Images play an important role in blogging. Images are visual stimuli which provide silent explanations to the subject matter you discuss. If properly utilized, it adds value to your blog post and allows the blog better ranking on the web. Although the options available in Blogger for images is a bit limited, still it comes with handy options to create a great post. In this post we focus on some useful tips for you to use the images effectively and discuss some common problems encountered by new bloggers.

 

Before selecting an image consider following things.

  • What is the best image for the content you have written; an image can quickly give the idea about the post so make sure choose an image carefully.
  • Does it have copy write issues (If you get an image without the permission of the original owner, it would be a copy write violation. Do not worry, there are plenty of options on the web.)
  • Is the photo sizable enough or too big. (Small and unclear photos will not be effective as well as too big photos might slowdown your web page loading)

 

Finding copy write free Images for the blog post

As earlier discussed, if we find an image by just googling it, you might have a copy write violation as you use the image without proper permission from the original owner. Therefore, find copy write free images. There are a number of sites which provide you with free quality images. We use most images from www.unsplash.com which provide great and quality images. It is a good practice to provide a backlink to the generous photographer by mentioning his name under the image.

 

What is the best size for an image in a post

Usually images of  800x500 pix will do for most blog templates. If you use high definition images, it might cause your blog to slow down. So, it is better not to use large image files for your blog. It is better to use limited number of images for each post because cluttered images would take a longer time to load for users who have slow internet connection.  If your post takes a long time to load, the reader might get bored and leave the page and it would affect SEO in your blog. Blogger provides resizing options for images to suit for blog posts: 


By clicking on the picture, you will get formatting tool bar of the picture, there you can change the size of the picture into small, large, extra-large...etc. You may select the size according to your purpose of the picture.

 

What is Alt text for images

When you click on the setting option in the image menu, you will see a widow (see the image) with a space for Alt text. You may wonder what it is.

 

The alt text is an attribute added to an image’s HTML that describes what appears in the image. Adding optimized alt text to your images makes your blog more accessible for the visually impaired and also gives your blog an SEO boost.

You may give a small title for the image that best describe the picture. It helps google indexing service to find the image easier. That means, images with alt text have better opportunity to appear the first page of the search results. That helps to attract more traffic to your blog.

 

Adding a CSS code to auto resize images

Most bloggers face the problem of uneven height and width of images in a blog post. If you add the image suitable for desktop browser, it might not be suitable for the mobile phone browser. You can simply fix this by adding a small CSS code to your theme customization. You can follow the steps below. You may type the CSS code given below in a note pad beforehand. 

  1. Log on to bloggers account.
  2. Click on the Themes on the left menu. (You can go to layout -> theme designer too)
  3. Click customize.
  4. Click on the Advanced menu again on the left.
  5. There is a drop down list right below, select Add CSS.
  6. Now you can copy paste the CSS code you have typed down in the note pad. (look at the last image.)

 

There should be more tips and hacks with you to share with us. Please leave a comment below about some new things you found while blogging with Blogger. Hope you got some new tips to work with images. Share the post if you find it useful to others.