In today’s blog post, we’re going to continue talking about some blog tools that we presently use to help us market our blog with Search Engine Optimization and also make them look much better.
Images in Blogs
Now while most people might not think that images are necessary in a blog, did you know that you can get 94% MORE views than your counterparts if you add images to your blog (and that’s an average).
Not to mention, it’s just much more pleasant to look at than just a bunch of black text on a white background… but that’s just my opinion.
I get all of my images from the website 123RF.com. They have over 35 million photos all available in multiple sizes and all easily searchable. For this particular post I simply did a search for blog tools.
Go there now and take a look (it will open in a new window). There are so many images to choose from and they ALL look great. Now when you click on an image, they come up available in different sizes by credits. You need to purchase credits to buy the images, but the standard license allows you to use the images on your website / blog. However, you are NOT allowed to use them in any promotional/sales material or use that image for resale items unless you purchase an extended license.
I only get the Small image (it runs 1 credit). That’s all I need and it’s more than big enough for the size that I want to use in my posts.
You can check out the pricing page there as well. When you get there SCROLL DOWN and you can see the On Demand prices which allows you to purchase smaller packages. The smaller package runs about $20 and gives you 20 images. At $1.00 an image, that’s peanuts compared to some other sites out there.
You also want to make sure that you purchase your images for your blog (unless you own the images). The last thing you want to do is steal (or borrow) them from other sites. I could tell you horror stories about how much people have had to pay when Getty Images comes calling when they find out someone didn’t pay for one of their images. Be warned.
With that said, if you’re on a really tight budget you can go to Wikimedia Commons and get images freely usable. But be aware there are some restrictions on certain images and the database is kind of limited.
Optimize Your Blog Images
Another reason you want to add images to your blog is for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. This is another way you can tell the search engines what you’re about.
Search engines can’t see images like you and I can, however they can see what the images are named. Therefore a good optimization tactic is that when you download an image, save it to your computer with your keyword in the name of the image. So this image to the right, I’m going to save it on my computer as: Another Great Blog Tool.
See how I did that? My keyword for this post is Blog Tools. I did not just call it by the keyword name but I imbedded it in there. I uploaded it to this post and then named the alt tag: Another Great Blog Tool.
You see, the search engines not only see the name of the image that you uploaded to your site, but they also see the alt tag. Might as well let them know what this page is really about and it gives you another opportunity to showcase your keywords.
So make sure you’re using images in your blog not only to make it look more appealing, but to get that extra search engine boost.
In tomorrow’s post we will continue with our blogging tools. Stay Tuned!