If Content is King, Why Do We Like Pictures So Much?
So I'm going through all these amazing Wordless Wednesday, Tuesday, Heck! Any day of the week photo posts and am astonished to find almost all of them have dozens of comments! It's just a picture for goodness sake!! Yet, we are all drawn to it!
It doesn't involve any thinking.
It is what it is, I don't have to think about it, I just have to enjoy it and let my mind conjure up it's own description. Why DO we love pictures so much. We are bored as children with books without many pictures yet as adults we still are somewhat tickled by that one picture above the chapter title in certain novels.
We are visual people. As much as we would never be drawn to a picture book of our childhood days we like constructing a scene or visual dynamic of what we are reading to give our imagination more to draw from.
I think that's the way we are made. People say men are visual but yet we all are in a way. We can construct a story so descriptive and so imaginative yet one little picture can make or break the visual for us. Many of you novel readers love to conjure up your own idea of Romeo or the setting and feel disappointed when that scene is not properly staged as was in their mind's eye.
But I still find it interesting that Google and search engines go for content and real info that someone would want to read, it's the pictures that we love so much. It's those images we are drawn back to. What would you rather look at? A page full of text, or broken up by inspiring graphics that help tell the story of what the reader is trying to convey?
Yes, we love our pictures. MSN is full of pictures, Yahoo, Cnn, everywhere... we are drawn to the image... the photo... the real capture of the instant emotion. We can sense the feeling, the timeliness, or the intent the author wanted to get across to us.
So how do you optimize your picture? Do sites with lots of pictures rank higher? Surprisingly no. Google still loves the content. If you have a zillion back links to your photo-only site you might be ok, but if not, you need the content.
Use the ALT TAGS to your advantage. If not given the choice for desription in the platform you are using, go to the code and type it between the " " after alt. Get your info in there. Don't keyword stuff, don't pad and don't be down right silly with the descrtiption but be intentional with how you SEO your graphic IF you want to be. It can really be worth it.
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