Can you use creative commons non-commercial images on a company blog?
-
Does anyone know if it is okay to use creative commons images on your company blog if they are under the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic license. Technically you are using it on a commercial site, but you are not directly making money from the image or selling it.
-
If you message or email the owner and ask for permission, you can avoid stepping into that fuzzy gray area.
-
There is no standard answer to your question. In addition to Mcarle's great answer, you can see what the creator of an image has to select from here... http://creativecommons.org/choose/
-
From the CCsite:
-
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
-
Noncommercial — You may not use this work for commercial purposes.
-
No Derivative Works — You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work.
It seems to me that the CC is designed to share NOT to try and sell, your blog is selling your business.
Many blogs have sales links right on them.
Several other factors are also in play:
1. Many people are savvy enough to spot "stock" images, is using images that are seem over and over again what you want your company to be known for?
2. If your company is based on any sort of creativity, clients will know that your just reusing old images as apposed to creating new fresh creative ones.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Can You Help Explain This Nightmare Screenshot from Google Webmaster Tools?
Your Next Dress (http://dress.yournextshoes.com/) has been performing poorly in search for a long time. My theory is that Google's algorithm somehow thinks our content is poor, and that we're not ranking for that reason. While we have deleted hundreds of blog posts and improved plenty of others, our SEO has continued to tank and recently reached zero. We do not have a manual penalty of any kind, though I've tried to disavow dubious looking links just in case. Is there anything that I am missing? 6p6IOIJ
Content Development | | Jantaro0 -
Blogging for Clients
Hello, I need some tips I think. I create content for my clients blog through research and I try to understand fully their product or service so that I can write about it and promote it. But is this enough, do you think, to be able to write good quality content? I will obviously never be as knowledgeable as they are about their product or service. Does anyone have any tips or approaches for writing content in areas they are unfamiliar with? What do others do to create blog posts for clients? Thanks
Content Development | | AL123al0 -
Do I really need a "Blog"?
Hello Moz community, I have a question about creating content on a new website that we just launched. Do we really need an area called a "Blog"? It's a financial website and the network admins have some security concerns about placing a blogging application such as Wordpress on the server because of PCI regulations. Can an area such as one called "Resources" where you list articles or posts be just as effective as a "blog"?
Content Development | | bcglf0 -
How long should a quality blog post be?
How long should a "quality" blog post be? General advice seems to be that a 300 word post just won't cut it, but advice on the optimum length is vague. I appreciate that all posts are different but is there a rule of thumb, is 1000 words good and 1500 too long...or should they are all aim to be 2000 words? Also with regards to pictures in blogs, can they just be taken from the web or are there sites that I should be using to source the pictures? Thanks
Content Development | | Studio330 -
I use a CDN
Hi there my sitemap is @ www.mobbly.com/sitemap.xml and images are stored on cdn.mobbly.com I have verified cdn.mobbly.com but as there is no sitemap apart from mobbly.com/sitemap.xml google has 3000 images in sitemap but only 289 indexed - was all when all were on the same domain any advice would be good
Content Development | | jimmy1640 -
Blogging Software Compatible with asp.net server?
I’m in the works of setting up a company blog right now but I’m struggling to find a great blogging software (preferably free). I’d like to keep the blog in a folder, so energyacuity.com/blog, but I’ve been told I need to find a blogging service that is compatible with asp.net so we can download it (?) to our server…meaning wordpress is out of the question. Does anyone have any recommendations?
Content Development | | abernatj1 -
Leverage My Blog
Hello All, We have a local service based website that caters to all types of services. We have a blog with over 130 original articles published. I recently hired three writers that each write at least one article per day. The topics we blog about are based on hittail.com and google webmaster keyword searches. Besides writing articles, what else can I do to leverage this blog? How are you all choosing topics to write about? Here's my blog: www[dot]yipees[dot]com[slash]blog
Content Development | | zorricsia0