Image via Wikipedia
Gosh don’t we all love to see pictures in posts? They really can juice up one, can’t they?
Pictures are pretty powerful draws to your readers. They not only illustrate what you’re writing about, they can entertain, enlighten, awe, inspire and drive SEO to your post.
“What’s that you say? A picture can give bring me Search Engine Optimization?” Yes, it can. Now I hope you’re saying “Tell me more!” (cause I’m gonna whether you said it or not 
)
Ok, let’s say you’ve written this absolutely riveting review of Quantum of Solace sort of like Ken Armstrong did. You’ve found this stunning picture on the web and you’re going to use it in your post to illustrate what a fab film this is. It’s a publicly distributed image, so you’re allowed to use it.
So you go to your handy dandy image upload icon and find your image, but wait just a minute before you click the “Insert into Post” button if you will. Do you see the field called “Title”? Type in a good title here. It needs to be as good as the title to your post is (something I’m notoriously bad at accomplishing, so you’re on your own as to how to write good titles). You can also write something in the Caption area — I usually don’t because I don’t particularly care for how WordPress handles captions, but it won’t hurt anything if you do. Then, see that box called “Description”? Type in some of your better keywords in there. Ok — that’s good — choose the alignment and size and NOW click the “Insert into Post” button.
Great! Now you have an awesome photo on your post that’s doing a bit of extra work because you’ve included those keywords in the description and given it a meaningful title. You can even see your handiwork by hovering your mouse over the image, but even better they are where they will be read by the bots that scope out your site every time you update it. Ok, so it took you a bit of mental exercise to think up a fantastic title and 30 seconds to type in the keywords in the description area, but it’s going to be so worth it! I promise!
But you say “I’m not using WordPress, so how do I, a lowly non-WordPress blog platform user accomplish the same thing?”
Well, it’s a bit more typing for you, but just as easily accomplished, I promise.
If your blog platform allows you to view the HTML of your page, you’re going to want to edit that. You will add the title element to your image’s HTML along with the alt tag. Don’t forget your size elements (to help with your page load) and then you’re done!
<title="Pictures are worth SEO" src="http://eyespi20.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/qos3.jpg"
alt="A Picture Is Worth 1000 Words As Well As SEO" width="500" height="398" />
There is a plug-in called SEO Friendly Images (which I actually have installed, but not configured) that’s supposed to make this a bit less painful, but from what I’m seeing in the configuration instructions, it just pulls in your post title and adds that to the file name of the picture. In my opinion, that’s not going to get the same action as my instructions above will from the bots. For one thing, your file name has to be something and I don’t know about you, but I tend to name mine stuff that really only means something to me. Like the screen shot above is named QOS3.jpg — what’s that going to mean to a bot even coupled with my post title? It’s the equivalent of making las vegas hotel reservations through Priceline as opposed to making them through the hotel’s reservations number. It’s a bit more work to go through Priceline, but you get more bang for your $$, right?
