Use Images Responsibly and Display an Image License

Protecting your images online has always been a challenge. Almost anyone can search for an image and use it however they like—even without providing proper credit to the owner! One way to prevent the misuse of your images on your website is to include a license badge to your photos. This badge provides essential information to web users about the image and the rights of use. 

If you have a WordPress website, you’re in luck! There is now an easy way to use images responsibly and display licensing information. With the new WordPress plugin from Schema Pro, you can easily show a license for your images that appear in Google Images. This encourages users to explore more legal options when they find your images online.

Before we dive into the details of the new Schema Pro Image Licensing plugin, let’s discuss what an image license is and why it is important and the types of rights for images that are available. Then, we’ll take a look at how to use the new Schema Pro Image License in WordPress.

responsible image use

What Is an Image License?

When you license an image, you are giving someone permission to use your image to create a certain number of products during a certain period of time and they must compensate you accordingly. Basically, an image license gives others permission to use your artwork.

Image licenses are particularly important in the age of social media. Today it seems like everyone is saving, sharing, and publishing images on social media. If you’ve taken a photograph or created an image, you must make sure you are given proper credit for your work when it is shared online. The best way to ensure you get recognition for your work is to display the image licensing with your photos. 

Types of Rights for Images

If you don’t own the copyright for an image, but you would like to use it, then you need a licensing agreement. Through this licensing agreement, the copyright holder grants permission to use the image in particular ways.

Here are some of the different types of rights that are available for images today.

Digital Rights

Digital rights relate to the digital version of the image. The photographer or creator sends an image file, rather than a physical print. If you have digital rights to a photo, you can distribute it anywhere in the digital world. You can’t, however, use it for commercial purposes unless you also have commercial rights.

Print Rights

Print rights give you access to a hard, physical copy of the photograph or image. You can reproduce the print to make anything for personal use, but you can’t use it commercially unless you also have those rights.

Editorial Rights

Editorial rights are given to images that are used for educational purposes. Editorial-licensed images are often used for blogs, newspapers, magazines, print publications, and other educational resources. These are non-commercial uses. Editorial rights cannot be used commercially.

Commercial Rights

If you want to make money with an image, you’ll need commercial rights. Commercial rights are required for any uses that could result in monetary gain for your brand, including marketing, paid ads, website use, and other promotions. Any images that are used to promote or sell a brand should have commercial rights.

Retail and Personal Use

Retail rights are for images that are sold to a consumer. These include family portraits, wedding photos, school yearbook pictures, and other pictures that are meant for personal use and circulation. 

Social Rights

Social rights are a combination of commercial and digital rights. They are specific to images on social media platforms. With social rights, a brand or business has permission to repost a work on their social media.

display an image license

What is Schema Markup?

Schema markup is code that you can add to the HTML for your website. This data helps search engines understand your content better so that they can return more detailed information and informative results to users.

Once you add schema markup to your website, it creates a more detailed description of your page. This “rich snippet” appears on the search engine results page (SERP).

Schema Markup and SEO

Schema markup can help you optimize your search engine results and drive more traffic to your website via organic search. When you add the structured data of schema markup, it makes it easier for search engines to categorize and index your content.

Schema markup structured data tells Google and other search engines what the content on your webpage is all about. Once Google knows this information, it can pass it along to searchers to show them the most relevant results to their query.

Structured data and schema markup is a great way to increase traffic to your website and improve your SEO.

schema markup and seo

How to Add Image Licensing in WordPress

If you are using a WordPress website, you can now easily add image licensing with the Schema Pro plugin. With the new image license schema type, you’ll be able to control the usage of your images that show up in search results.

What is Schema Pro?

Schema Pro is a WordPress plugin that lets website owners and markets create schema markups without having to write any code. Anyone who owns a website can use Schema Pro. There are a variety of schema types to choose from. 

Here are the schema types that are available with Schema Pro:

  • Review
  • Local business
  • Article
  • Service
  • Product
  • Course
  • Recipe
  • Person
  • Job postings
  • Software application
  • Book
  • Event
  • Video object
  • FAQ
  • How-to

Now, Schema Pro has a new schema markup for photographers and creators—the image license!

add image licensing

How to Add Image Licensing with Schema Pro

The new image licensing schema type from Schema Pro makes it easy to add image licensing to a single image or multiple images. You can add image licensing with Schema Pro in four easy steps.

Step 1: Add a New Image License Schema

First, make sure you’re using the latest version of Schema Pro. Then, find Settings and choose Schema Pro. Click on Add New.

You’ll see the different schema types that are available. Choose Image License and click Next.

Now, you’ll have the option to choose the target pages or you can quickly add licensing to images across your website or on specific pages and posts with the Enable On or Exclude From options. Click Next when you are done.

Click on Complete Setup to move to the next step.

Step 2: Add Schema Settings

Now, you’re on the image license schema settings page. Scroll down to All Schema Fields.

These fields are required by Google to make your schema work correctly. You can add multiple licenses by clicking Add.

Here is a list of schema properties that you’ll need to fill in for the image license schema markup.

  • Content URL: This is the URL to your image that you’ll need to apply for a license.
  • License: This is the URL to the license information page that explains the important terms of using the image.
  • Acquire License Page: This is the URL to the page that explains the process of acquiring a license to the image.

Once you are done, click Update.

use images responsibly

Step 3: Add Image License Schema to Your Pages and Posts

Schema Pro gives you the option to add image license schema across your entire website (as explained above), but you can also add the image license schema to individual pages or posts if you so choose.

To do this, visit any existing page or post on your website and click Edit. Scroll down to find the Image License tab under Schema Pro.

Fill in the required fields and Save Changes.

Step 4: Test the Schema

Now it’s time to make sure your schema is working properly.

When you are logged in to your WordPress website, you’ll see a Test Schema option in the top bar. Click on it to head to Google’s Rich Results Test page. Google will analyze your page and, if it looks good, you’ll see a green checkmark next to the image licenses.

Responsible Image Use

Image licenses are crucial to encouraging the proper use of your work online. Get compensated for your work and keep your images from getting stolen, modified, or used without permission with image licensing. Using Schema Pro to license your images on WordPress is quick and easy.

license images with schema pro

Get Help for Your WordPress Website

Do you need more help designing your WordPress website and making it the best it can be? SEO Design Chicago can help you build a new WordPress website. We also provide great WordPress website and web development services to highlight the information you need your customers to find. Contact SEO Design Chicago today to improve your WordPress website.

FAQ:

  • What does an image license do?
  • What are the different types of image rights?
  • Why is schema markup important?
  • What does the Schema Pro plugin do?
  • How do I add an image license with Schema Pro?

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