How many images do you use per 100 words?

[AmicableSkipper]

After reading @Ryuzaki ‘s case study, who mentioned he implements about 1 image per 100 words, I began wondering.

I‘ve never heard someone use this many images and it seems to be working pretty well.

Now to my questions:

1.How many do you use?
2. How do you size them? In terms of how much of the page they take up, not their kB-size.
3. Where do you get your images from?

Thanks

 

[thisishatred]

To note, @Ryuzaki's usage of images could be different from yours just purely based on his niche and being able to serve the user better. We also don't know the type of content (at least that I'm aware) his team is producing. For instance, listicles can easily insert images every 100 words, where-as an informational article may struggle to use one every few paragraphs.

1. As many as necessary so that the reader has a better understanding of what they're reading.

2. This is theme-dependent and based on break-points - in my opinion. There are also factors like isolated images of singular objects, etc. Most People enjoy stimuli other than giant walls of text that are super intimidating.

Matt's points about readability are important: https://diggitymarketing.com/content-audit/

3. 123rf.com or depositphotos.com. Always watch out for appsumo.com deals for these two sites. They don't happen often but when they do, buy a bunch of credits because the savings will pay off in like the first month. This last one for 123rf.com I bought 1000 credits and Depositphotos I bought 2000.

I have a Writer who is also an illustrator by trade so I also pay for those from him. I also work with folks from 99designs/fiverr to create illustrations of things and strings that don't exist or that I don't own.

I have one site that I use as a passion project - I bought a Canon EOS M50, a 50mm lens, and a Viltrox EF-EOS M2 - a sort of budget camera build. Most of the folks in this niche don't have photos of half the shit they talk about, so when I'm doing said activity, I take a photo of it and watermark it. I also use this camera for other sites I own where-in I physically own the product or thing I'm talking about.


Just as a sort of devil's advocate:

In a recent SEO Fight Club the guy who made CORA brought up factors that both gone up and down for on-page, one being the number of images on the page (down 20) and keywords in alt attributes (down 33) -

However, this data is crowd-sourced by users of the software and who knows how many data-points that is.

Regardless, you should be providing images to better serve the user, that's it. Think about it this way, when you were a kid in school, did you enjoy reading page after page of text? I'd wager to say that most people didn't. Rather, treat them like they're children and serve them both text with an accompanying image - like a picture book.

 

[Ryuzaki]

After reading @Ryuzaki ‘s case study, who mentioned he implements about 1 image per 100 words, I began wondering.

I‘ve never heard someone use this many images and it seems to be working pretty well.

I would caution you to not draw a causation where there's only correlation. I only shared that info because of the trend of people thinking they need zero or only one image. That's not really going to cut it for most types of content that are more than 250 words in length or whatever.

Having too few images will hurt you with users and Google. That doesn't mean having extra images is better.

To note, @Ryuzaki's usage of images could be different from yours just purely based on his niche and being able to serve the user better. We also don't know the type of content (at least that I'm aware) his team is producing.

Exactly. I could be doing listicles, tutorials, photo galleries, virtual tours, commentary on videos... who knows?

Literally who knows besides me? Drawing any conclusion that "more images = more success" is faulty reasoning. I was only illustrating why some people can publish 250 posts a month (with zero or one image) and why I'm only producing around 25 at the moment.

Regardless, you should be providing images to better serve the user, that's it

Yeah, that's basically it. Use images where you should and don't be lazy, and write alt texts.

1.How many do you use?
2. How do you size them? In terms of how much of the page they take up, not their kB-size.
3. Where do you get your images from?

1. Depends on the type of content.

2. I like to keep the featured image the full width of the content container and then all other images are thinner around 450px wide. This keeps them smaller but big enough for desktop and small enough (in payload) for mobile. Of course I'm lazy loading too but still. No need to load gigantic images.

3. There are countless paid and free stock photo sites, as well as creating your own diagrams and stuff like that, as well as "borrow" an image and drastically changing it so you don't get caught when you absolutely have no other choice. Just don't "borrow" an image from a paid stock photo site or a paid photographer.

 

[stoat]

I guess it all depends on the niche and what you want to achieve. If you are after high RPMs, it can be counterproductive. Too many unessential images negatively affect ad viewability. Most people scroll through images quickly (unless the visitors came for that in the first place) and the content ad is not on the screen long enough to count as an impression let alone refresh.

If you want good user experience there are some other simple options too like making important sentences bold, adding lists, etc. It all increases time on page. Basic stock photos are visual clutter. I have this idea that users are developing something like banner blindness for meaningless images, not sure if there is any research on this.

 

[fstopeight]

My rule of thumb is, you want something interesting at every scroll. Usually that means images but could be anything else. You also want to be careful about the page-size at then end of the day and make sure to use Webp. This is magical.

 

[MrMedia]

Totally depends.

I suspect I get a ton of traffic from Google image search which is classed as direct traffic in analytics so I always go heavy on images.

Some of my posts around 2,500 words have 20+ quality images.

 

[AmicableSkipper]

Totally depends.

I suspect I get a ton of traffic from Google image search which is classed as direct traffic in analytics so I always go heavy on images.

Some of my posts around 2,500 words have 20+ quality images.

Could you specify your idea behind quality? Are they unique pictures or are they edited and do they have text or something similar, so they sort of act as a thumbnail in google image search?

 

[MrMedia]

Could you specify your idea behind quality? Are they unique pictures or are they edited and do they have text or something similar, so they sort of act as a thumbnail in google image search?

All 100% unique.

 

[asduran]

All 100% unique.

I've read your responses on other forums and I'm wondering how you come up with unique images. Do you use stock photos that your Fiverr guy edits or is he creating illustrations? I really struggle with images and can spend a lot of time finding the right images for an article an author wrote so that it's helpful and useful.

I'd love any advice you are willing to share. (on my knees begging )

Do you think that real photos versus illustrations work better?

 

[bubududu]

After reading @Ryuzaki ‘s case study, who mentioned he implements about 1 image per 100 words, I began wondering.

I‘ve never heard someone use this many images and it seems to be working pretty well.

Now to my questions:

1.How many do you use?
2. How do you size them? In terms of how much of the page they take up, not their kB-size.
3. Where do you get your images from?

Thanks

1. It depends on the context of content. If somewhere need an image to facsimile, I will insert it.
2. Just use Adobe Photoshop, resize image -> then click Save for web with 60-70% quality. Or if we need to make it more compressed, I will use tinypng for further optimize.
3. Google search but pay attention about the license/right used.