How Many Pictures Should You Use in a Blog Post? Does it help blog SEO to use more? Ep. 142

Do you wonder how many pictures your blog post needs to have? If so, that's what we're talking about today. We're also touching on how to optimize those pictures for SEO and how your blog helps you rank higher on Google or in ChatGPT and other AI searches. 

Your blog can make a big difference to your online visibility, website traffic, and the leads your business generates. Learn how to use images, opt-ins, and even your podcast or YouTube videos to help increase the user experience and engagement time on your website, which will help you improve your overall SEO. 

There's a lot more to this than just how many pictures to include in your blog post. Listen in today and find out. 

Transcript

0:32

Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. Today I want to talk about your blog, because you know your blog is a great way to help increase your visibility, drive more traffic to your website, show up more often in Google, AI overviews, AI mode on chat, GPT, et cetera, because each new piece of content that you create is one more chance. For you to help your website and your business be found. So now, if we're creating content for our blogs, we want to make sure that we're making it content that our ideal customer wants to read. So you may have found yourself wondering, not only like how long should my blog post be, but how many pictures should I include in my blog post? So let's talk about that. And then the other question I get is, does this stuff matter to blog SEO? So let's jump right in. The number of photos that you use in your blog, honestly, technically does not impact your SEO. However, there are things we can do with your pictures to help your blog or your pages SEO, to help you have a better chance of showing up on Google or in AI search, and we'll talk about that. So with a typical blog post, there is no ideal word count. There's no perfect word count. As far as Google is concerned. What we really wanna focus on is. Creating content that's really helpful and useful and anticipates our ideal customer's questions. So when they're searching for information and they see our blog either referenced in AI search or as a link that they can go to in a traditional Google search result, then we want them to feel like. We can help them and they want us to help them. If they're going to take the time to read our blog post, then we need to be able to provide value. So what we really wanna think about when we're laying out our content is what questions do they have? What information do they need? What should I include in this content piece Now. With AI search, we wanna make sure that we're really focusing on one question per blog post. This is a little different from Google, but we really do wanna stay focused on just one question. We're not as worried about the keywords for ai. AI is more about the questions, so we wanna make sure that we are answering questions. In our content. Now let's get back to the images. So we're going to say, let's pretend we have a blog post that's a thousand words. It's a fairly in depth, but it's not like super, super crazy in depth, but it provides enough value that it's helpful. It gives them information and insights. That post would probably have anywhere from two to four images in it. I personally see somewhere in that 250 to 500 word range is about where you should have a image. Now, I've seen some people say, you should have one every 100 words. To me, that starts to feel a little heavy on the images. Like if I have a blog post that's a thousand words, which is approximately like a page and a half, two pages, if I were writing a story, if that much. And I have four images in it. That's quite a bit. Now, there are special circumstances where you actually will potentially want more images, and that's if you're doing like an in-depth how to piece, maybe you're a recipe blogger and you wanna include step by step and you want to show them what it's gonna look like. Or if I am doing a blog post, like if I'm writing a blog post for you and I'm talking about how to write title tags in WordPress, I'm probably going to screenshot what the interfaces look like and tell you. This is where you start, here's where you put this part. This is what you do. Just because it makes it easier to learn that way, to have the words and the visuals. So in some circumstances, some specific posts, you may have more images than in others, but in general, one image every 250 to 500 words is probably fine. Now for me, I always have a hero image at the top of my blog post. So that counts as one image. So if I have a 500 word post, I might not put another image in it. The other thing that I do to break things up,'cause really your images are just about helping to tell the story, giving more information, making it easier to understand, but also breaking up large text blocks because nobody wants to read large text blocks. So if somebody lands on your page. And they see paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, and there is no headers, there's no big font that helps separate it. There's no images, all of that. They're very likely just going to leave because it's not a good user experience. So that's really why we want additional images, not only to help tell the story, but also to help break up the content so it's a better user experience. So for me, I use a mix. Of my header image, I use photos that are royalty free or from subscription services. I have several subscription services that I've used over the years, and so you can reuse those photos because you've paid for access to them. There's lots of them. There's social curator, there's deposit photos. Um. Those are the only two I can think of off the top of my head, but there are a lot of them out there. You just need to look and see and make sure that you are getting one where you have access to the license, you're allowed to use it. You don't wanna get in trouble. It's not as prevalent today, but probably five to eight years ago, there were a lot of problems with people pulling images, just straight off Google images and maybe it. Said it was okay for commercial