When I’m formatting my blog posts, it’s not uncommon for me to spend more time looking for a blog image than I did writing the post.
I’m not alone on this, am I?
Over my years of blogging, I’ve used paid and free image sites. Sometimes I’ve skipped images altogether. But blog images actually serve a very useful purpose. Quite a few in fact.
1. An emotive blog image can convey a message very quickly
2. The blog image can act as a memory trigger for your message
3. The image will capture the reader’s attention long before anything else
4. Use within a long post, an image can give your reader a visual break
5. Images can give boost your search engine optimisation. That’s right!
I cover this in more detail in this post on image SEO but the TL;DR* is when you use an image online, you also can provide an ALT tag (or alternative text). These should describe the image but are the sweet spot for keywords too.
Want some free blog images?
Of course, you do!
Some websites promote free blog images but sometimes, they aren’t as free as you think. Always check the rules around use, like having to attribute the image creator or whether you can use them in commercial projects.
Unsplash: My all-time favourite site for free blog images. Gorgeous images. Completely free. You are recommended to attribute the creator and you should, because these are stunning photos. I find Unsplash returns the most option for business related keywords.
Canva: Yes! Canva! Lots of free stock photos for your blog images and you’re right there in Canva to add your blog title and subheading.
Pixabay: Another site packed with free images released under Creative Commons, so you can use them (even commercially) without attribution or payment.
Pexels: More payment and attribution free images here but as I mentioned for Unsplash, giving credit is good karma. Be a good human and give these amazing photographers credit!
FreeImages: These images usually just require attribution. Double check the licence for each image.
Flickr Creative Commons: Individual licence rules for each image but quite a few images are no strings attached.
Willing to spend some coin on blog images?
While free image sites are a great place to start, it’s worth weighing up your time as well. I now check the freebies but if I can’t find what I am looking for, I’ll use one of my credits on a paid image site and finish up early!
BigStockPhoto: Royalty free images at very reasonable prices (and you can get a proper belly laugh at some of the photos returned for almost any search).
iStock: More of the same, royalty free images at pretty reasonable prices.
Super searching tips
When I’m looking for the right image blog image, I begin with the general topic. Is it a blog about standing out or maybe about being busy. Those kind of searches are easy but you’ll often get a lot of vanilla photos.
To get more interesting images, consider how someone feels before they read the post (frustrated?) or how you’d like them to feel after they read it (joyous? organised?).
A fantastic search tip is to add “abstract” or “concept” to the end of your search term. Like, “creativity abstract” or “creativity concept”.
And if you still can’t find an image you like, there are often suggested photos related to the one you’re looking at. Beware of the rabbit hole though!
Set a time for your blog image search and be focused on finding one that’s suitable.
What’s your stance on blog images… time suck without return or a solid investment? Let me know!
Belinda
21 Responses
Very interesting article. What is an ALT tag? Is that what the image itself is called?
Hi Marita. And thanks!
An ALT tag is the HTML for the or alternative text associated with the image you are using. Search engines can only read the HTML code so the ALT tag is the way you tell a search engine what the image is. If you pop your keywords into that description that will also help the search engines match you with that words/phrases.
I’m not quite sure what you mean by what the image itself is called though…
The HTML tag to reference an image is IMG and it’s made up of a few parameters including the source, dimensions and alternative text. But if you have an CMS to manage your own blog/website you should just be able to insert an image without knowing the coding parlance.
Hi Marita,
The actual purpose of the alt tag is to help the visually impaired when they surf the net identify what an image is about. This is why the search engines can pick them up.
Most content management systems (I know WordPress does) give you the option to provide “alternate text” for an image. You’ll find this text comes up when you hover over the image with your mouse on your web page.
In terms of the actual file name, it doesn’t have to be the same as the alternate text but it’s a good idea to have keywords in their as well. Just makes things easier when it is consistent.
The key is to know what keywords you are targeting with your post and add them to the image as well as the post content.
Regards
Chris @MarketingHQ
Thanks for the clarification Chris (and inspiration behind the SEO value)!
I’ve too pondered the time spent on trying to find the ‘perfect’ blog image, but eventually realised as long as you have SOMETHING relevant, it probably doesn’t matter if it’s worth the thousand words you spent so much time writing.
I also tend to tag pics I think may be relevant for future posts while I’m hunting, so my favourites collection is slowly building up (if you work out a blogging schedule with topics/headlines in advance, you can also think about your pics in advance).
After hunting through a number of free pic sites, I’ve settled on http://www.sxc.hu as my main source, but there’s plenty of others out there.
I agree that it’s a balance of time and value (like many things we do!). What do you use to tag your images? That’s a great idea!
I’ve just been adding them to the lightbox… was trying to find the “appropriate” term for that. As the collection builds, I’ve been meaning to see if there’s a way to further catagorise them.
Great blog, thanks for the info!
Hi Belinda,
Great to see you writing an article about this! It is an interesting debate. 🙂
For anyone else reading this comment, I’m the Twitter “fellow who said he didn’t include blog images anymore and he didn’t see any difference in the number of people reading his posts”. 😛
I gotta say – personally, I’m still leaning towards not including images on my blog. Apart from the SEO benefits, I think a lot of the other “benefits” mentioned above are debatable (and some are almost impossible to prove).
