Photos play a big role in how we connect with the world, whether that’s on social media with our family and friends or as a consumer on a business’ website. They help us understand concepts, give us a better sense of what something is, and can make or break our interest in something. How often has reading a recipe with just text made you want to make a dish, as compared to recipes with a beautiful photo? A picture is worth a thousand words, as the old adage goes, and that’s never been more true for your web strategy than now. Without a great photo, a catchy title for your latest blog post will only get you so far — and your post is almost certain to do poorly on predominantly visual services like Pinterest.

So how can you get a great photo to illustrate your post without breaking the bank with stock photos? Services like MorgueFile or Creative Commons have provided a way to get photos free for years, but finding a great photo appropriate for your topic usually requires digging through page after page of lame images. Over the past year, we’ve seen several new services, such as Unsplash and Gratisography, pop up to tackle that problem with weekly, curated selections of great photos, available for free. It’s made a big difference in the free photo scene, but still requires you to sign up for several different services.

That’s why we were very excited when Pexels launched recently to aggregate great photos from these multiple services and allow you to search for exactly what you’re looking for. High quality, curated, completely free photos. You don’t even need to give attribution! Check out the photo license for all the details. This service is going to take blogging to the next level for many of our clients. If you’ve been hesitant to blog frequently because you don’t have the time to search for a photo that’s licensed for free use or the budget to buy photos every time, now’s the time to check out Pexels and get writing!

(And yes, we did get the photo for this post off of Pexels!)