Increasing Blog Traffic With Pictures

Posted by Handmade Spark on 2/06/10   |   Categorized as Blogger Lesson,Blogging Tips,For Sellers,How To

Share |

By: Button Bristo

They say that pictures speak  a thousand words, but in the blogging world they speak even more.  Adding pictures to a blog post will visually stimulate your readers and give them an image to identify with.   The great thing about blogging in the handmade scene is our business are driven by pictures.  Imagine a blog with just text and no pictures.   Pretty boring.  Adding pictures to your blog posts will not only spice up your blog visually but it will also bring in more traffic from search engines.

By adding pictures with proper tagging to your blog posts you will notice an increase in traffic and Google search rank.

Take a look at this blog post written on my blog.  You will notice the picture with some text that talks about my jewelry tree giveaway.

This picture not only tells your readers what is going on in the blog post, but it is also visually eye catching.  There is something going on behind the scenes in the Html code that is very important.   Since this post is all about my jewelry tree giveaway you want to make sure 3 things are happening. First you want your title of your blog post to contain the same words that are in your post.  You can see that I have “jewelry tree” and “giveaway” in the body of the post.   Last you want your picture to be tagged with the same keywords.

Below is a screen shot of the html code for this blog post. To access the html code on Blogger just hit the “Edit HTML” button.  Check out the red box below.  This is the all important ALT tag.  You can change this to any text you want.  In my case I want to to say “jewelry tree giveaway”, because it matches up with my keywords in my title and body text.

How has this helped my blog gain traffic and Google search rank?

In the screen shot below you can see the results in the Google Image search.  This post made it to the 4th spot in the Google Image search in about 4 weeks.  This is just due to the proper tagging of the picture.  Click HERE to view the search results first hand.

With the great spot in the Google Image search, this post also moved up in the normal Google search. This post of my blog is now number four in the search.

If you read articles on  search engine optimization (SEO) you will find recommendations to use the alt attribute (alt tag) to improve the SEO of your web pages/blog.

SEOmoz released an article October 22, 2009 showing that using the alt attribute does benefit your search engine optimization.

“…consistent suggestion to use images with good alt text that employ your keyword term/phrase….”

Explaining (Some of) Google’s Algorithm with Pretty Charts & Math Stuff

The  article  by SEOmoz doesn’t note  that while the proper use of the  alt tag does improve your on page search engine optimization, the text in the alt tag needs to be also useful to your readers.

“…while using keywords in alt attributes may help your web site rank, it can also result in a significantly less accessible web site, if applied poorly….

Best practices: keywords in alt attributes

  • http://www.ubervu.com/conversations/handmadespark.com/blog/increasing-blog-traffic-with-pictures/ uberVU – social comments

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by handmadeology: RT @handmadespark Learn how to increase your blog traffic with pictures!! http://ow.ly/15kOF #handmadespark…

  • http://topsy.com/tb/ow.ly/15kOF Tweets that mention Increasing Blog Traffic With Pictures | Handmade Spark — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by handmadeology, Handmade News, timothy adam, Handmadeolgy U, Handmadetop10 and others. Handmadetop10 said: RT @handmadespark Learn how to increase your blog traffic with pictures!! http://ow.ly/15kOF #handmadespark [...]

  • http://www.melissaserenity.com Melissa Serenity

    I use pictures on my blog. I completely agree with you. When I started my blog I didn’t even think about adding pictures. Now I realize how important it is.

    Best regards,

    Melissa Serentiy
    http://twitter.com/melissaserenity
    http://www.melissaserenity.com

  • http://www.beadedjewelrybysusan.etsy.com Susan Campanini

    I find that carrying my small digital camera around in my purse encourages me to take photos wherever I go. Sometimes it’s only after returning from a simple outing that I realize something about it might make for an interesting post, and then I already have the photo to illustrate my text.

    Check out my blog at http://www.beadedjewelrybysusan.blogspot.com

  • http://www.eccentricity.etsy.com Sonnee McCabe

    Pictures definitely make a blog more interesting and noticed. I am such a visual person that photos always catch my eye before the written word. You always give good and helpful information Tim. Many thanks.

  • http://www.orsinimedici1951.etsy.com Elsie Collins

    I have seen this proven first hand, before I ever knew a thing about SEO!!
    My Italian Renaissance Carnivale Masks have consistantly gained and held their top four listings, and page rank on Google, when the keywords “Italian Renaissance Mask” is typed in the search bar. That’s the first four listings out of 110,000 listings!!! Now if I can just repeat that relevancy for all my items!!!

  • http://www.sheepfarmmusings.com Beth Corey

    I seem to learn something new from you every day! Thank you, thank you!

