Stock photos can be a convenient way of filling up your website or social media feeds with colour: a generic picture of an office full of staff busily working, a picture of a knife and fork and so on - you can conveniently purchase these from stock agencies as and when you need them and they look very professional but the use of stock images may actually put you at a disadvantage...

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Some may see these images as misleading: after all, they are not actually your staff in that office, the knives and forks in your restaurant don't look anything like the ones in the picture on your website... but perhaps more important to consider is that with so many images used for online applications Google's ranking algorithm is able to detect which images are original and which are stock images reproduced on multiple websites across the internet; Google loves unique content and actively promotes and rewards original images of your business.