Feb 08 2012

A Picture Paints a Thousand Words: Using Images in Copywriting

Copywriter’s will ensure that keywords are strategically placed within text, links are created to relevant pages and the content will be informative to help search engines understand what exactly it is that they are saying.

By doing this with every piece of content written, they can help to ensure those looking for what they have to say can find it with ease as search engines will favour the site they are writing for over Joe Bloggs who has rambled on and never really optimised the point of his content.

One other thing that you may not have considered though is the importance of images in relation to both SEO and the user experience, so let’s have a look and see why they are of benefit to a campaign.

Design Value

Design is so vitally important to any website as people will make a judgement on what they see in the first moment of reaching the landing page. If they are met by a plain background, small text and no images the chances are they will start to think that the text on the page is as boring as it looks. Adding colourful and relevant images enhances design value which can in turn form a positive first impression of a site, meaning visitors are more likely to stick around and see what you have to say.

Enhanced Understanding

A block of text always looks more appealing to a reader when broken up with relevant images or infographics as they assist in helping them to understand the meaning of your post quickly and easily. Ensuring your post is as easy to read as possible is imperative when you are battling against many others offering similar information.

Search Engine Rankings

The major factor in providing images along with an article is the fact that search engines are able to interpret the images; therefore their addition creates another optimisation opportunity through the coding used. ALT tags are used as a way of making sure the spiders can interpret the image with ease which can in turn help to boost the webpage’s ranking. Remain contextual and brief when creating ALT tags through relevant keywords and remember to mix up the tags if multiple images are being used.

Guest Blogging Benefits

To entice the best offers for a guest post, providing a perfectly written article that offers unique and interesting content is great, but providing an image or two with it is even better. Many blogs use images for their guest posts, so if you can save them the trouble of sourcing a relevant image by doing it yourself you could find the quality of the offers you receive in terms of readership, design and domain authority increases which means the value of your links will too.

Make your content stand out from the crowd by taking the time to source a few images that enhance the post through their design and relevance.

Sophie is a Project Manager for a company specialising in SEO Leicester and is rapidly learning the value of high quality images within online copy of all descriptions, from guest posts to site text.