Pictures in Blog Posts: Priceless. Saturday Sharefest!

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Welcome to the weekly blogging tip and comment game! This week I’m talking about using images to your best advantage.

In last Saturday’s comments Leah asked: “What about pictures? Good? Bad? Lots? Or just one?” And JanMary asked: “I hear the term metatag and something about how you label photos you put on your blog to enable searching, but no idea how that works.”

First let me say that images in your blog posts are a good thing. Very good. Pictures can help attract attention if perhaps your title or first paragraph didn’t grab a reader. They can break up a block of text, enhance a plain-looking template, and draw a reader deeper into your site. As with most things, moderation is the key. Most posts only need one strong photo.

Meta tags don’t apply to images (we’ll talk about meta tags another day). What JanMary is likely thinking of is the ALT tag, which is inside the IMG tag when you upload a photo to your blog. Putting descriptive keywords in your image’s ALT tag gives search engines extra information about what is on your page. Search engine robots can only read text, not images, so having a descriptive ALT text attached to your image is one way to get more keywords indexed by the search engine. But don’t overdo it – don’t load up your ALT tag with tons of keywords – or your site might get flagged as spam. Your ALT text should be just a few words that clearly explain what is seen in the image. More in-depth info can be found in this article on the Alt Attribute & Image SEO.

HOW you add ALT text varies depending on what blog platform you use. If you use Wordpress, you can specify your ALT keywords easily when you upload your photos. If you use Blogger, you’ll need to go into the “Edit HTML” section to put in your ALT keywords.

After you upload a photo in your Blogger post, click on Edit HTML and find the spot in your post where the image is. You will see a bunch of code that looks a little like this:

img style="width: 154px; height: 200px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/Uf9IPM/AAAIg/028029436qgGoH/your_photo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383028" border="0"

Notice the alt=” ” part. Enter your descriptive words right there between the quotes so it looks like this: alt=”ancient Mayan Ruins” (if your photo happens to be of ancient Mayan ruins!). Then simply click back to the “Compose” area and finish your post. The ALT text is sometimes seen when users hover over your photo with their mouse, but usually it will never be seen by anyone but search engines.

There are several places to find photos for your blog posts if you don’t have your own. Check out 26 Places to Find Free Multimedia for Your Blog.

Thanks to all of you who asked questions in the comments last week. I’ll try to get to them all and please keep ‘em coming.

Now, let’s play a game! Here are the rules for the SITS Saturday Sharefest:

Leave a comment here with a link to one of your best blog posts (or just your main URL if you prefer).
After you leave your comment, visit the link of the person who commented BEFORE you.
Comment on their post and be sure to say “Happy SITS Saturday Sharefest” in your comment.

This last part is really important because other people visiting our blogs will see the “sharefest” and wonder, “What the heck is that?” Then they might seek us out and we’ll get even more people involved in SITS. Get it? Good? Now, go play nice and leave some comments!

Please visit me at PHAT Mommy and enter to win the Scooby-Doo First Frights video game for the Wii!

And, as always, when you see this: