Last month, I showed you how to find free photos for your blog using Flickr’s Creative Commons search. I was overwhelmed by the response I got and the enthusiasm for the next part.
Well, here it is. I’m going to show you how to use them to improve the look and feel of your blog, while following the rules of the Creative Commons license.
Ways of Incorporating Photos into Your Blog
There are two common ways to jazz up your blog posts with photos. I call them the ‘article’ method and the ‘front-page’ method. Both are pretty straightforward adaptions of the way images are used in newsprint and magazines.
The front-page method is a bit ‘in your face’ and is best used sparingly. It uses a larger image that takes up the entire width of the article column, with the text starting beneath it. The advantage of this is that with a larger image, it’s more likely to ‘grab’ the reader. Keep in mind that if this is overused, the effect is lost and it can get irritating.
The article method is what I use here on goldengod; smaller images aligned to either the left or right with the article text wrapping around them. I find this method is a lot more pleasing and works better with the overall layout of my site.
I try not to post photos wider than 200-250 pixels. If you’re using my previous advice about Creative Commons photos on Flickr, use the ’small’ size to get this effect. This is not a hard rule for all blogs, you can vary that based on your own personal layout.
Try both methods and see what looks best based on your template.
How to Add Photos to Your Blog
Here is an example of the code I use to add Creative Commons photos into my blog posts:
<div style=”float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 2px”><a href=”http://www.asiteyouwanttolinkto.com” target=”_blank” title=”A relevant title for the link; use keywords“><img src=”Direct link to the source of the image” alt=”Same as title above” style=”border: 2px solid #000000″ /></a>
<div style=”margin-bottom: 3px” align=”center”><span style=”font-size: 0.9em; margin-top: 0px”><a href=”Link to the Flickr individual photo page” target=”_blank”>Title of photo</a> by <a href=”Link to photographer’s Flickr page” target=”_blank”>Photographer</a></span></div></div>
This covers all the bases; it gives you tastefully integrated photos, optimizes for search engines, and provides two photo credit links for the photographer. I have no doubt that there are a number of you out there with better html skills than mine. If you have a better alternative to nested divs, go ahead and add your own code examples in the comments.
This Will Help Improve Your Blog
Following these steps and adding quality images to a blog will help boost your traffic, search engine rankings and add to the overall look and feel of your site. From a technical standpoint, it’s long been thought that outgoing links, image alt tags, and link title tags are all taken into account by Google’s patented SEO magic. The source I’ve provided you with should take all of this into account without being inappropriate.
Blogs with images are more popular than text-only blogs. This means that you’re likely to see an improvement in the number of readers you have, how long they stay on the site, and how likely they are to comment or link to you. Compare your stats between a month without images and a month with, with no other major changes to the site and you’ll see the difference.
Got a better way of doing it? Want to show off your shiny new photo-filled blog? Leave a link in the comments; I promise to take a look at each one of them and I’ll comment with feedback for you.
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