Stock photography can be a great addition to a website when used strategically but given the choice, I will always favour original photography for marketing a local small business. And with AI Mode on the horizon there is even more reason to invest in a local photographer. Want to know why? Read on.
Google has always given prominence to original content and in my experience I see that generally the first to publish will be considered the source. So if that same content then shows up on another website you wouldn’t expect it to have a lot of visibility. Even paraphrasing is something I would avoid unless it’s as part of a comparison or discussion perhaps.
So imagine how that works for a stock photograph that has appeared firstly on the stock photography website and subsequently on a gazillion other websites. I’d call that duplication – wouldn’t you? At the very least it’s not saying anything new so not very original.
Now, lets think about the upcoming AI Mode that Google has already released in other countries (not Australia yet but it’s coming). AI Mode uses multimodal search i.e. multiple inputs – voice, image, video. And I reckon that means your website needs to speak the same language if you want to leverage that in your small business marketing. And leverage is exactly what I like to do when I am managing digital marketing for my small business clients.
So if you are using the same stock photos that every other small business is using as their ‘photography’ then you are missing a huge opportunity.
Now I’m not saying never use stock photography, there are great use-cases of course and I use it myself often, but I do it knowing exactly what, why and how. When you are updating or designing a new website there are a lot of aspects to split your budget across and I want to make sure this is giving the best result.
Perhaps take a look at your website this week and look at the photos on your site with new eyes and armed with this information. Could you do better? I reckon you can. I think most of the time original content is going to work better for you long term.