Images are a very important ingredient for any successful blog!

Studies have shown that not only are images VERY important for your blog (in several ways, more on that later), they also keep viewers more engaged in your content, meaning, they will spend more time on your website/blog, now that IS a good thing :)

Go back to the nineties (or even early noughties), actual newspapers were still a big thing, the digital age hadn't quite took over as it has today. Newspapers were mostly big chunks of text, paragraph by paragraph (like the image on the right). 

No-one thought anything of it because that was just the way it was. Fast forward to today and the difference is huge, not just in the way information is devlivered to us, but also our reading habits, the internet has made us lazy readers!
We expect fantastic, beautiful images to accompany the story/article we are reading, the visual representation of an image not only breaks up the large chunks of text, but can transport you to a place in your mind that text alone could just never do. Images can invoke strong emotions.
Have a look at the examples below, one is simply a description in text only, the other is the same description but is accompanied with an image, which engages you more?

---

A close-up photograph of a piece of delicious caramel shortcake, how the crumbly delicate biscuit sits below the mouth watering caramel, topped with the tastiest 100% milk chocolate.

---

---

See how having an image to back-up the text makes a World of difference? If you are a lover of caramel shortcake, I bet your mouth was watering?

Now I'm not saying text alone can't give a detailed description, of course it can, it's just having the right image (and this is very important), just brings it all together, just like the old saying - A picture is worth a thousand words!

So, having understood all that, where do we find images to use in our blog, and more importantly, do they match our content, and are we allowed to use them?

Sourcing images for your blog

Using images that match what your content is about is important for a few reasons, firstly it helps keep viewers engaged and interested in your blog if you use images to help tell your story, it's pointless blogging about food, then using an image of a washing machine (silly I know, but you get my point), keep them related!
Secondly, using images to match your blog content can help with your SEO (page rank), as long as you give the images proper titles and descriptions, search engines will use this to match a search result. So rather than using generic titles like IMG-2.jpg, use descriptive titles that tells search engines what the image actually is.

Make sure you are allowed to use and publish the image(s) and you aren't breaking any copyright rules, this will be costly for you!
You can't simply do an image search, find one that you like and use it, more often than not, the image you have just downloaded to use will be copyright protected, meaning you have to either get permission from the image author or purchase the image before you can legally use it.

Also be careful regarding 'Royalty Free' images. This phrase can be very misleading, 'Royalty Free' does not necessarily mean the image is free of charge or there is no license involved, you still have to read the small print before you use a 'Royalty Free' stock image.

Here at The Stock Image Hut, we own every single image, so you can be safe in the knowledge that whenever you use one of our images, be it an image you have purchased from us or an image from our free section, you will not be infringing on any copyright rules, we have one unique license which covers all our images and gives you more freedom when using your stock image.
All you need to start using our images is simply open an account, totally free of charge, only your name and email required, that's it!
Once you have an account, you can purchase and download any image - without the watermark - for use in your projects, blogs etc. All your downloads are stored in your very own Admin area where you can re-download at any time free of charge. This also applies to our fantastic free section.

Check out our main image section HERE!