  • http://www.janssendesigns.com Rachel

    wow, I hadn’t heard of the alt tag (I’m very new to blogging and to html). Added it to my pictures! thanks!

  • Tim Adam

    You are welcome Rachel…. I hope it helps increase your traffic!

  • http://www.kmberggren.com Katie m. Berggren

    Thank you Tim! I certainly did not know how to include alt tags in my images until this story, I really appreciate your help. :)
    Sincerely, Katie
    http://www.kmberggren.etsy.com

  • http://naturevisions.etsy.com Erica

    Looks like I have an awful lot of photos to go back and edit! When you have multiple photos of the same subject, is it okay to do this on every one? Or will Google think it’s tag stuffing? I would like to get my blog into search engines, and moving up, now that I’m finally dedicated to it:-)

    Thanks,
    Erica
    http://naturevisions.blogspot.com/

  • http://www.yoola.esty.com YooLa

    Great tip, mentioned it on our hebrew forum… so you’ll have probably lots of israeli traffic coming sooooon :) cheers

  • http://www.sleepymoondesign.com Zoe from Sleepymoondesign

    Usually my whole blog post is written around the theme of the picture!!

    Check out my blog here~ http://sleepymoondesign.blogspot.com/

    ~ Zoe

  • http://artblogbykat.blogspot.com/ kat

    wow…thanks for sharing that important bit of info to increase our blog traffic…i really appreciate it!!

  • http://www.missvalscreations.com Val

    I use tons of pictures in my blog but did not realize you can change the alt tag! Very helpful.

  • http://naturevisions.etsy.com Erica

    Been meaning to add an update to this – I upload most of my blog photos directly from my computer. I don’t see an Img Alt tag this way. Is the Img Alt tag this (part of the HTML from the photo upload): border=”0″ alt=”"id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5439469346245535394″ /> ?

    I went back and looked at your photo, Tim, and saw that you were using Photobucket. I can find the Alt tag easily on the few I’ve used Photobucket for, but don’t really want to have to upload in two places just to be able to do this. Help:-)

    Also, when you use Photobucket, you actually don’t need to mess with the whole Edit HTML thing on Blogger. When you’re uploading photos onto Photobucket, just make sure to add the tags that you want on the page that asks for the Title, Description, Tags. Those tags will automatically be your Img Alt tags – I realized they were when I was trying this out on some photos I had already tagged when uploading onto Photobucket. Hope that helps save a step.

  • http://www.indigo-blue-designs.blogspot.com Andrea

    Hi,
    I have taken a look at the html in my most recent post and I can not find ALT within it. Do I add ALT and the words? I did manage to add an additional text heading by putting a sentence between the j.peg><. So am I half way there?
    x

  • http://sophismpress.blogspot.com Chrisy

    Tim I saw your comment about this process over in an Etsy forum…so headed over to check it out. I was expecting it to be complicated and difficult to understand but not so. Have completed my first alt pic and will see how it goes. Thanks for taking the time to share this info with us…

  • http://handmadespark.com/blog/what-is-in-a-title-etsy-item-titles-2/ What Is In A Title? – Etsy Item Titles | Handmade Spark

    [...] your Etsy item title is so important has to do with pictures.  You have heard me talk about how important alt tags are for pictures on blogs.  Well it applies to any site or page, including your Etsy [...]

  • http://kobrienjewelry.blgspot.com Kim O’Brien

    I had the same problem with not finding “alt” so I added it in after “img” to tag my photos (which I upload through blogger from my computer). After I did this I googled my tags and my images didn’t come up. I looked at all of the pages (50+). Is there some other trick to this?
    Love the idea. thank you for sharing.

  • http://www.etsy.com/shop/bhpeters Beth Hartman-Peters

    Ran across this in the etsy community and stopped by to see what it’s all about. You always offer great info! Thanks again!
    Beth
    http://www.etsy.com/shop/bhpeters

  • http://sylviacook-inspirations.blogspot.com/ Sylvia

    I checked out my blogger posts and have 2 different variations of html.
    It seems now that I have switched to the new blogger editor for photo upload, there is NO alt tag. Here’s an example of the code from a recent post:

    Can I just add the code in there somewhere? If so, where?

    Here’s an example of an older one (not using the new blogger editor for upload) that had the alt tag and I was able to add “free desktop calendar” to it:

  • http://robinswoods.blogspot.com/ Jennifer Robin

    I’m also wondering about that elusive alt tag. As Sylvia said, the new Blogger editor does not include one, in the photo upload, and I have no clue about how or if to add one myself. Anyone?

blog comments powered by Disqus