This blog post will show you how and why financial advisors should use images in their blog posts. Read on to discover best practices for images and learn how to find and create your own.
Why You Should Use Images in Your Blog
Blog posts with images receive nearly twice as many views, according to OptinMonster. But beyond making a blog more enjoyable to read, images provide additional benefits. Some examples include:
Link-Building Opportunities
When someone sees an image online that they find helpful or interesting, there is a chance they’ll want to share it with others. And, if they share it via social media, that’s more potential attention directed towards your blog.
There is a chance this could work with a stock image. But this really works best with something original and shareable, like an infographic on data your firm has collected.
Additional Keywords
Including alt-text in your images is essential to SEO, and provides a chance to add more keywords to your article. This can help your post appear in more locations in a Google search (such as the images tab). And, it helps Google understand your blog post better by providing context to the images you’ve included.
Elevate Brand Quality
A Blog post with well-optimized images improves the overall presentation and experience of a site and is helpful for creating a high-quality brand.
How To Find Images for Your Blog
There are two types of images you can use for your blog – stock images and custom images.
Stock images will be the easiest to acquire, though you’ll want to make sure you can legally use images before adding them to your post (more on this below).
Custom images will take longer to create but can provide a greater benefit. First, by allowing you to have more control over the image. Second, by creating something unique that’s not available on other websites.
A balance of both types of images is a good start, providing the time-savings of stock imagery, and the SEO and brand benefits of custom.
Here are a few best practices for including images on your financial advisor blog.
7 Tips for Including Images on Your Financial Advisor Blog
1. Optimize Image Resolution
Whether you create a custom image or download it from stock, your image will most likely be in an HD resolution. This is not necessary for most web pages and will only add to overall load time, which can be harmful to SEO.
So, how big should your images be? Well, the size will depend on its destination. This image from EngineScout helps elaborate:
How you reduce the resolution of your image will depend on your source and platform. For example, Unsplash provides a dropdown for different resolutions when downloading an image. Whatever method you prefer, the goal is to make your image as small as possible without reducing quality.
2. Make Text More Interesting
When we click on a blog post, we’re often inclined to skim for useful information. And, though a blog that’s entirely text could be just as useful, it doesn’t necessarily show this from a quick skim.
Images break up text and support it. Used alongside proper spacing and headers, images increase how interesting and valuable your blog appears. For this reason, you’ll want to include images whenever they can be used to provide additional context and break up the text. For example, check out the difference between these two sample paragraphs:
3. Include Alt Text
As mentioned above, alt text is beneficial to SEO and also ADA compliance. It gives you the opportunity to describe an image, including additional keywords when possible.
Adding alt text in Website Engine is simple. Start by selecting the image you want to add alt text to:
Then, click the alternative text button in the sidebar (shown as a small “i” icon):
From here, simply fill out your description in the text field that appears, click Update, then save with the Save Changes button in the bottom right.
If you’re unsure of what to write for your description, then you’re not alone. For alt text, a short sentence describing the image with key details is best. For example, in the image above we might write “How to add alt text in Website Engine” as our alt text. This provides enough context and detail for Google and other search engines to understand the image.
4. Visualize Data
Most advisors include market reports within their blog, offering insights to readers. These posts can benefit from visualization, by turning data into infographics, or simple charts. Doing so allows you to make your conclusions more shareable and your data more engaging.
Creating these images doesn’t need to take too much time though. For example, at Twenty Over Ten, we use Canva to create images on the fly. You can even create templates to help save time in the future.
5. Use Stock Images
Stock images are a great resource for quick visuals. They’re high quality and in many cases can be used for free. Just make sure you’re using free images, like one from our list of 15 free stock photo sites. Using any image on Google will not work unless its usage rights indicate otherwise. The downside of stock images though, is they can’t be used to provide more detail, and are often used on many other sites.
For these reasons, consider including stock images to support a general point or as a featured image. To add an extra level of branding and cohesion, consider using similar images for different blog series, or across your blog as a whole.
For example, the Twenty Over Ten blog often uses tech and landscape stock images to maintain cohesion:
Creating cohesion between your featured images adds an extra level of polish to your site. Selecting similar stock photos doesn’t have to be your only form of cohesion though. Consider other methods, like editing the photo to include brand colors, or adding a black and white filter. Anything to relate the images to one another will achieve the same goal.
6. Create Your Own Images
Creating your own images is a great way to bypass any concerns about image usage rights. But it also allows you to be very specific with your posts. There are also a variety of options for creating your own images.
You could take your own photos. Or, as mentioned earlier, create your own using Canva. For example, we do this with many of our series, like our “Monday’s Five Little Things” posts:
Creating custom images for repeating series can be especially helpful, allowing you to save time finding a thumbnail. The options are up to you. But, if creating an image is too time-consuming, then why not consider our next tip?
7. Hire Help
Depending on how often and where you include your images, hiring help is a great option. This person could be a freelance or intern photographer or graphic designer. Of course, who you hire should be based on the goals of your blog.
In many cases, images can be created in-house. But for most advisors, an intern can help save time in this process while helping to support a student. If you’re curious about this route, then check out our post on hiring an intern.
How To Add Images To Your Blog in Website Engine
Including images as a Website Engine user is relatively quick. To start, click on the space where you would like to include an image in your blog, then click on the image icon in the toolbar near the top of the text field:
From here, a window will appear allowing you to either drop an image file:
Or, include a link to an image:
Once you’ve added either, simply click Insert. Be sure to also save your post before exiting by clicking the Save Post button in the bottom right.
Wrapping Things Up
Images provide a variety of benefits to your blog posts. By understanding their benefits and uses, you can improve your blog to enhance your site, increase traffic potential and stand out against competitors. Consider the tips above as you explore the ways to use images in your blog posts.
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About The Author
Stuart Farst
Stuart is a Content Marketing Specialist at Twenty Over Ten and enjoys creating content that both entertains and educates. A Game Designer at heart, he can be found pursuing one of his many hobbies during his free time.