Have you ever wondered how many blog images you should put in your post? And what size they should be? I decided to ask some marketers and bloggers over at the Warrior Forum and got a variety of answers.
The Amount of Blog Images to a Post Most bloggers use at least two images to a post, some use three or more.
The general consensus is that it depends on the length of the post.
The longer the post, the more images used to break up the article and keep the reader's attention.
One blogger follows a rule of one image per 250 words.
The type of blog you have can determine how many images to use too.
For example, if the main theme of your site is photography, fashion or weddings, you may want more images than text.
In browsing a lot of different blogs, I've noticed that wedding blogs in particular are more about images than text.
They tend to use a ton of images with small captions below, but not much written content.
Another idea that might work well is to use a relevant infographic image in place of a subheading.
And still others use a relevant video inside of every blog post, which can also take the place of an additional photo.
Does Size Matter with Blog Images? And what size should they be? Some marketers don't give much thought about the actual size of the image, again, depending on the type of blog.
Obviously, you don't want the image so large that it overlaps into your sidebars.
So make sure you know the width of your main column so that doesn't happen.
You also want the image large enough so people can see what they are.
If you're going to have the image floating to the left or right of the text with the text wrapping around the photo, you'll want a slightly smaller image.
I would suggest nothing wider than about 220 pixels is about average and doable.
And make sure to leave some white space around the top and sides of your images to keep the wrapped text from overlapping or being too close to the image.
Where Do You Place The Images? Almost everyone agrees that the main graphic should be at the very top of the article.
This helps to grab the reader's attention right away.
An image can also be placed near the end of the post, like at the second to last paragraph, or even at the very end.
Any images in the middle of the post should be distributed evenly, and how many depends on the length of the article or simply on personal preferences.
If you're making sure to use a larger, bolded font size for your subheaders, you may not need more than one image in the center of the post.
And if you're using Google AdSense graphic ads in your blog, that can take the place of a third image.
Uniformity in Your Blog Some marketers prefer to keep all of their graphics the same size throughout their blog.
It's said to decrease load time and keeps the site neat and clean.
There are a variety of ways to resize, crop and generally edit your photos and images.
If you're not too handy with PhotoShop or Paint, you can use sites like http://www.
resize.
it.
Personally, I like using the free Adobe PhotoShop CS2 to keep most of my images the same size.
You can also use photo editing to put a white "margin" around the photo too.
Optimizing Your Blog Images for the Search Engines Also known as optimizing for on-page SEO, there's a little thing called the ALT tag, or alternate name tag, you should always add to your image link.
The ALT tag is what the search engines will pick up on so your images can rank too.
If you're only using one image per post, make sure your post's main keyword is included in the ALT tag.
For the rest of images, you can use secondary keywords in the ALT tags.
The Amount of Blog Images to a Post Most bloggers use at least two images to a post, some use three or more.
The general consensus is that it depends on the length of the post.
The longer the post, the more images used to break up the article and keep the reader's attention.
One blogger follows a rule of one image per 250 words.
The type of blog you have can determine how many images to use too.
For example, if the main theme of your site is photography, fashion or weddings, you may want more images than text.
In browsing a lot of different blogs, I've noticed that wedding blogs in particular are more about images than text.
They tend to use a ton of images with small captions below, but not much written content.
Another idea that might work well is to use a relevant infographic image in place of a subheading.
And still others use a relevant video inside of every blog post, which can also take the place of an additional photo.
Does Size Matter with Blog Images? And what size should they be? Some marketers don't give much thought about the actual size of the image, again, depending on the type of blog.
Obviously, you don't want the image so large that it overlaps into your sidebars.
So make sure you know the width of your main column so that doesn't happen.
You also want the image large enough so people can see what they are.
If you're going to have the image floating to the left or right of the text with the text wrapping around the photo, you'll want a slightly smaller image.
I would suggest nothing wider than about 220 pixels is about average and doable.
And make sure to leave some white space around the top and sides of your images to keep the wrapped text from overlapping or being too close to the image.
Where Do You Place The Images? Almost everyone agrees that the main graphic should be at the very top of the article.
This helps to grab the reader's attention right away.
An image can also be placed near the end of the post, like at the second to last paragraph, or even at the very end.
Any images in the middle of the post should be distributed evenly, and how many depends on the length of the article or simply on personal preferences.
If you're making sure to use a larger, bolded font size for your subheaders, you may not need more than one image in the center of the post.
And if you're using Google AdSense graphic ads in your blog, that can take the place of a third image.
Uniformity in Your Blog Some marketers prefer to keep all of their graphics the same size throughout their blog.
It's said to decrease load time and keeps the site neat and clean.
There are a variety of ways to resize, crop and generally edit your photos and images.
If you're not too handy with PhotoShop or Paint, you can use sites like http://www.
resize.
it.
Personally, I like using the free Adobe PhotoShop CS2 to keep most of my images the same size.
You can also use photo editing to put a white "margin" around the photo too.
Optimizing Your Blog Images for the Search Engines Also known as optimizing for on-page SEO, there's a little thing called the ALT tag, or alternate name tag, you should always add to your image link.
The ALT tag is what the search engines will pick up on so your images can rank too.
If you're only using one image per post, make sure your post's main keyword is included in the ALT tag.
For the rest of images, you can use secondary keywords in the ALT tags.
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