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Get More Clicks: How to Optimize Blog Images for SEO
Luke Dougherty
January 30, 2024
Images make your content more attractive, more intriguing, and easier to read. Not only that, but they also help with search engine optimization (SEO). So if you want to drive more traffic to your website, improve the quality of your SEO images.
That said, you don’t want to just plaster any old JPEGs onto your blog and call it a day. Finding the right images and formatting them properly is a skill—one you can start learning today.
Here’s a rundown of what makes a good image, how to maximize your images for SEO, and how better images improve lead generation.
What makes a good SEO image?
A good image is a useful one. So what makes an image useful?
In short, useful images are relevant. They highlight or illustrate a particular point in the content. Useful images are specific, clear, and, whenever possible, actionable.
For example, say you’re writing about recent trends in the financial sector. Rather than just barrage your reader with a wall of text, include data visualizations, charts, graphs, or other kinds of summaries.
These images help condense important information so your audience can digest it at a glance; remember, most people skim first and then read once they realize it’s worth their time. Summary images help ensure readers don’t lose momentum when reading, especially during more complex sections.
Ranking-style images are another type of easily digestible image you can include in your content. Websites like Canva make it easy to make ranking or tier-list graphics in minutes. These are great for comparing, contrasting, and displaying information without bogging your readers down.
Finally, maintain some purely visual imagery throughout your piece. As useful as graphs, charts, and old-school gaming console tier lists are, you still want to include some good old-fashioned images.
Include photos, graphics, or even videos to help illustrate your point. Don’t just tell your readers about how no one had ever beaten Tetris until Willis Gibson stepped up to the plate at just 13 years old. Show them.
A good image is also a well-sized one. This may be surprising to hear, but sizing your images properly matters more than you might think.
You see, the more large, pixel-rich images you slap on a webpage, the longer it takes to load. And the longer your audience has to wait, the more likely they are to do something—anything—else besides sit around. Google understands this, so it lowers search rankings on websites that take too long to load, especially on mobile devices.
Think about it: when was the last time you stuck around to wait for a web page to load?
I can’t remember either.
So in general, the smaller your image is while still being clear, the better. On longer-form content like blog posts, aim for 500 × 300 pixels or less per image. Take a look at this guide to get an idea of how to size your images for different social media sites. You can also compress your images or use a tool like Pic Resize to reduce the loading time.
Keep your images trim and useful to give your posts an SEO boost.
Optimize blog image alt text, descriptions, and accessibility
Don’t neglect the importance of including great descriptions, alt text, and other accessibility features in your content. These SEO components do serious work in the background (literally), so their meaningful contributions often go unsung.
When you upload an image into your content management system (CMS), you have an instant SEO opportunity. Include keywords in descriptions, titles, and alt text to feed the SEO crawlers. It’s wise to include more keywords here rather than keyword stuffing your body text, which puts your site at risk of losing rank.
As important as descriptions are, alt text is even more so. Alt tags are an accessibility feature that helps vision-impaired individuals understand what’s going on in the image. Screen reader software reads the alt text aloud so these users understand the content.
To write a good alt tag, write descriptive yet succinct phrases, and never start with “a picture of…” or “an image of…” And while these alt tags can and should include SEO keywords, don’t overstuff them either.
So avoid descriptions like: “An image of streamer, gamer, content creator Willis Gibson beating Tetris, Tetris game, gaming 2023.” Instead, opt for descriptions like: “Young gamer Willis Gibson ecstatic as he becomes the first person ever to beat Tetris.”
Short, sweet, and to the point.
Additionally, keep in mind that alt tags are indexed by search engines—another perfect keyword SEO opportunity. That’s how pictures show up in Google Images in the first place.
Finally, these alt tags will display on your page even if the image fails to load, providing some redundancy.
Great alt tags aren’t just an SEO opportunity. They’re the right thing to do.
Enhance your post with pull quotes
Pull quotes are a great way to include more useful graphic features in your writing. Pull quotes are branded images of a key phrase, quotation, or excerpt pulled from your content and used as part of the page layout.
They entice readers into reading the full text, and they highlight a key topic or idea. Typically, pull quotes are placed in a larger, more distinctive typeface than your body text.
Keep your pull quotes short. Limit them to roughly 10 to 20 words or two to four lines. Quotes under 280 characters can also encourage retweeting or reposting on LinkedIn. Include a pull quote too long and you’re more likely to turn your readers off than to help them dive in.
Additionally, don’t place a pull quote too close to the original text. Rereading the exact phrasing can be jarring. Skimmers especially may be confused by reading double. So if you’re going to use pull quotes, carefully consider where you place them.
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Call your blog audience to action
So you’ve interwoven your piece with beautiful, eye-catching, useful images. You’ve also woven keywords into engaging descriptions and helpful alt tags.
All set, right?
Wrong.
There’s one more crucial component of image optimization that you shouldn’t ignore if you want to maximize click-through and conversion: the call the action (CTA).
One of the best and most iconic CTA images is the button. Simple but effective, well-designed buttons encourage folks to click the embedded hyperlink that brings them to a relevant landing page.
Take your buttons to the next level by adding graphical elements to them. For example, program your buttons to change color when a user hovers over them to highlight their interactivity. Or include buttons with the logos of relevant social media sites to encourage your readers to explore your content there.
Get even more use out of those clicks by making them point to a lead magnet. A lead magnet is a free incentive that you offer to leads in exchange for their contact information. Use your highest-value content as lead magnets. This could be ebooks, checklists, white papers, templates, demos, or free trials. Think of the last time you went to a website and signed up for a 30-day free trial. That’s a lead magnet.
People won’t just give you their email address because you ask for it. So offer them something in exchange, and tie it up in a beautiful, clickable image.
Value relevance above all
Search algorithms want your content to be unique, high-quality, and useful to people. In short, Google wants your content to be relevant.
The more relevant your content is to a particular audience, the more it will be recommended to those people. You’ll rank higher, get more traffic, and grow your brand and your business.
It seems obvious, but too many B2B companies just hit “publish” and pray that everything will work out. If the content isn’t well-optimized, including images, it won’t reach the people who want and need it most.
By including SEO-optimized images in your content, you’ll increase your site’s search rank higher and faster.
All that said, images are just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many ways to optimize your content to make sure it reaches the right eyes. Invest in writing high-quality SEO content so you can stand out from the crowd and provide your audience with genuine, valuable insights.
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