Add a free Pexels key

A Pexels key is the biggest visual upgrade you can make, and it's free. It takes about 2 minutes.

Why bother

SEOBetter adds images to every article. Where those images come from depends on your setup:

With your own Pexels key: every article gets crisp, on-topic stock photos with a dedicated quota (15,000 requests per month on Pexels' free tier, no card needed).
Without a key: images come from a shared SEOBetter cloud Pexels pool with a small monthly per-site allowance, then fall back to Openverse (Creative Commons) images.

Without a Pexels key, image quality drops noticeably. The fallback images are often generic or off-topic, and even a great article looks unprofessional next to the wrong photo.

Set it up

Go to pexels.com/api and sign up. It's free and there's no card.
Copy your API key.
In WordPress, go to SEOBetter > Settings > General, find the Pexels API Key field, paste the key, and click Save Settings.

You can also paste it during step 3 of the setup wizard.

That's it. Every article you generate from now on uses your own Pexels quota.

Managing the key later

The saved key shows as dots, not text, so nobody can read it off your screen. To replace it, type a new key and save. To delete it, tick the "Remove saved key" checkbox next to the field and save.

What about AI-generated images?

Pexels covers the images inside your articles and the featured image by default. Pro users can switch the featured image to an AI-generated, brand-aware image instead (Settings > Branding). Inline images always use the Pexels chain, since real photos work better there anyway.