use, but then people would use that image. They wouldn't know that it actually was not okay for commercial use. And then they would be, they would receive. I got a letter from the company that owned the rights to that image, or their lawyer. I've talked to people over the years who had really large fines because they pulled the wrong image. They didn't realize they pulled one they needed to copyright or they, they didn't have access to. They didn't legally have permission to use it. So don't just go straight to Google images and look for pictures for your blog post. Make sure that you are getting royalty free. You're taking them yourself. You are using a subscription service, whatever you're doing for those images so you don't get yourself in trouble, because that's a really expensive lesson to learn. I don't want you to have to learn that. The other thing that I do. And that really helps break up the content on the page, but also helps to work on my sales funnel and grow. My email list is to include my opt-ins, graphic versions of my opt-ins, and I drop those into the blog post to help break it up as well. So if you look at my blog post, you're generally going to see an opt-in for, maybe it's the Beginner's Guide to SEO. Maybe it's the free class. Sometimes if it's a podcast one, you're gonna see an opt-in for the podcast guide. So I try to do that. I also, because I generally have a podcast episode now for each blog post, I also embed the podcast player because again, it gives it a lit, it breaks it up, so it makes it a little easier to read the post. But now it also gives someone the opportunity to listen if they prefer to listen than to read. In any event, what it's doing is keeping people on the site longer, and Google likes that. Google looks at your analytics data to understand how long people engage on your site, and the more time they spend on your site, or the more often they come back, the better Google believes that your site is. So by doing that and embedding your podcast or embedding your YouTube video right there in your blog post, you can help Google see that. Not only do you have all this content, but people interact with it. They like it, they watch it, they listen to it. They spend time on your site. Your site is a good one for these type queries, which can help your overall SEO. So there's a another little boost for your SEO. Now the last thing I wanna talk about are the optimization tips. So when you're using images in your blog post, and you should be, you want to make sure that you're also optimizing those images. So you're going to want to make sure that you're using whatever your core keyword is for the page in your image file name. So if you're taking pictures off your phone, I don't want you to upload them anymore with like image 6, 7, 8, or. Homepage, dash header, like, let's put that keyword in there. You're gonna use the dash, the one that looks like the minus sign, and you're going to do keyword dash, keyword dash, keyword dash. Now if you want to include your business name at the end, you can do that. That helps you show up and has all those blog images show up when someone goes to Google Image search. Looking for more information. Now, those blog post images will. Potentially show up giving you more visibility in the image search. So you do that, make sure you continue to use the dash, the one that looks like the minus sign. Now, I did get a question the other day from one of my students about alt text and she wanted to know, because I've always historically taught to use your keyword in your alt text because honestly, that's what I was trained to do 15 years ago. Now there's more of a movement. For inclusion and disability friendly websites, all of that. So we should honestly be putting a description for people who use like a reader to help them understand so we can put a description about what that image is. You can use a key word if it makes sense, but like I was talking to a friend the other day who is another SEO strategist, and she said she always teaches her. Students and her clients. She's like, if it's a picture of an apple, go ahead and just say picture of apple. Like it doesn't really need to say key word because it's an apple. So for me, when I'm doing, let's say for example the free class one, I will put the name of it is free dash SEO dash class dash etched. Dash marketing dash academy. Yes. It's super long. It doesn't matter. Then in the alt text, I don't necessarily say graphic image of, I say, take the free click to take the free SEO class. That way if somebody is listening, they've got reader that they're working with, it's going to say, oh. Click here to take the free SEO class. So yes, it's the alt text that tells us what the banner says, but it also is optimized. So if you can do it that way, that works great. If not, if it's a picture of an apple, just say apple. So, alright, hopefully that helps you understand how many pictures you should be using and how they do or do not impact your SEO for your website. And remember. When you are creating content, now you want to think about not only your keywords for Google, but you also want to make sure that you're thinking about your AI overview, AI mode and chat, GPT and whatever other AI search tools, somebody's using visibility. So for your visibility, make sure you are addressing the questions that they're asking and you are using them not only in your copy, but in your header tags. Your header tags are the big text that separates out your page, that separates the paragraphs and makes it easier to understand. If you don't know what those are, you're not quite sure, get the beginner's guide to SEO that is. At the freebies tab, etched marketing.com/freebies or take the free SEO class. Right now I'm teaching a class that's all about how to show up in Google and chat GPT, so you not only boost your online visibility, you increase your website traffic and can hopefully start to generate more leads because the more people we can get to know who you are and help find you and get to your website. The more emails you should be able to get on your email list. Alright, that's it for today. I will see you back here next week. Bye for now.