SEO is all about using keywords to get listed in the search engines but once you have achieved top listing front page status, it is ‘people ‘ who will be coming to veiw your site.
Humans are visual creatures by nature. We respond to colors and images on a visual and emotional level. Words capture our imagination. Pictures capture our attention.
With that in mind you may consider inserting images and pictures into your blog posts and on your websites.
One of my students asked me the other day how I get pictures into my work from home blog. I thought this question was important enough to blog about.
The actual mechanics of inserting pictures into a WordPress blog is relatively simple…
While in composer mode you place the cursor where you want to put the image and then use the image button (looks like a tree).
A dialogue box appears…
You fill in the image url, image description, choose the alignment, set the size in pixels, add a border in pixels, and set the spacing in pixels you want to appear around it.
Easy, right?
But where do you get the image and image URL from?
Because I use this blog as a tutorial site for my students, I tend to use screen-capture images to help explain processes and procedures. To do this I use Tech Smith’s Snagit software to take the screen capture and I use the Snagit Flickr plugin to upload the images to my Flickr account.
You can use the Snagit software for a 30-day trial period before you have to buy it. There are other screen capture software programs out there ( do a Google search for “free screen capture”) but I fell in love with Snagit so I bought it.
Flickr is a photo-sharing social-bookmarking site so it has the advantages of being Web 2.0.
With the Snagit Flickr plugin installed I can send my screen captures immediately to Flickr and Snagit places the URL in my PC clipboard so I can paste it directly into the image dialogue box.
I learnt how to do this from Mike Mindel of WordTracker fame. Here’s the link to his post “How I do my flawless screen-captures”
Another way to upload images is to use FTP to upload them to your server if you have an image on your hard-drive. Place them in the images folder of your site and add the file name to the image folder address. remember to include the type of file it is… .jpg .gif .png etc. The URL will look something like.. http://www.your-site.domain/images/imagefilename.type
The Wordpress composer has an upload facility so you can use this to upload images also.
Now what if you don’t have a suitable image to use?
You can check out public domain image and clip-art sites. Do a search in Google for “free public domain images”. However I will caution you to double check that the image you choose is OK for you to publish. That is, use it on a website or blog. You don’t want to find yourself in breach of copyright.
Another tip is if you do have screen capture software you can open the image files of the WordPress and OSWD templates in an image editor and capture a portion of the image that you quite like.
Wherever you get your images and pictures from, the process of inserting the into you work-from home blog or any other site is the same
