As a blogger, you know that images are just as important as the great content you produce – kind of like salt to your pepper. It’s important once you have great images for your posts to know how to optimize them. We’re going to briefly talk about a few best practices when adding images to your posts.
Image Names
When I first started blogging, I would name my images after my posts for organizational purposes. Then, I learned that the image name is important for google search. It’s important to name your images something relevant & searchable. I quickly started changing my habits and have now found that this works. A recent post I did on air yoga with Nike can be found just by typing in “Nike air yoga” in the search. Woo hoo images 3-5 and 7 in the first row are my images! This will help direct people back to your site. Depending on your Pinterest settings if you have a “Pin It Button”, your image title may pop in there when people pin your images too.
Alt Text
You have heard of or seen a little thing called “alt text”. What is it you ask? It basically identifies “alternate text” for an image. This is important because it can help your images be easily searchable via Google. This is where you’ll want to describe the image and think of things people may want to search for to find your image.
Here are some helpful tips:
- The text should describe the image
- The text should explain where the link goes if the image is inside an <a> element
- Use alt=”” if the image is only for decoration
- The description does not always have to describe the image literally
- You can list several words and put commas in between
- The more specific you are the better chance you have of your image being towards the top – generic terms are going to have a lot more competition in search results
- Don’t use more than a handful of words or it may recognize it as spam and ignore it
Image Sizing
The pixel size of your image is very important. You will want to compress the image so that your pages and site will load faster. You can do this in Photoshop directly or when you resize your images. I normally save them as JPEG highest quality and adjust down the pixels. You won’t want to go too far down or else you will start losing clarity. I’ve tried a range between 620-800px but it will depend on your site layout, too.
These are some simple and easy ways to help direct traffic back to your site and optimize the work you’re putting into your blog! Do you have any other image tips to share? Leave a comment if so!
By: Christine, The View From 5 ft. 2