Studies show that a blog post that features an image for every 75-100 words will get twice the number of shares as blog posts that don’t have images.
In addition to images, you can use other media to break up your content.
- Screenshots
- Charts
- Infographics
- Gifs
- Memes
Places to Get Royalty-Free Images
Images are key to a good blog post, but do you have to take your own images?
You certainly can, but you can also find high-quality images that other people have taken and provided for free.
There are several different websites that offer royalty-free images that you can use in your blog posts.
Here are a few of our favorites.
Using Alt Text in Images
Alternative text (alt text) is also sometimes called alt descriptions, alt attributes, and alt tags.
Alt text is used inside the HTML code of your blog post to describe the function and appearances of the images you use on a page.
Why do you need to use alt text?
- Alt text is primarily for web accessibility for users who are visually impaired. These readers use screen readers that will read aloud the alt text so that the user can understand what the image is.
- If an image doesn’t load, the alt text will show instead so that readers know what the image should be.
- Alt text helps Google and other search engines properly index your images.
Here are some tips for writing good alt text.
- Use your primary keyword or related keywords. Since Google indexes images based on the alt text, this is an excellent opportunity to get your images to the top of Google’s image search results.
- Don’t keyword stuff. While Google won’t penalize you for alt text that is poorly written, they will penalize keyword stuffing.
- Keep it short. Most screen readers cut alt text off at about 125 characters.
- Describe your images as specifically as you can. Remember that the primary purpose of alt text is to convey value and meaning.
- Don’t use the words “photo of” or “image of.” Google knows this intuitively, and so do your readers.
Here is a great video that explains alt tags in images.
Minimize Image Size
While you want to be sure you’re using high-quality images, images that are too large slow down your website and make your blog post slow to load.
Studies show that half of mobile users will abandon a website if they have to wait more than three seconds for it to load.
Slow-loading web pages don’t rank as well in Google.
Another issue with large images is that they consume a lot of the space on your website.
Don’t confuse image size with image dimensions.
An image can be small in dimension and still have a higher file size.
To minimize the sizes of your images, you can use a tool such as TinyPNG or Img2Go.
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