Blog Image Musts for SEO and Sharing

The Importance of a Blog Image

If you blog, then more than likely you understand the importance of a blog image or images as they relate to sharing your blog across social media platforms.  A shared blog image can compel someone to click through and read your blog.  For this reason, eye-catching images suited to social media sharing are vital to the shareability of your blog.

While the image itself is important, there are some other factors regarding the image that are just as important, if not more important than the image itself.

Image Title

When you upload an image into your blog, you will see a place to put an image title.  Title the image in a way that relates to the material being covered in the article, paying close attention to keywords.  When you upload your image, you will see the screen below.  Wordpress will automatically pull in the name of the image as the blog title.  Be sure to change it to suit your blog content, trying to use keywords to make the image more searchable.

Alt Text

The Atl Text is probably one of the most important key elements for image SEO.  This box will be blank unless you type something into it.  It is very important to use SEO keywords in the Alt Text.

Description

The description is one other area you can use to add information regarding the image to refine the search criteria and use other identifying factors and keywords to help your image to be found by search engines.  When you are filling in the description, think of how your potential clients would search for the information you are providing in your blog post.  You can use all of these fields to add relevant information regarding the image and the blog to make it easier for people to find it using search engines.

Pinterest Size It!

Take a lesson from successful bloggers and include at least one Pinterest-sized image to your blog post.  Successful bloggers create massive amounts of traffic from Pinterest by using interesting and eye-catching images that are the correct size when pinned.  Use Canva templates to create images in the correct size. Images are easy to create in Canva and templates are already there for you for just about every size you could possibly want!  The image below is an example of a Pinterest-ready image.

Image Share Buttons

Now that you have your images set, you need to have share buttons for your images.  There are many different types of plug-ins available on WordPress.  Whichever one you choose, make sure it shares out to the platforms you use most and where your potential clients are.  Try sharing an image yourself with the plug-in to get a feel for the blog reader experience.  As of this writing, I currently use SumoMe image share buttons.

Conclusion

As you can see, your blog image (s) can be just as important as the content itself.  Using images that are optimized can greatly enhance a blog post and help the searchability of the blog post.  If you are not using images or are using images that are not optimized, start implementing these simple steps today.  If you have old blog posts that do not have the images optimized, I would highly recommend going back and adding images that are optimized.  While you are are it, share your older posts out one at a time again, as long as the content is still relevant! I did this on some old blog posts and had more readers than I did when I initially wrote the posts!  I want you to see the same results!  Happy blogging!

If you are not blogging yet or need help setting up a blog, I can help you get started, and even show you how to never run out of blog content! If you don't understand why you should consider blogging or how you can benefit from blogging, check out this page for additional information on blogging. I want to see you succeed, so if you have any additional questions please head over to my contact page or schedule a call with me!