I have thousands of photos in galleries on various websites. They do OK on image search and the gallery code is pretty much bespoke and highly optimised.

What I've noticed (although I haven't thoroughly tested this) is that images fare better when placed in a 'content' page on the same sites. Would anyone be able to confirm that?

With this in mind I'm wondering what the best use of some of my photos would be.
I currently place 250px thumbs of the images inline with the content which link to the full size version in the gallery.

What I'm thinking is turning these into lightbox links which just bring up the full size photo (same photo URI as in the gallery)

Does that make sense? Do you think it would help. Should I just do my own testing instead of asking?!

Thanks,
Chris