Even if you have a serious business blog whose main purpose is to share information, you’ll still need images to reinforce the overall appeal of your articles. Today, readers tend to pay more attention to and actively engage with visual, illustrative content that can communicate a message quickly and effectively. And you should keep this in mind if you want your blog to be successful.
Though choosing images for a blog might seem like a no-brainer to the majority of seasoned bloggers, in reality, it requires much time and consideration. Below are some easy recommendations that can help you select the best pictures for your current or future blog and make it more reader friendly.
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Be Relevant
When it comes to selecting images for your texts, relevance should be your top-of-mind priority.
First things first, you need to make sure your selected images should be relevant to your posts. Not only do poorly chosen images detract from posts’ value but also scare off your visitors. With this in mind, let relevance and quality guide you when looking for deal images for your blog.
For more compelling pictures, pay attention to composition. Your main subject should be easy to spot. So, make sure to give it due prominence and the right amount of exposure in your photos. If you’re just starting out in blogging, stick with the tried-and-tested rule of thirds composition. This will help you get your visual message across more accurately and entice your visitors.
Should you want to add stickers, vintage, cinematic, or moving photo effects to your pictures, use photo editing software. This way, you’ll spruce up your blog images in no time.
Don’t Be Too Generic
Your next step is to ensure that the image you’re planning to use is not too generic. The image of a happy family captured smiling in front of their newly purchased home might work well the first couple times it was featured in real estate posts. But today, such images look trite, insipid, and annoying.
Look for something fresh and more original for your blog if you want it to stand out. Of course, this can be challenging at times, especially if you discuss popular or generic topics. That said, try to come up with unique and to-the-point images that reflect the problem in focus. Doing so will help you succeed in hooking your readers’ attention and provoking thinking and discussions, which can be very beneficial to your blog.
Format Properly
To format your images properly, you should take a look at your blog content area. What you want to do is to keep your photos flush with the text, especially when it comes to formatting your featured images. When adding pictures throughout your article, you can either center or align them with your text. Just make sure your visuals don’t overlap your text or other areas of your blog.
There are lots of great formats to choose from. Among the most popular are JPEG, PNG, WebP, and others. Depending on your needs and preferences, pick the one that helps you maximize the visual depth and effectiveness of your posts.
Decide on the optimal resolution for your images. You can also resize your photos to fit in with your posts. Just make sure to incorporate all the necessary edits before uploading them to your blog.
Optimize for Search Engines
Picking the right format and compressing are just the first step to making your images more SEO-friendly, which, in turn, means more organic traffic and readers. If you want Google to ‘like’ your blog, try to post unique images. Stock photos can be great and cater well to your readers’ needs. Still, if your blog ends up being cluttered with generic pictures that can be found on tons of other websites, you won’t be able to get Google’s coveted attention. You should also tweak your descriptive tags and include relevant keywords in your image file names.
These are only some simple tricks that can help you create the best images for your blog. Hopefully, they will help you instantly grab your visitors’ attention and turn into loyal readers.