Eventually, you’d come to find that relatability and uniqueness in stock image selection is a major key.