Did any bloggers you spoke to manage to find solid evidence (on their own blogs, for example) that images are actually accomplishing anything other than an SEO boost for them?
This is a genuine question.
I’d like to see some hard evidence, because I suspect a lot of other bloggers out there just assume that all these things are true, without having actually tested them on their own blogs…
You are that very chap Adam! I’d love to hear what everyone thinks of your point of view because we didn’t get into measurable evidence… just their thoughts on the whether blog images served a purpose. But the numbers can reveal all …. Has anyone done a similar experiment to Adam and measured the differences?
It’s on my cards to do although I have a renewed interest in blog images!
Actually, I did forget to add something very important (that I think we all forget in these kinds of debates):
The importance of blog images obviously depends on what type of blog you’re running. The same advice isn’t going to be applicable to everyone.
For example, it would make no sense for a photographer’s blog to have NO photos! 😛
On the other extreme, if you’re running a blog that deals with the written word, then I’d argue that images in the post are much less important (and actually irrelevant). If a writer believes that readers won’t stick around to read their written content unless they include an image as well, then I’d argue that that is a major problem – and one that no amount of images will fix.
(Just as an aside – if the only remaining argument for using images is to “break up the content”, then I think that can be done just as effectively with lots of white space, lots of headings, and bullet points where appropriate).
Two examples I like to use of successful blogs that don’t contain images anymore are:
– http://sethgodin.typepad.com/
– http://zenhabits.net/
Their readers come to their blogs solely for the written content. They come there to get actionable information that improves their lives and businesses. Images are superfluous in that context. And I like that approach.
Anyhoo, that’s all from me. Would love to hear others’ thoughts on this (and some hard data too! :P).
PS: In terms of hard data from my end, many of my top performing blog posts continue to get average time on page results of 4 – 6 MINUTES EACH. And that’s for short, 500-word articles (which definitely don’t take that long to read)!
What does that tell me? It tells me readers are getting something from those articles, and are enjoying re-reading parts of it to form their own thoughts and conclusions. And that’s exactly what I hoped they would do.
As one quick example. I recently wrote a controversial article about what happened in Japan – http://tinyurl.com/467z3eo . Conventional wisdom would have said that it’s important that I include an “emotive” image in that article to really bring home what happened there. I chose not to. Result? The article spread very quickly on Facebook and Twitter, has an average time on page of 4:58 minutes, and collected 137 “likes” on Facebook.
Kind Regards
Adam “That Twitter Chap/Fellow” Wozniak 😉
I agree Adam – as a writer I rarely think a picture will enhance what I am saying (not a lot of images say “grammar is really important” for instance!) I add them occasionally for variety but I really don’t think (and I don’t have data either way) it is worth my time to search for images to use in every post I write.
I would also argue the SEO value of alt tags. That is, having keywords in the alt tag is good for SEO but if they don’t describe the image as well it isn’t helping the visually impaired and can be really obviously just an SEO trick.
However, it is interesting to read some reasons for using images, so thanks Belinda 🙂
As a photographer, I’d argue that images are everything! 🙂
Belinda, glad to see you advocating licensed imagery…so many folks just ‘borrow’ off the internet.
I agree with Adam when he says that bloggers just assume these things without testing them. Personally, I use them from time to time, but not always. Sometimes, it’s just not worth endlessly trawling the web (sxc.hu included) to find something which actually adds any value to human readers.
In any case, how would you accurately measure this? I don’t think it’s practical do even try.
Just to clarify something Chris said:
> You’ll find this text comes up when you hover over the image with your mouse on your web page.
Actually, that’s not the case. The “tooltip” text you’re talking about comes up as a result of having a “title” attribute. The “alt” attribute text comes up when you browse without images.
It’s also worth remembering the usability and (therefore the) SEO benefits of specifying the width and height of images, which so many bloggers don’t bother with.
Well, I’ve changed my mind on this debate. 😛
I’ve just relaunched my blog (as a separate website), and have decided to start using images regularly. Apart from http://www.sxc.hu I also recommend http://www.everystockphoto.com/ for free stock photos.
So, what has caused me to change my mind?
I still don’t believe images make a difference to someone who has already landed on your blog post and is interested in what you have to say. My previous website’s stats was evidence of that (to me, anyway).
But for my new website, I’ve decided to use images for three main reasons:
– makes the blog post link stand out on social networking sites (such as Facebook), where the thumbnail is automatically displayed. No image = no thumbnail, meaning that your link is likely to get lost in the noise of text on people’s walls.
– it fits the tone of my new blog
– it adds some much needed colour and appeal on the home page (where recent and featured articles have thumbnail displays)
I don’t have any data to support the above benefits I’m aiming for, and I don’t believe images will make any difference to my avg time on page stats (for those who are already ON my website). But it MIGHT attract new visitors who never would have landed on the website in the first place. That’s something I didn’t completely consider before.
So the ongoing experiment continues. Thanks for starting this discussion.
I believe my backflip is now complete. 😛
I totally agree about the keyword in the file name and ALT text. I don’t have stats but I’m positive that using images like that has brought me traffic. Funnily enough . Using just an image in a gallery with a highly searched keyword as the title has brough me a surprising amount of traffic by it’s self too.
Totally agree. I think this article best describes what shall we know.Â
Thank you for the free image info! It will really help me with my blog.
My pleasure Charm. I love sharing beautiful images with my blogs!