Ways to use images and diagrams in your blog posts


As a rule of thumb, you should never publish a post without at least one image. You should always have an image right at the top; between the headline and introductory paragraph is one good spot for a picture, or you could have it lined up on the left or right of that first paragraph.

Wherever you put it, to be clear, you should avoid publishing a post without at least one image in it. Images really freshen up a page, and work best if they are above the fold where they are easily seen.

Above the fold simply means the image is visible when the page loads without having to scroll down. What constitutes "above the fold" is different with every screen size and resolution, so you want the first image to be as high up on the page as possible to attract the attention of those readers with smaller monitors.

Newspapers have dedicated a massive chunk of front-page real estate to images for decades now. You'll notice that the headlines are biggest on the front page too – that's because well-chosen images and headlines are the most important factors in grabbing attention and getting people to purchase that day's paper (or in your case, stick around and read your blog).

Using images to break up the page

Blogs have an advantage over newspapers in that they have the ability to use a lot of images without concern for page count, or extra print costs. You don't want to smother your article with images, but a great tactic is to make sure an image is always on the screen so that long tracts of paragraphs are frequently broken up by some color. Most people recoil in fear at the sight of unbroken text; it's just too hard to keep the eyes focused on it for long.

That doesn't mean you should insert a new image in your post every two paragraphs, but set up your post so that once you've scrolled down far enough that the first image is no longer visible, a second one is coming into view.

f course, it's impossible to format the piece so this works on every resolution, but that's okay, this is just a rule of thumb. If you can line up your images like this on the most common consumer resolution at the time of publication, you'll have a good balance of images and text at just about any resolution.

In a post where the focus is on written content, this rule of thumb is a maximum. You wouldn't want to break it up more than that, otherwise it becomes too distracting, takes too long to load, and the scrollbar extends forever. Of course if your post is a showcase of great portfolio designs or trendy business cards, you can have a post that consists of nothing but images.

That maximum is accompanied by a minimum. You'd do well to ensure that for posts under 2,000 words there's at least one image, and for anything over that, you need one image for the first 2,000, words and another for each 1,000 over that. You will do better with more, but we're talking about the least you can get away with after all!

How relevant should images be?

Try to ensure that every image is at least somewhat relevant to the content it represents, but you'll often need to make the most of limited options when it comes to images. Do the best you can with what you have. Ideally, if you're using five images in an article, each image will be specifically relevant to the part it's in or the closest paragraph.

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This article was sent to us by: Roger Hill at 02172011

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