This can sometimes negatively harm your SEO. Read more about negative SEO and how to disavow these types of links. Which is what we ended up doing with in the case above.

How to Protect Images

Now it’s time to explore how to protect images on your WordPress site. Implementing some or all of these suggestions can help prevent theft and copying.

Enable Hotlink protection

The first thing we recommend is to enable hotlink protection. The concept of hotlinking is very simple. You find an image on the internet somewhere and use the URL of the image directly on your site. This image will be displayed on your website but it will be served from the original location. This is very convenient for the hotlinker but it’s actually theft as it is using the hotlinked site’s resources. It’s like if we were to get in our car and drive away with gas we siphoned off from our neighbor’s car.

Hotlinking is bad for the following reasons:

• Hotlinking costs the original website owner money
• Hotlinking in most cases is illegal
• Hotlinking drains the original website owner’s server resources
• Hotlinking is just plain lazy

Check out our in-depth post on how to enable hotlink protection.

Disable Right-Click on Images

Another tactic you can use is to disable right-click on your images. A lot of users simply right click on an image they like, save it to their desktop, and upload it to their WordPress site. There is a great free little plugin called Prevent Content Theft which will help stop that. It currently has 4,000+ active installs with a 4.5 out of 5-star rating. You can download it from the WordPress repository or by searching for it within your WordPress dashboard under “Add New” plugins.  There are no settings, simply install and you’re good to go.

This plugin not only disables right clicking on your images but also the entire page, therefore protecting your content as well. This will by no means stops everything, especially for those who are a little more tech savvy. But we have found that a majority of the users that copy images are those that don’t know any better. We installed and tested this on our development site and you can see an example below of what happens when a user tries to right click on an image. They are met with a notification box that lets them know that this function is disabled.

Or you could also go with this other approach in the new free Shrinkwrap imagesplugin. Instead of doing anything with prompts, it simply adds a tiny, invisible image on top of all of the images on your site. If a visitor right-clicks on one of your images, they download the clear tiny image instead of your original image.

Watermark Images

Another approach you could take is to watermark your images. This is especially important for photographers. By adding your logo or a mark on top of your images this could deter people from wanting to copy them. And if they do, it’s free publicity for you! Watermarking could be great for when people share your images on social media as well.

The free Image Watermark plugin allows you to automatically watermark images uploaded to the WordPress media library and bulk watermark previously uploaded images. It currently has 30,000+ active installs with a 4 out of 5-star rating. You can download it from the WordPress repository or by searching for it within your WordPress dashboard under “Add New” plugins.

After installing it you can enable watermarking in the plugin’s settings (see an example of our settings below). You can choose where you want the watermark to appear, upload your watermark image, set the scale, set the transparency, and even backup the original image. This plugin also has basic image protection to disable right click. If you wanted to both disable right click and implement watermarks this plugin could be a great combo.

Here is an example below on our development site with an image and our Host SEO logo as the watermark. This was automatically applied to the image when we uploaded it to the media library. How cool is that?

Add DMCA Badge

The DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) is a United States copyright law focused on digital mediums that help content owners get their stolen content (which includes images) removed in a fast and efficient manner. This extends to places such as Internet Service Providers (ISP), web hosting providers, and search engines. A DMCA takedown notice applies to where the content is physically hosted. So people outside the US can still file DMCA complaints.

You can add a DMCA badge to your WordPress site for free, although they do offer premium services too. Think of it like like putting up security cameras around your house that aren’t enabled. People might think twice before trying to copy your content and images. There is also a DMCA WordPress plugin.

Add Copyright Notice

And finally, it’s always good to have a copyright notice on your WordPress site. This technically isn’t required as everything you publish is automatically copyrighted and owned by you, however, it is recommended. Typically copyright notices are placed in the footer of a site. You can see an example of ours below.

To add a copyright notice to your site we recommend first checking your WordPress theme’s documentation. Most of them should have an easy way to change the copyright information. If they don’t, you could always place the following into a footer widget.

<p>Copyright &copy; 2017 Site Title</p>

You could also add a dynamic copyright notice to the footer of your WordPress site by adding the following code to your theme’s footer.php file.

Copyright ©
<?php $the_year = date("Y"); echo $the_year; ?>
<?php bloginfo('name'); ?>
All Rights Reserved.

What To Do About Stolen Images

Now that you know a little more now about how to protect images on your site let’s explore your options for what to do after the fact. And trust us, this will happen to you at some point. Below is the approach we use here at Host SEO which works quite well.

1. Analyze Copied Image First

The first thing we recommend doing when you find someone that has stolen or copied your images is to first check to ensure they are hosting it on their server. This ensures they aren’t hotlinking and using up your server’s bandwidth. In Chrome you can right click on an image, click on “Inspect,” and it will highlight the URL it is being hosted on.

If it is loading from their server, then look to see if they gave you a backlink (referenced you as a source). If they did, then you might actually want to leave it. If they didn’t reference you, send them an email asking them to, as this can be a good way to obtain a free backlink, which can be great for SEO purposes. Below is an example template:

Hello,

I work for _____ and we noticed you used one of our images in your article here: [link to their post]
You can see that we are the owner of the image here: [link to your original post]

We are OK with you using our image as long as you reference us. Please add a link to [term/phrase] in your article to [link on your site].

If you don't want to add a link we totally understand, but we'll need to ask that you remove the image as this is something created by us.
Thank you, if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Name
[link to your site]

Remember though that this would only apply to images that you created, not images you licensed. Licenses images would still need to be taken down as they don’t have permission to use it.

2. Send Polite Takedown Email

If the image is licensed or you didn’t want a backlink and simply want them to remove it, we recommend then simply sending a polite takedown email first. Create a task and then check back in a couple days or weeks. Note: In our experience, this polite email usually resolves 90% of the cases.

Hello,

I work for _____ and we noticed you used one of our images in your article here: [link to their post]
You can see that we are the owner of the image here: [link to your original post]

We would kindly ask that you remove and or replace this image.
Thank you, if you have any questions please feel free to ask.

Name
[link to your site]

3. Send More Aggressive Takedown Email

If you don’t hear back from the website owner after the first attempt, then you could send a slightly more aggressive takedown email. In our experience, this usually resolves the remaining 10% of those you don’t hear from.

Hello,

I work for _____ and haven't heard back from you regarding my first email.

We noticed you used one of our images in your article here: [link to their post]
You can see that we are the owner of the image here: [link to your original post]

We would kindly ask that you remove and or replace this image. If we don't hear back from you within the next two weeks we will have to file a DMCA complaint.

Name
[link to your site]

4. File a DMCA Takedown Notice

And finally, if it comes to it, you can file a DMCA takedown notice. This can be a quick way to ensure that it gets taken down. Also, we have a related article on the topic: WordPress Content Scraping (Fight Back or Ignore?) (Compared With Examples)

Summary

It is important to protect images on your site as a content creator. If you put in the hard work to create it, or paid for it, there is no reason a third-party should be using it. In fact, in most cases it is illegal. Hopefully, now you understand a few ways to prevent this from happening, and what to do when it does.