Image Link Building Services
I really do not like cold outreach. So I tend to focus my link building efforts on tactics that deliver semi passive links with less outreach over the long term.
Image link building is one such method.
I really do not like cold outreach. So I tend to focus my link building efforts on tactics that deliver semi passive links with less outreach over the long term.
Image link building is one such method.
Millions of people each month go off to Google Images, Flickr or other services in the hunt for free to use images. By finding a gap where there’s little to no free to use stock imagery in your niche and filling it with a high quality bank of images licensed under Creative Commons Attribution licensing, you can earn attribution in the form of links when people use your content.
Here’s our approach to image link building services for businesses.
We need to identify gaps where there's a lack of premium quality stock imagery in your niche.
We find those gaps and we start to consider how we could fill them.
We look at what type of imagery in your space is the most in demand.
Based on those findings, we put together a list of image ideas we can create for your company. These ideas need to be relevant to you, proven in demand and in a space where there's an existing gap in provision of high quality photos.
Sometimes it's photos, sometimes it's illustration, sometimes it's concept imagery. Whatever the photos we then move into creating the bank. We like to start with a bank of 30 to 50 images which can expand over time.
Optimised titles and descriptions designed to help the images get found is next on the list. And then we distribute the images via upload to common Creative Commons image banks including Flickr.
People are pretty terrible, in my experience, at actually attributing images properly. So we check who is using them and we look at how they've credited the image. If they've linked already, great. If not, we chase up!
Where someone has used the photo but not linked properly, we contact the corrections department or feedback desk to request a correction to the image attribution. And that's how we build links with images.
We’ve built thousands upon thousands of links using images across our own projects and our clients. Here are some examples.
Our bank of images for this dancewear retailer has landed scores of images on highly relevant websites like these contributing to their overall link profile and in turn contributing to good organic search visibility.
I’m a big believer in testing your tactics on your own sites. So we do. And our image bank has generated almost 200 links from sites including the Big Issue with little more than 30 minutes of work each month.
A simple piece of research for our test site, Micro Biz Mag, on freelance statistics in the UK. So far, the piece has produced over 150 inbound referring domains (without a single outreach email) including
Image link building scales well with simple processes in place for chasing attribution and a little bit of automation help.
Images I produced 10 years ago are still generating links today.
Want links today? Then image link building isn't the approach. With the exception of reactive news images, image link building generally takes a couple of months to begin generating opportunities.
Let's Talk Image Link Building
If you’re looking for more scalable methods of link building and looking to reduce your cold outreach activity, image link building could work for you. Fancy a chat about it? Pop us an email or pick up the phone.