You might believe that the only thing that matters when blogging for SEO is producing a lot of written material, but photographs also play a significant part in the search engine ranking of your blog post.
As an consultant of SEO for the wedding industry, one of my primary responsibilities is to ensure that the blog posts my customers publish contain relevant photos and that those images have been properly optimized to assist in the post’s overall ranking.
Here are 3 of the most important things I’ve learned about using photographs in wedding industry blogging.
1. Resize Your Images Before Uploading
Google places a significant emphasis on how quickly a page loads. The usage of HUGE, unoptimized photos that have been uploaded directly from a photographer’s high-resolution files is one of the primary reasons that websites, in my experience, load slowly and perform poorly in search engine rankings.
Avoid dropping in rank or losing visitors because your photos are too huge. Before you upload them, make sure to resize them first.
When I need to resize an image, I like to use the Save for Web tool in Photoshop since it allows me to choose a size, choose a file format (typically JPG), and increase the Quality slider as far as it will go without compromising the image’s overall appearance.
If you are uploading an entire gallery or a blog post that recaps a wedding, you may utilize Photoshop’s Batch Processor to do this operation on a large folder of photographs at the same time.
2. Rename Your Image Filenames Before Uploading
What are the names that you give each of your image files? I’m referring to the title of the picture that appears when you search for it on your computer; specifically, the filename.
The names you provide your picture files have a significant role in whether or not Google finds both your image and your content. Search engines are able to understand what is depicted in an image based on the filename, and Google suggests that filenames for photos be “short yet descriptive.”
You should always give the image you upload a filename that describes either the content of the image itself or the subject matter of the post you are making.
3. Use Photos And Graphics Throughout Your Blog Post
As growth hacking agencies reported If you want your blog post to rank on Google, you need to keep people on your post and on your site for the longest amount of time feasible. Because Google tracks the amount of time users “dwell” on a page, you should strive to boost this metric to demonstrate that people find the information you provide to be beneficial.
The use of images and graphics as section breakers in posts is an effective strategy for keeping readers engaged for extended periods of time.
Make sure to include pertinent photographs not only at the beginning of a post but also throughout the body of the writing. A good number of readers will merely skim the written text, but they will take the time to look at the pictures and read the captions.
