Images are often underrated when it comes to improving SEO or improving organic web traffic. This despite the fact that we've all likely arrived at a website or blog post recently through searching for an image on Google and then following the link to its origins.
In other words, Google image search is a great opportunity to bring new people to Hive, LeoFinance, or whatever is your favorite Hive community. Yet, most content I see on Hive fails to take advantage of this. But that only means we have an opportunity to improve!
So what can you do to help bring more traffic to your articles, and thus also our blockchain and token(s)?
Title Every Picture Properly!
It's really as easy as it sounds. Make sure to give the images that you add to a post proper names! Just make it as objective of a description as possible, ideally including the most likely keywords to be associated with the article. I know this can be tempting to skip, as our images from a camera or phone tend to give images a numeric number associated with the date and order in which it has been taken. And no curator is likely to look at whether or not a creator has taken the time to name the images before voting on a post. Yet, if we do this well, we can increase the number of people we attract to our websites and thus benefit the value of our token(s).
For example, my last few posts have been mostly referring to recent price movements in Bitcoin, HIVE and LEO. The images I've used have typically been simple screenshots of the price. But the image name "Screenshot_20210216_133952_com.android.chrome" doesn't perform very well... So at least replace it with the name of the token, the name of the page it is from, the date it was taken, and the keywords in the article.
Personally, I like to make a folder for the pictures I'm going to use in a post, and add simple descriptions like in the example below:
Sure, it may take an additional minute or two to add a description and maybe more if you want to think more deeply about the best keywords to include. But at the end of the day, it's a small effort to make every time you post which has a positive impact in the long run.
This is perhaps especially valuable when writing content about new niches in crypto that there isn't yet a whole lot of coverage about. With very little competition, a well-described image can easily take the throne in google images for that topic.
The best performing posts are not always the ones you think
I have to admit that I have not always been consistent with this myself in the past. However, that just means it's easier to verify its effect. Doing a simple google search for "Fredrikaa steemit" gives a clear idea of which post I've made that has had the greatest success. And it's one that I had completely forgotten that I ever wrote!
As seen below, my best performing article these past 4 years is a simple night photography post with rather simple pictures I took with my phone when going for my usual evening walk in Paris.
It's safe to say that I don't find the post very impressive, nor did I put a lot of effort into it. If I saw someone else make a similar post, I would probably just shrug and think "oh, just another simple shitpost to earn auto votes" (although with some storytelling and effort to share with one's followers what daily life is like where you're at, it can still connect with and be appreciated by a following). Still, it's evidently one of the better "contributions" I've made to grow the platform through posting content.
Why did the post perform so well?
The pictures in the post and the related keywords are googled a lot more often than one might think. Whether it is "Louvre by night Christmas", or "Notredame at night Paris Christmas". Since I made sure to include all of these words that were directly related, they rank high in the search.
In fact, one of my images appears in the top four search results for "The Pantheon Christmas Paris", which is actually quite impressive.
Obviously, this won't result in a high-ranking picture every time. But every image that we can put further up will result in some number of people clicking through to the website and thus arriving in our cute little bubble. So let's do it!
How to name images easily and quickly
One quick and easy way to improve the quality of your post's google image search result would be to simply copy and paste the headline of your post into the name every image and then add one to three extra words to describe each unique picture at the end.
Of course, taking the time to consider what keywords people are likely to look for and then be as specific and descriptive as possible can help further. However, it is my experience that doing the small thing with a certain benefit over doing nothing usually outperforms overthinking in the long term. The most important oart is consistency.
A low hanging fruit for long term success
Success usually comes from the small things we do every day that make a positive impact in the long run. Adding proper names to images and trying to make them rank high in Google image search is one such thing. It's really simple. More traffic = new people who are introduced to our blockchain, communities and tokens which helps improve onboarding. As well as improving the SEO for our front ends which adds to that snowball effect.
Recommended reading
I believe making SEO and web-friendly content to bring more eyeballs to Hive and LeoFinance is one of the key enablers for growing the value of our token(s). I thus recommend everyone to find the time to learn how they can improve the SEO quality of their posts.
How to Improve the SEO of Your LeoFinance Content with One Simple Trick — And for Every Other Tribe Too by @fknmayhem
Yes. I Bring Traffic To LeoFinance & Hive. by @hitmeasap
Hope you're also feeling motivated to help bring more attention to our content and front ends as a way to help increase the value of our tokens and the success of our project!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
It's a very good trick, I honestly didn't know it, I'm going to start using it from today in my publications.
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Great to hear! I really think making a conscious effort to bring more traffic to our different websites is key to help improve the value we get from being here. Both financially and in terms of growing the platform we believe in.
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Thanks for bringing this up, I definitely need to do better in this regard. I can’t even find my own pictures from my folders because my picture naming is so irrational 😅
Hahaha! See, there are even more benefits to it! 😁
I find it helpful if only to help me find old articles I've posted here throughout the years. Since the front ends have never had very impressive content discovery and/or search options, I've mostly had to use Google to find old articles I've made to reference them in future posts by googling my account name, the name of the front end, and as many keywords as I can remember.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one googling my own posts. I don't keep my pictures on a cloud so when ever I need to pull up something on the go, I google my own stuff. I have noticed that Steemit came up better in searches than Hive now, so we definitely need to work on that.
I do this for my memes so I can find them quickly. Image uploads will often pick them up and place them into the
altattribute:If dealing with gifs, it's a good strategy to upload them to tenor and tag them appropriately.
https://tenor.com/view/vitalik-buterin-hive-approves-clap-gif-20745680
Then, they show up in discord gif pickers:
As well as twitter:
By the way, eventually, tenor uploads show up in google search results. I just did that vitalik clapping gif yesterday, so it's a little too soon. Here's one I did a few months ago:
Great advice. The truth is that genius is in the details. Thank!
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good idea!
Thanks!
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Yup. As part of building my own brand, I've been inserting at least my account name into that field for a very long time. I even wrote a post almost exactly like this one of yours, years ago.
How to do it when we upload it on mobile device?
That is good idea
I tried to search on Google trends for cub and leofinance and also hive
There is no clear results
We have to work more and this is a good idea to start with
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I wonder if we could plausibly modify the frontends to give helpful tips about ways for someone to improve the SEO value of their posts. For example, in this case, it could alert them when their images don't have a description/title.
I try to do this to an extent, but am impressed with the level of detail going into your descriptions. I will try to make mine even more descriptive in the future as I agree this could be an easy traffic bringing change.
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For the people that don't spend time naming images, Title = picture name works for mass pages. So it can be a super simple solution to add extra traffic because the picture most time relevant to a topic.
With a spintax about the title it works even better :)
if more picture 1 = title 2 =h2 3 =h3/ second h2 and so on.
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I am very guilty of naming my images as such: header, 1, 2, 3, etc ~ haha!
I had no idea that could affect the SEO and will endeavour to change my lazy ways. 😅