Using Images to Improve Your Content Marketing

Whether they are inserted into the header or placed within the main body of text, images are an illustration of you contents core idea. Including simple images that relate to as wide an audience as possible will help maximize the work your content can do.

Where Can I Find Photos?

There are a number of places on the web you can find royalty free images that are free to download.  Even more where you can pay to download. The easiest way to find the latest resources is to do a search for “Royalty Free Images.”

No matter where you go for images, it’s vitally important to give proper attribution when required. A good rule of thumb for attribution is to credit the contributor of the image and include the website where you found it, ie: “Photo Courtesy of ABCD from FreePics.com.”

The same goes for a registered trademark or trademarked product. For example, if Nike Swoosh or an actual Nike product is seen in the photo, include a statement like, “Nike, the Nike logo, and Nike Products are trademarks of Nike Inc., registered in the U.S. and internationally.”

Image SEO

According to most experts in the SEO field, Keywords appear to be the end all be all of SEO.  Primary Keywords, secondary Keywords, Google “Keyword” and the list of sources of info will probably go on forever.  With Image SEO the first location to use your primary keyword will be the image filename.

The right filename will let a search engine know what the image is about.  This means if your image is a women’s top in a specific abstract design, the file name shouldn’t be DSC12345.jpg.  Instead, you want to rename it “ann-monique-womens-top-abstract-v.”  This gives the search engine spiders something to grab onto and take back to their part of the web.

Start a file name with a lowercase letter or a number and remove all spaces.  For multiple words, join them with a dash.

Loading times can be crucial for websites to maintain traffic. The faster the site, the easier to visit it. Images can have a huge impact on this.   Standard resolution for a screen image is 72ppi and most web pages won’t need an image to be more than 1000-1200 pixels wide.  To put that into perspective, a typical smart phone camera today will give you an image at 72 ppi but the file will often be over 3000 pixels wide (or more).

There are a few online image editors that work quite well and often don’t cost a thing or have a minimal membership fee with added benefits.  Two are PicMonkey and Pixl.

When uploading your image, you will often be given an option to add “alt text” or “alt tags.” This is also another good place to use your keyword placement.

In most e-commerce catalog pages, the product is shown in a specific place on the page that doesn’t overlap any other image or text.  JPEG images are most commonly used for this.  I’m adding this quick highlight in case a need arises for you to remove the background of a photo.

JPEG images include a visible background showing behind any curves or irregular lines. If you’ve taken the trouble to remove the background of the photo of a product but save it as a JPEG (JPG), you will still be stuck with a background color when you re-open it.

PNGs allow you to make the background transparent so it can be used over any color, texture or other text.  This can be helpful if you decide to show multiple products in one virtual shot but don’t have the means to retake the photo.

GIF images are a much lower quality than JPEGs or PNGs. Best for small decorative images and icons it is doubtful you will have a reason to use them on a product page.   Most often they are used to float basic logos over pages or header graphics since they can be saved with transparent backgrounds, like PNGs.

Even if it takes extra time to find just the right image for a post, the increase in SEO and lead generation make it worth your time.

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