On one of my recent blog-tip features: 10 Tips On Growing Your Blog Audience, quite a few readers expressed a keen interest to learn more about the benefits of optimizing images to boost blog traffic, and not being one to disappoint that’s exactly what we’re focusing on in today’s post! So go grab your notepads as this could be rather useful ladies 😉
Now although I’m by nooooo means a techie; during my own blog journey I’ve learnt a few valuable lessons that have really helped me grow Confetti & Curves. Getting to grips with properly optimizing my images has been a lesson that has certainly yielded pretty successful results to date. So for those who may be newbies at blogging, who aren’t the most fluent in computer lingo or self acclaimed SEO wizards – but are curious on how to reap the benefits from your blog images, then this just might be right up your street…
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Although search engines perform like highly intelligant well-oiled machines, they can’t recognise an image visually like you and I can, therefore they need words in place of pretty pixels to uncover what’s been searched for. So when a cosmetic craver takes to an online oracle (such as Google) and types a series of words into the search bar e.g ‘Maybelline Colour Show Nail Polish in Pink Party Dress’, the search engine will filter out exactly what ‘key words & tags’ it has successfully picked up on with those words or phrases attached to the images that have been optimized.
Therefore, as a blogger with a keen interest on driving more traffic to your online haven, the more detailed YOU are when it comes to entering a description to your images the more likely a search engine is to pick it up = voila, your image is found by the user who clicks on the source to redirect straight to your blog. Mission accomplished!
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Thankfully WordPress have made it super easy-peasy for us mere mortals who haven’t the first clue about coding or any of that important guff. When uploading a picture from your computer hard drive, you’ll notice a nifty little ‘Attachment Details’ box to the right hand side of the media library as shown below…
As you can see there’s a number of fields in which you can enter text. Confused what goes where? Here’s a quick run through…
URL: This is where the image is stored on your WordPress Site.
Title: This is simply as it suggests, the title of your image. If uploading from a camera you may notice a series of letters/numbers. Be sure to replace with an actual description eg. change DSC00001 to something more descriptive such as ‘Red Chanel Lipstick shade 444 Gabrielle’.
Caption: This is where you can add text to show beneath your image e.g ‘My Favourite Red Lipstick’.
Alt Text: This is text that search engines will more than likely pick up on & will also show if the image is slow in uploading. This is where you need to enter your key words/description e.g ‘Red Lipstick, Chanel 444 Gabrielle’.
Attachment Display Settings…
Alignment: Allows you to choose the format in which you want your image to be positioned.
Link To: This controls where a reader is taken to when they click on your image. Media File opens the file in it’s own tab. Attachment Page opens the image on its own page in your site. Custom URL allows you to set a specific page where you’d like your reader to be redirected too on your site. None means the image is unclickable.
Size: Allows you to control what size you’d like to display your image, from full size to thumbnail.
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Personally I’ve noticed a dramatic increase in volume of traffic since really putting the effort into making sure my images are properly tagged and search engine ready. By looking at you stats page you’ll soon begin to notice the increased referrals coming from the likes of Google images etc. Here’s a quick example of a few recent posts below that still manage to get new traffic on a daily basis thanks to savvy tagging & Alt Text…
Example 1: Maybelline Colour Show Nail Polish in Pink Party Dress
This particular feature (above) was posted back in September. Just a few months later it’s already top of the image search, even above Superdrug’s own catalogue image which is directly below. Not bad for adding a few extra words into a box chums 😉
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Example 2: NYC Shine In A Minute in Prince Street
This feature (above) was only posted a few weeks ago and already it’s top of the search results & images. The power of good search engine terms really does make a significant difference when it comes to boosting you up right up those rankings!
Are you tagging or lagging when it comes to making your images search engine friendly? Do you have any top tips for boosting blog traffic through images? Is this something you’ll be adding to your uploading routine? Whatever your thoughts I’d love to read them in the comments below, so do stop by & say a quick hello 🙂
Cheerio Chums…
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