The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” couldn’t be more true when it comes to websites. Not only do pictures break up long page content, making it easier and more enjoyable to read, but pictures also stimulate the brain.
Images also enhance what you are writing about. Think about the last time you looked through a magazine. Which articles caught your eye, those with plain text or those that had an image?
The same hold true for websites. If you provide a text blog post about how to bake an apple pie in detail chances are your reader’s interests will be piqued. However if you add step-by-step pictures of the making and a picture of the finished product your readers will be intrigued and more interested. The more images your website has, the greater possibility that those images will be picked up by Google.
Not only will images on your site entice your readers, but they can also increase your traffic. As Google indexes your website, they will also index the images to display to people when they use Google Images.
It is important to use images for your website because they will be one more place that you can implement SEO to help your site rise in the rankings. Adding alternative text, or alt-tags, to a picture of graphic on your site explains what the image is. It also helps to name your image with your keywords. Learn how to optimize your images here.
Finding images for your website can be time consuming. You can take your own pictures, but make sure they are professional looking. Presentation is everything and you don’t want to bring down the value of your website with low quality photos. You can purchase stock photos from websites for under $1 each but they can get expensive if you purchase them often or require a larger size.
Images are not only a great way to break up content for easier reading but it also allows you a place to add your keywords. Whether you take your own pictures or use stock images, they will make your website more appealing to your readers.
Below are some websites where you can get stock photos for your website
DepositPhotos – Reasonably priced stock photos, you can get a 1 week free trial which gives you 5 free photos a day
Istockphoto.com – Similar to DespositPhotos but a little more expensive.
Corbisimages.com – Find photos for your website for a cost
Morguefile.com – Free images
Stock.xchng (sxc.hu) – Free images
Public-domain-image.com – Free images
Learn how to optimize your images for maximum results here.
