Your one-stop-shop resource for everything – Blog Images!
This reference will be keep updated to provide YOU with the latest and greatest when it comes to your blog photos and digital content! Let’s jump right in!
Please note: Some of the links on this page are affiliate links – meaning that if you signup and begin using the product, Build Your Stampin’ Site will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. I am a paying user of the products and only recommend products I truly believe will be helpful for my readers.
WHY DO WE USE BLOG IMAGES?
Blog Images add another dimension to your website.
Adding Images does these four things really well:
Enhances Your Content
Enhances Your Brand
Enhances Your SEO
Enhances Your Sharability
Images play a critical role in your content
As a creator, you KNOW and have experience with the phrase:
ENHANCES YOUR CONTENT
Adding images to your blog posts does three major things to the content. First, it makes your content richer and more comprehensive; it allows your reader to better visualize what you’re trying to communicate.
ENHANCES YOUR BRAND
While you’re writing, you utilize a unique voice; images aren’t much different. By keeping a consistent style throughout your images (Colors, Fonts, Word Placement, Watermark, etc.) you are training YOUR audience to recognize YOUR content through visuals.
ENHANCES YOUR ON-PAGE SEO
Images have quite a bit of data attached to them when you put them on your blog.
Most images we find or even create ourselves end up looking something like “screenshot-01-02-18-1545.jpg” or “Untitled Design (55).png”. These two filenames don’t give Google or any other search engine any pertinent information about what your post or that image is about.
It is very important for SEO purposes that you make your filename, alt text, and description your desired search keyword.
For example: if you wrote a post about wedding cards and you want to rank well on Search, your image files in that post should be “wedding-cards.png” and adding the alt text and description in WordPress is very helpful. See the example below!
ENHANCES YOUR SHARABILITY
A lot of research has been performed on what performs best on Social Media. Every year they find that photo content performs higher in shares, retweets, likes, and comments than any other type of social media content (links, video, status updates).
Having great visuals will help you attract new eyes to your website! When posting to social media having an image with your message is key to success.
Finding images for your website
Finding quality images to legally use for your website may be an obstacle to inserting beautiful visuals onto your website. Below I will walk you through my process of finding great images for my website.
KNOW HOW TO USE IMAGES LEGALLY
Many people think that all images on the internet are equal, but in reality, images come with all different types of usage rights. When these rights are infringed upon legal action can be taken by the content creator.
I don’t say this to scare you from using images that you find online, but so that you can be careful to use images you know that you have the legal right to use, modify, and distribute.
The easiest way to make sure you are acting within the law is to use images that are labeled Creative Commons 0 1.0 (CC0 1.0). This label means that the creator of that image or photo has given up the copyright to that particular image and have dedicated their work to the public domain.
The easiest and safest way to find and use images for your website is with the CC0 label or by using photos that were taken by yourself. There are other copyright classifications that require attribution, but for the majority of your visual needs, you will find them in these two ways.
WHERE I FIND IMAGES WITH A CC0 LICENSE
The following are websites I personally use to find CC0 images for my websites:
Snappa is more than just a place to find great images for your blog, but it also provides the user (YOU) with an experience from finding images, editing them for your business, and then downloading them into a size that meets your specific needs. Snappa has a wide array of HD images and icons to personalize and brand your content.
SnappaPixabay is a site that offers FREE unlimited CC0 images to download. If I cant find the perfect image in Snappa, there’s a good chance I can find it here with their massive selection of beautiful images, vector illustrations, and videos.
PixabayUnsplash is another site that offers beautiful HD images that are in the public domain under the label CC0. Here you will find another library of quality and relevant images to use on your website. Unsplash has a FREE and PRO version, the FREE limits the number of downloads you can do during a period of time.
UnsplashSOME TIPS ON FINDING THE RIGHT IMAGES
Use only quality images –
You may find the perfect image of the certain thing you’ve been looking for but it’s a little blurry. One may think “it’s not that bad, my audience will still be able to see the point of the image”. It really is that bad… It is NOT your perfect image. (This doesn’t apply
Gather your images in bulk –
Finding that perfect image can take time and if you are only focused on the one photo you can miss many photos that will be great for your other content pieces. What I do is set aside 30 minutes and browse through potential content topics, downloading images and saving them in a folder for later review. This strategy can also help with inspiring new content ideas.
Get the Blog Image Checklist free!
Editing your images for your website
So you’ve found the images you want… What next? Do you just put them in your post the way they are? How would you edit them in a way that enhances them and your content?
MAKE THEM UNIQUE, BUT CONSISTENT
When you edit your photos by adding text, create a watermark, or create the images you post to social media, you want them to be representative of YOU and YOUR BUSINESS! You can do this in several ways.
Use the same font style, colors, and structure found on your website. Remember, your images are going to help train
YOU NEED A PHOTO EDITING TOOL
You will find that are many options out there to help you edit your images. Many of them have similar features, but the one that I have found that beats the rest is Snappa.
This tool allows me (with very little graphic design experience) to design and share beautiful and unique digital content that I and my audience can enjoy!
To edit my digital content, I use SNAPPA!
How does Snappa work?
Snappa has a three-tier pricing structure with FREE, PRO, and TEAM plans.
I recommend starting with the FREEmium version first and if you love it like I do and can utilize its value, then Upgrade to the PRO!
StartER
Free
per month
- 1 User
- 50,000+ HD photos and graphics
- 5 downloads per month
- Limited Templates
- 2 Social Accounts
Pro
$10
per month (billed annually)
- 1 User
- 50,000+ HD photos & graphics
- Unlimited downloads
- Unlimited templates
- Unlimited social accounts
- Saved designs & folders
- Custom font uploads
- Buffer integration
Team
$20
per month (billed annually)
- 5 Users
- Unlimited downloads
- Saved designs & folders
- Custom font uploads
- Team collaboration
Optimize your images on your website
Now that you found great images online, edited them to make your style and brand show through, you are ready to upload them to your site. When you do this, there is a GOOD way to place them on your site and a less optimized way to place them on your blog.
OPTIMIZE THE IMAGE FILE SIZE
Your file size is a big deal when it comes to content loading on your site. The larger the file the longer it takes to load; so does that mean we should just upload the smallest possible files?
No. The smaller files have less definition and clarity, so there is a happy middle-ground where the images are crisp and they load without any significant trouble.
The key here is to try out different file sizes, using the one that is the smallest without any loss of image quality. This will take some practice, but you will have your sites loading faster in no time!
Another way to optimize the image file size is by downloading a plugin that optimizes the size immediately on upload. I use a plugin called “Smush Image Compression and Optimization” to automatically optimize the images I upload for loading speed. Below is the link to this plugin.
OPTIMIZE THE IMAGE FOR SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
As stated in the introduction, your digital content contains information that Google and other search engines use to rank your content. SEO is simply the practice of creating or adapting content in a way that is more favorable in Google’s search algorithm.
With images, the idea is to modify the pieces of information (alt text and filename) to the desired keyword so that the search engine will understand the topic of your content.
Design Tutorials
Disclaimer: I am in no shape or form a professional graphics designer. This is simply my guidance on several of the functions and features helpful to online business.
More tutorials coming soon!
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Custom Watermark
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Blog Featured Images
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