Having beautiful images on your blog is only the beginning, learning how best to make them work for you to gain your blog traffic and followers is the next stage. Here are my 4 quick tips to optimising your blog images for SEO and followers.
1. Pinterest Hover Button
Pinterest can be a very handy tool to help you grow your blog following and also to publicise your posts. Make it as easy as possible for people to pin your images by installing a plug in that will give you a Pinterest ‘pin it’ button over your images. When a visitor views your post and scrolls over your image a ‘Pin it’ logo will appear and at the click of a button, your image has been shared to Pinterest. Don’t forget to pin your own images too. Try hovering over the image below to see this feature in action. I use the ‘Pin It Button for Pinterest’ plugin, there are a few options for personalisation, I chose the most discrete button option.
2. Alt Text
This is the most important tip for optimising your images for SEO. When you add an image to WordPress you should be able to edit the title, caption, alt text and description. Alt Text tells the internet the context of your images, for instance, if the image doesn’t load the Alt Text may be displayed instead. But the biggest use for Alt Text is that it makes your images searchable by google.
When considering what to write in your Alt Text think about key words related to your post, don’t spam with random words but choose a few niche words that are relevant to your image.
3. Captions
Writing clever captions can give context to an otherwise out of place picture, it may not do much at all to help SEO but used well, captions form another layer of interaction with your reader, like a second private conversation.
4. Links
Quite often your blog posts will probably refer to something you’ve previously written, either directly or indirectly. Links are a way to gently direct your readers to other parts of your site, make it as easy as possible for them to do so by linking either in the text itself or by using a picture. When adding an image to WordPress, in the same side section as the caption and Alt Text you can scroll down to add a link.
There are three sections that I always make sure to fill out, firstly the link itself, then I ask the link to open in a new window, so as not to force the person to leave the current post, and finally, I ask the Gallery Link on Effect to stay not be removed once it has been clicked.
So there's my 4 top tips on optimising your blog images for SEO. Do you have any other ideas?