People often put a lot of time and energy into writing blogs. They research the topic, choose just the right words, and make sure their categories and tags are on point. But all too often, images are an afterthought. They’ll throw any old stock photo in there or worse – skip the image entirely. Bad idea.
Do you want to give your blog a more professional appearance? Are you having trouble convincing a user to click on your post? Are your blog posts being overlooked? It may be as simple as adding a featured image, or post thumbnail to enhance your blog and take it to the next level.
How Can Stand Out From Other Staffing Companies?
I took a quick survey of staffing sites launched within the last year and only about 1/3 contained featured images for their blogs. This statistic lead me to do some further research and according to an article posted by eBizMBA, all 15 sites that were considered to be the Top 15 Most Popular Blogs in July 2017 contained featured images for their blog posts. While none of these are staffing websites, they must be doing something correct in order to draw millions of unique visitors each month.
The Benefits
There are many benefits to adding images to blog posts that will not only help users learn more about your business but can almost immediately improve the visual aesthetics of your content. It is imperative that you take the visual impact of your blog seriously. Here’s what featured images can do for you:
Social Media Sharing
Sharing your content on social media has never been more important and easy to do as it is today. Whether it’s Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter or your preferred social network employers and job seekers are reading and sharing articles daily. According to an article published by hubspot.com “Facebook posts with images see 2.3X more engagement than those without images.”
Makes Reading More Fun
As a kid growing up, the books I read with pictures were more fun to read. It’s as simple as that. It doesn’t have to be different now that we are adults. Still don’t get the picture? Imagine reading a newspaper with no front page photography.
Improved Design Aesthetics
Blog images can break up large blocks of text and improve the overall look of a blog’s design. Whether it is within a news feed, an archive page, or the blog post itself, an image that is relevant to the content it supports can help further engage the user and help convey your ideas.
Search Engine Traffic from Google Image Search Results
While you may not get much traffic from Google Image Search results, it is fairly easy to optimize your website’s blog images for google. Including filenames that describe your content and using alt tags will be very helpful in accomplishing this.
It’s Not Difficult
Adding a featured image to wordpress can be done in just a couple clicks and most themes not only support this, but will also resize and crop the photo for you and then place it appropriately into your website.
It Does Not Have to Be Expensive
There are many options available to you when using featured images for your blog post. There are many stock photography websites, both free and paid. You may also have your own images that you can use as well. The most important aspect about using images or photography on your website is that you have a legal right to use them.
Want more ideas on optimizing your blog posts? Take a look at what we’ve done with the blogs on the haleymarketing.com website or email our marketing professionals at [email protected] to learn more!
