This is part 1 in a 2-part series on photo and photography tips for bloggers. Part one? Top 5 Photo Tips for Bloggers, and some examples about how to put them into practice.
Let’s take this photo for instance (since it’s one of my recent favorites).
Name your images.
Before you upload them, change ‘IMG0086’ to something related to (and descriptive of) the photo itself. For instance, this photo of bourbon and bokeh lighting is called “bourbonbokeh.jpg.” This makes sense, considering it’s a glass of bourbon with some bokeh effect lighting in the background.
Bokeh is the blur of the lights in the background that give them their circular, fuzzy shape — also one of my favorite effects. I think it looks all magical and fairy-tale-like.
Speaking of naming your images —
Super basic and super simple photo SEO – add a title and alt[ertnate] text.
Think of these like tags (keywords) for your photo. When you upload the photo (in WordPress), you’ll see options like the ones pictured here.
If someone were to find their way to this page from a Google search for “bourbon” or “bokeh,” or even more likely “bourbon and bokeh,” then this page is more likely to rank higher for those keywords when they’re not only found on the page, but in the tags for any related photos on this page. If you’re posting photos of cupcakes and you want your blog to rank highly for ‘cupcakes’ then make sure any photos you post of cupcakes are named and titled as such!
Resize your photos!
Here’s why:
- Your page will load [so! much!] faster if you use smaller photo file sizes.
- You’ll take up less space on the server hosting your blog (and your hosts appreciate that! and depending on your space limitations, this could save you money).
Here’s How | In Photoshop
First, resize the photo to less than or equal to whatever your column width is. I like when my photos take up the same amount of space as the column width, so I resize mine to 750px wide (the width of my content column). Except screenshots. Because, screenshots.
Next, save your photo for the web. This will reduce its quality by a tiny, tiny bit and will reduce its file size considerably. I usually save mine at 80-85%.
Once you’ve saved this version, upload THIS version of the photo to your blog.
If you don’t have Photoshop, you can use PicMonkey.com to edit photos.
In the Basic Edits, click “Resize” and enter in the new dimensions you want to use for your photo.
If you have “keep proportions” checked, you’ll just need to know the width you want and it will figure out the relative height for you. Save the resized image and upload this one to your blog.
Bonus! You can also you PicMonkey to create collages, which is pretty fun. Just make sure whether you’re editing a photo or making a collage, you change the size of the photo before you click ‘save’.
This is great for all new photos, but what about the years’ worth of photos on my blog right now!
I’m glad you asked. Rather than going back through your posts, one by one, and swapping out any offending, larger photos for superlightning fast and awesome new ones, you can install a plugin called WP Smush.It.
This plugin attaches itself to your Media Library, where you can run it in bulk.
This means that it will go through all of your photos and reduce their file sizes as much as possible by optimizing JPEG compression and stripping it of any unused colors. It does not strip meta data (which is a good thing, considering you just learned how to add some in steps one and two!).
If you have a lot of photos, this could take awhile (like, an hour), so let it run. New photos when added will automatically be “smushed,” keeping your space well-utilized and your blog loading much faster!
Other super helpful tools/tricks:
- Host images on Flickr. Instead of uploading an image, grab the image URL and paste that into the image upload box.
If you’d like any help with this, don’t hesitate to get a hold of me. You know where to find me: email | twitter | facebook.
